The Young Up­ward­ly Mo­bile Adults aka Yu­ma cel­e­brates its fifth birth­day as a Car­ni­val band.

From Zo­di­ac, to Press Play, to Imag­ine, to Cirque and next year's Reign, the band ex­pe­ri­ence goes be­yond 3,000 mas­quer­aders danc­ing along the streets of Port-of-Spain. For this mixed com­mit­tee of 70, rang­ing from neo­phytes at 18 to uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents to the ex­pe­ri­enced in their 20s and 30s and the el­ders who pro­vide an an­chor, Yu­ma has cre­at­ed a fam­i­ly unit in and out of cos­tume.

The for­mu­la for a hap­py band, they say, is with the mas­quer­aders. "Every­thing the band goes through, we go through," said Aca­cia de Ver­teuil, com­mit­tee mem­ber.

"This year we had the per­fect cos­tumes, no cos­tume en­vy. We had things on point. Next year, we want to du­pli­cate the ex­pe­ri­ence."

To­mor­row, at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Yu­ma will in­tro­duce Reign, which presents 13 sec­tions that por­tray dif­fer­ent as­pects of his­tor­i­cal rule across the globe.

"It en­com­pass­es the roy­al theme–em­pires, king­doms. We touched a lot of coun­tries. How­ev­er, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a king or queen but a piece of a dy­nasty. We did a lot of re­search," said de Ver­teuil.

The theme may be sim­i­lar to por­tray­als pre­sent­ed in the days of stal­wart band­lead­ers like George Bai­ley who pre­sent­ed the fan­ta­sy in his­tor­i­cal themes.

But as fel­low com­mit­tee mem­ber Chase De Souza points out, the band cap­tured this his­tor­i­cal theme with a mod­ern twist, adapt­ing to the tastes of the present-day mas­quer­ad­er.

"We want to be re­lat­able to the theme, to have that old vibe, yet pro­vide a bal­ance. We want to have a holis­tic im­pres­sion of the theme," said De Souza.

Among the de­sign­ers is Crys­tal Am­ing, the daugh­ter of mas leg­end Neville Am­ing. She has been de­sign­ing with the band since year one. There are al­so uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents who have be­come bur­geon­ing de­sign­ers. Mas­quer­aders David Dew­er and Justin Scott, who made their de­but as de­sign­ers last year, have an in­put in the cre­ation of the elab­o­rate head­pieces and de­tailed body jew­els.

Nev­er­the­less, in cre­at­ing the cos­tumes there is an in­ter­change and ex­change of sup­port through sug­ges­tions in colour match­ing, ma­te­r­i­al, place­ment of pieces, over­all cos­tume de­vel­op­ment.

"We took a page from (Wayne) Berke­ley by en­cour­ag­ing all our de­sign­ers to grow. We have a bar to meet. Every­body helps each oth­er," said De Souza.

"The point of the cos­tume is telling a sto­ry," de Ver­teuil said. "It helps us to re­main rel­e­vant and trendy plus the vibes we are known for–filled with so much spir­it and youth, so much en­er­gy."

With an on­go­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sion over the trend in cos­tume de­signs, the Yu­ma team be­lieves the "less is bet­ter" con­cept de­pends on the mas­quer­ad­er. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that in this age sex sells, the band must con­sid­er how it wants to be viewed.

"We like to keep it very taste­ful," de Ver­teuil said.

Af­ter five years, the main les­son these young band­lead­ers have learned is not to get too caught up in the busi­ness side that the cul­ture of mas is for­got­ten.

"It is al­so about look­ing at evolv­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and we get to see what peo­ple like, some­thing trendy...be­cause we still love the cul­ture," De Souza said.

The band's oth­er birth­day wish is to over­come the chal­lenge of road lo­gis­tics. While the dis­cus­sion of the op­er­a­tions con­tin­ues at the lev­el of the over­ar­ch­ing Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, the band still has to pre­pare a road map that would pro­vide a sense of di­rec­tion for the mas­quer­aders.

They un­der­stand the NCC's task is no easy one, as it tries to man­age as many as 80 bands cross­ing the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah stage on both Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day or find­ing a so­lu­tion to the grid­lock that oc­curs on Char­lotte Street caus­ing some bands to wait for hours be­fore mak­ing the rit­u­al ap­pear­ance in front of the Grand Stand.

"We try to make every­body hap­py but you can nev­er please every­one. You would al­ways find that out some did not like wait­ing at the Sa­van­nah, and there are some who want­ed to have that stage ex­pe­ri­ence. We try to get feed­back from every age group, we don't want to leave any­one be­hind," said De Souza.

But as the new year bends the cor­ner, plans are al­ready in place to im­prove the road ex­pe­ri­ence as a new fea­ture will be added. "We look for­ward to im­prov­ing the mas­quer­ad­er's ex­pe­ri­ence," de Ver­teuil said, with­out re­veal­ing the sur­prise.

�2 For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about Yu­ma, check the Web site www.yu­mav­ibe.com The band is al­so a ac­tive on www.face­book.com/yu­mav­ibeCar­ni­val, In­sta­gram and Twit­ter @Yu­mav­ibe