An­ge­lo Mar­celle

It has on­ly been four months since Car­ni­val 2010 closed its doors and al­ready band launch­es have be­gun. Band­leader Pe­ter Samuel's Woi! Mas pre­sent­ed Skull­dug­gery–the be­gin­ning of the New Age, at the An­chor­age in Ch­aguara­mas on the evening of Ju­ly 4. The new en­ti­ty showed a merg­er be­tween tra­di­tion­al mas and all the ameni­ties of a suc­cess­ful con­tem­po­rary mas band. Al­so merg­ing were their com­mit­tee mem­bers, which com­prised five car­ni­val in­ter­est groups.

The venue reeked a retro feel­ing. Skulls and skele­ton dec­o­ra­tions draped the walls, while teas­er mod­els pa­rad­ed in cos­tumes. Live en­ter­tain­ment was pro­vid­ed by Char­lie's Roots and a host of oth­er DJs. Al­though it was a car­ni­val band launch, some­how Ker­win Trot­man and Nathalie York, who start­ed the vo­cals for the band, saw it fit to start with Neo's Clos­er, but lat­er, brought back mem­o­ries of the band's for­mer lead singer Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert.

The duo al­so per­formed the 2010 Road March, Palance. When rap­so gi­ants 3Canal took to the stage they per­formed se­lec­tions from their ex­ten­sive reper­toire, and as they end­ed their stint on stage, blue dev­ils came out spit­ting fire. The pre­sen­ta­tion of over 16 sec­tions showed not on­ly the band­leader's ded­i­ca­tion to im­mor­talise tra­di­tion­al mas, but the de­sign­er's di­ver­si­ty.

De­sign­er Sonya Sanchez Arias said, "What I love about Trinidad is the va­ri­ety; the va­ri­ety of faces, the va­ri­ety of food and the va­ri­ety of the cul­ture. So why is the va­ri­ety in the mas lack­ing? "I think that I have an idea and a vi­sion that is dif­fer­ent. It is so dif­fer­ent and un­like every­thing else that has gone be­fore, it makes me a lit­tle ner­vous at how dif­fer­ent it is," she ad­mit­ted.