Kamal Bankay, chairman of Dream Entertainment — parent company of Dream Weekend and Xodus Carnival — anticipates that Sunday’s Carnival Road March will yield the biggest success in Jamaica’s history.

“We started our partnership with Yuma and we have now partnered with Bacchanal, so they have a proper section within our Xodus Parade. All of our partnerships not only add size but have also given us great competencies in planning and execution.

“Our government and corporate sponsors have allowed us to keep the cost of costume production and road execution reasonable, thus allowing us to keep the consumer price reasonable and allowing more and more people to access the road parade. Without them, the Carnival would not be possible at this scale,” he explained.

Since starting, Xodus has not only grown in popularity, but also in size. In 2017, they started with 1,700 mas players to 3,000 in 2018, and 4,500 in 2019. Last November, Xodus signed an official agreement with Bacchanal Jamaica to have a joint parade this year.

Outside of physical and financial growth, Xodus has seen a steady rise in its contribution to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“After our first year we made investments into infrastructure that would assist us in the long term. So year one was a break-even year, and year two onwards have been profitable,” Bankay added.

The team is currently headed by Xodus Festival Director Pierre Goubault and supported by Dream’s Managing Director Scott Dunn.

There is also a full-time staff of core members who are responsible for event execution, costume design, production and distribution, as well as logistics and entertainment.

Xodus’s record-breaking launch catapulted it to be the biggest band in Jamaica.

“We achieved our title as the biggest band because of two main things; we believe that you can be the biggest and also the best by giving quality on a large scale and people trust us to actually deliver that experience, no matter what.

“We also believe that you need to have a distinctive experience on the road; hence, our decision to incorporate our Jamaican dancehall music into our parade, thus giving us a great differentiating factor from Trinidad. We’ve built a great reputation for delivering on promises throughout all of our years managing Dream Weekend,” the chairman further said.

The events leading up to the Road March Parade are mainstays for the band which include Tailgate, J’Ouvert, and Remedy.

In an exclusive interview with the Jamaica Observer at Carnival Road March in 2019, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett beamed at the boom in numbers in tourist revellers.

“Carnival has been a growing phenomenon and, as it builds, it’s driving more economic activity in Kingston primarily…” he said at the time.

Yard Mas and GenXS Carnival are the other two bands that will participate in this year’s road march.