By Curtis C. Nelson, Executive Director, Sesame Flyers International, Inc., Bandleader, Sesame Carnival
As Sesame Flyers International prepares to take to Eastern Parkway as one of the Grand Marshals of the 2026 West Indian American Day Carnival, this moment gives us an opportunity to reflect—not only on how far Sesame Flyers has come, but on the extraordinary journey of Caribbean culture in New York and what will be required to sustain it for generations to come.
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Our 2026 presentation, Rhythm of the Renaissance, speaks directly to that journey.
Rhythm has always been at the heart of Caribbean life. From the drum to Tamboo Bamboo, from the development of steelpan to the amplified sound systems that move today’s Carnival crowds, every generation has found new ways to express itself.
The instruments changed. The rhythm remained.
Rhythm makes us move. It accompanies celebration and struggle. It connects generations, islands and people. At its most fundamental level, rhythm is the beating of the human heart.
It is life. It is love. It is movement.
That is the renaissance we celebrate.
Standing on the Shoulders of Pioneers
New York Carnival did not begin on Eastern Parkway. Its history is a story of migration, persistence and reinvention, and it is important that younger generations know the names of those who helped build it.
Jessie Waddle was among the pioneers who helped establish West Indian Carnival traditions in New York, beginning with indoor costume celebrations in Harlem in the 1920s. Over time, Carnival moved from the ballrooms into the streets.
Later, Lionel “Rufus” Gorin played an important role in carrying that tradition into Brooklyn. Alongside Carlos Lezama, another giant of New York’s Carnival history, the foundation was established for what generations of Caribbean New Yorkers would come to know on Eastern Parkway.
Waddle, Gorin and Lezama did more than organize celebrations. They created infrastructure around culture. They created something that another generation could inherit, develop and pass forward.
Sesame Flyers is part of that inheritance.
Our own story began in Brooklyn in 1983 through the vision of our late founder, Joseph Charles. Joseph understood that culture could be a powerful vehicle for reaching young people, strengthening families and building community.
Our first Chairman, Winston Munroe, helped establish the organizational foundation upon which Sesame Flyers would grow. Today, our
Chairman Raymond Luke, who has led the organization since 2010, continues that tradition of stewardship.
Sesame Flyers began participating in children’s Carnival in 1987 and adult mas in 1992. Over the years, Sesame Carnival has won 13 Large Band of the Year titles.
Those titles are an important part of our history. But while we were building mas, we were also building an institution.
Today, Sesame Flyers operates with an annual budget of approximately $3.5 million, supporting youth development, employment, education, cultural arts, family support and community services. Thousands of young people and families participate in our programs each year. Some of the young people who grew up with Sesame returned as staff, volunteers and community leaders, and today we see their children—and another generation—coming through our doors.
That is what 43 years of continuity looks like.
Recognition Comes With Responsibility
This past June was an extraordinary month for the Sesame Flyers family.
During Caribbean American Heritage Month, Sesame Flyers was recognized by the New York City Council at City Hall, the Neighborhood Technical Assistance Clinic, and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Our Chairman, Raymond Luke, was also honored by the Caribbean American Center of New York.
Four recognitions in one month gave us reason to reflect.
Those honors do not belong to any one person. They belong to generations of board members, staff, volunteers, young people, parents, artists, supporters, funders and community partners who have carried this organization for more than four decades.
But recognition also comes with responsibility. And part of that responsibility is being willing to speak honestly about the condition of the culture we are celebrating.
What Happened to the Big Mas Bands?
Those of us who have participated in New York Carnival for decades remember when a single costume band could bring thousands of masqueraders to the road.
Names such as Hawks International, Boroketes Mas USA, Blackfoot Mas and T&T Boys represented an era when large-scale mas was a dominant part of the spectacle of New York Carnival.
Many of those bands no longer exist.
Another generation followed. From around 2009 through the following decade, Ramajay Mas International, Natural Freaks and Dingolay became dominant forces in New York mas. Ramajay alone captured the Large Band title nine times.
By around 2019, those bands had exited the New York Carnival market and shifted their major Carnival participation to Miami.
That should concern us.
These were successful bands. They had experienced bandleaders, designers, loyal masqueraders and championship records. They did not suddenly forget how to produce mas.
The economics changed.
At Sesame Carnival, we understand those pressures because we experience them every year. Long before a costume reaches Eastern Parkway, the financial investment has already begun.
Design, materials, manufacturing, mas-camp operations, trucks, sound, insurance, security, storage, transportation, marketing and labor all have to be paid for. Those costs continue to increase.
There is also a limit to how much of that increase can be passed on to the masquerader. If the only answer to rising production costs is a more expensive costume, eventually participation itself becomes unaffordable.
That is not a failure of the culture.
It is a business-model problem.
The decline of large mas also raises an uncomfortable but necessary question about priorities.
The Carnival Association raises public and
private resources around an event whose cultural foundation depends heavily upon mas and pan. Yet beyond competition prizes, the mas bands themselves have not historically been treated as a significant investment within the Carnival budget.
Budgets reveal priorities.
If sustaining the organizations that actually produce mas is not meaningfully reflected in the investment behind Carnival, then we have to ask whether their long-term survival is truly being treated as a priority.
Steelbands have raised similar concerns over the years about the level and timing of support and prize payments. Greater financial transparency about how public funding, sponsorship and Carnival-generated resources are reinvested into mas and pan would help strengthen trust throughout the community.
This does not have to become another conflict between the Carnival Association and the bands. We need each other. Producing New York Carnival is an enormous undertaking, and preserving its artistic foundation has to be a shared responsibility.
But the relationship has to evolve.
Prize money rewards what was produced this year. Investment helps make sure there is something to produce next year.
If Carnival depends upon mas and pan, then mas and pan must be visible not only on the program and the Parkway, but in the investment priorities behind the Carnival.
Culture Is Also an Economy
We sometimes hesitate to put the words culture and business together. We shouldn’t.
Look behind a Carnival costume.
Somebody designed it. Somebody bent the wire. Somebody sewed it. Somebody supplied the fabric, feathers and stones. Somebody photographed and marketed it. Somebody provided the music, truck, sound, printing, transportation, food and security.
Behind pan are tuners, arrangers, musicians, instrument makers, educators, technicians and panyards.
These people are not on the margins of Caribbean culture.
They are part of a Caribbean creative economy.
We saw that again this year when Sesame Flyers presented our Caribbean Essence Awards & Showcase, followed by the launch of Rhythm of the Renaissance, at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Producing culture puts people to work. Resources circulate through artists, performers, designers, technicians, vendors and small businesses.
Culture is not simply something we display. It is something we invest in.
We have become very good at celebrating Caribbean culture. We now have to become equally serious about building the economic infrastructure that allows the people who create it to survive.
That does not mean commercializing our traditions until they lose their soul. It means creating an environment in which cultural practitioners can earn a living from their talent while passing their knowledge to another generation.
From the Panyard to the World
Perhaps no Caribbean art form demonstrates renaissance more powerfully than steelpan.
Pan was not the creation of one individual. It emerged through the collective ingenuity of a remarkable generation of pioneers in Trinidad and Tobago.
Winston “Spree” Simon was instrumental in developing the ping-pong that evolved into today’s tenor pan. Ellie Mannette pioneered important advances in pan construction and tuning. Anthony Williams developed the revolutionary spider-web arrangement of notes.
They transformed metal into music.
The generations that followed expanded what was musically possible with the instrument.
Panorama became one of the greatest expressions of that evolution. Among its legendary arrangers is Dr. Leon “Smooth” Edwards, whose decades of work with the Trinidad All Stars Steel Orchestra helped establish both arranger and orchestra among the giants of the Panorama tradition.
That same Trinidad All Stars tradition connects us to Dane Gulston, who earned his place in All Stars in 1982 and has spent more than four decades associated with one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most celebrated steel orchestras, while building his own reputation internationally as a pannist.
Then there is Andy Narell, who helped take pan into another musical space.
Narell successfully integrated pan into the larger jazz and fusion world, putting the instrument out front and demonstrating that it could stand comfortably alongside piano, saxophone, guitar and the other established instruments of jazz.
Sesame Flyers had the privilege of featuring Andy Narell in our Pan Jazz concert series at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. The purpose of that series went beyond presenting a concert. We wanted audiences, particularly young people, to hear what was possible with the instrument.
The story of Earl Brooks Sr. and Earl Brooks Jr. gives us another example of the evolution of pan across generations.
Earl Brooks Sr. established himself as an outstanding pannist, improviser and arranger. Earl Brooks Jr. began playing as a child, performed and toured with Exodus Steel Orchestra, studied at Berklee College of Music and developed into an accomplished performer, arranger and educator.
In 2020, father and son co-arranged Hatters Steel Orchestra to the Trinidad and Tobago Medium Band Panorama championship. That same year, Earl Jr. won the inaugural international PanoGrama solo competition.
That is cultural continuity—a generation passing knowledge forward while the next generation finds new places to take it.
We see another dimension of that development in Dr. Kendall K. Williams, pannist, composer and arranger, who earned a doctorate in music composition from Princeton University and leads Pan in Motion.
Consider the journey represented by that accomplishment.
An instrument created from steel drums in the panyards of Trinidad and Tobago now has practitioners moving comfortably between the panyard, Panorama, jazz, concert stages and some of the world’s leading universities.
Alongside them are musicians such as Freddy Harris III and remarkable young pannists such as Sir Halo, reminding us that another generation is already coming.
Different generations. Different musical approaches. One continuing tradition.
But talent alone will not secure pan’s future.
Steelbands need panyards. Young musicians need instruments and teachers. Bands need storage and rehearsal space. Tuners and arrangers need to be compensated. Artists need opportunities to perform, record, tour and make a living.
Again, we arrive at the same issue.
The artistic infrastructure and the economic infrastructure have to grow together.
Culture Cannot Live Only on Labor Day
There was special meaning in returning to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum this year for our Caribbean Essence Awards & Showcase and Band Launch.
Sesame Flyers has a permanent Caribbean cultural exhibit at the museum featuring Carnival costumes, steelpan instruments and cultural imagery.
That means a child does not have to wait for Labor Day to encounter Caribbean culture.
That child can walk into a museum in February and see mas. A family unfamiliar with the Caribbean can encounter pan. A young Caribbean-American can see something from his or her own heritage occupying permanent space in one of Brooklyn’s major cultural institutions.
That matters.
Culture cannot live only on Labor Day.
It must live in our museums.
It must live in our schools and panyards.
It must live in our community organizations and businesses.
Most importantly, it must live in our children.
The Next Renaissance
As we celebrate Carnival 2026, we honor the pioneers who brought us here. But honoring them also requires us to think about the people who will carry this culture after us.
Where is the next great mas designer?
Where is the next great pannist, composer or Panorama arranger?
Where is the next bandleader or cultural organizer?
Some of them are children today.
And somewhere in our community may be another visionary like Joseph Charles, seeing a need and imagining an institution that the rest of us do not yet realize we need.
Our responsibility is to create the conditions that allow those people to emerge.
That requires mentorship. It requires space. It requires investment. It requires opportunity. And it requires strong institutions capable of carrying culture from one generation to another.
Caribbean people have always demonstrated extraordinary resilience. When circumstances changed, we adapted.
From drum to Tamboo Bamboo.
From steel drums to steelpan.
From indoor Carnival celebrations in Harlem to Eastern Parkway.
From the panyard to Panorama, jazz stages, concert halls and universities.
We have always found another way.
But our resilience cannot become an excuse for underinvestment.
If we value Carnival, we must invest in mas.
If we value steelpan, we must invest in pannists and steelbands.
If we value our artists, we must create opportunities for them to make a living from their art.
And if we truly believe Caribbean culture is worth preserving, we must build and support institutions strong enough to carry it forward.
That is what Rhythm of the Renaissance means to us.
It is more than the theme of Sesame Carnival’s 2026 presentation. It is a reminder that every generation inherits something from the generation before it—and has a responsibility to leave something stronger for the generation that follows.
The rhythm is our inheritance.
The renaissance is our responsibility.
And the future is ours to build.
