Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

Ros­alind Gabriel is the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on of kid­dies Car­ni­val. Her elab­o­rate pre­sen­ta­tions have cap­tured the Band of the Year ti­tle for 14 con­sec­u­tive years, this year be­ing the most re­cent. "I feel re­al good about it. I don't set out to build pro­duc­tions with prizes in mind, I do my best be­cause I love the cul­ture, I love to make chil­dren hap­py with what they wear," she said when Wom­an­Wise con­tact­ed her. For years, chil­dren's car­ni­val has sur­passed the adult ver­sion in terms of cre­ativ­i­ty and beau­ty. Gabriel, whose work is of­ten used in events out­side of Car­ni­val, has been lead­ing the charge, cre­at­ing cos­tumes that are elab­o­rate, colour­ful, and true to her var­i­ous themes. Her pen­chant for or­nate cos­tumes is a di­rect in­flu­ence of the mas she grew up watch­ing. "I grew up on 28 Stone Street, Cor­beaux Town as they called it, and when I was lit­tle all the mas passed on Ari­api­ta Av­enue. All the chil­dren ran to the cor­ner to see the bands when they passed; George Bai­ley, Harold Salde­nah, those icons," she re­called.

Her strict fam­i­ly up­bring­ing didn't al­low for play­ing mas but thanks to her hus­band Nor­man, she was in­tro­duced in­to the world of mas mak­ing. "When we were court­ing, he was friends with Wayne Berke­ley and we used to go the mas camp and help him build mas." Gabriel, 61, has worked with many oth­er band­lead­ers, among them, Pe­ter Min­shall, Steven Lee He­ung, and Cito Ve­lasquez. When she had her first child, Gabriel didn't hes­i­tate to im­merse him in­to the ex­pe­ri­ence she was al­lowed to watch grow­ing up. "I put my son in mas from the age of two and when he was sev­en I made his first in­di­vid­ual cos­tume. When my last child was 13 and her days in ju­nior mas were com­ing to an end, I de­cid­ed to put out my first band with the en­cour­age­ment of Lil Hart," she said. In 1989, Gabriel's first band hit the road in the medi­um cat­e­go­ry un­der the ti­tle, Court of the Myth­i­cal Fire Opal. Gabriel has long up­grad­ed to the large band cat­e­go­ry with over 200 mas­quer­aders and since 1996, has ded­i­cat­ed her pre­sen­ta­tions to lo­cal themes.

The band­leader has been re­spon­si­ble for many firsts. Her band was the first chil­dren's band to com­pete on Car­ni­val Mon­day and in its very first year in 1994, won the Band of the Day ti­tle. Gabriel re­peat­ed the win up un­til 1998. When the adult bands com­plained, the Na­tion­al Band Car­ni­val As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA) was forced to cre­ate a new rule in 1999 that stat­ed for a chil­dren's band to be judged in an adult com­pe­ti­tion there had to be two adults in cos­tume to every child. "Joan­na Humphrey used to de­sign the band and He­len and John Humphrey en­cour­aged me to go out on Car­ni­val Mon­day. They said mas is dead on a Mon­day we should bring out a band. It worked well and even­tu­al­ly, years lat­er, I start­ed do­ing it on a Tues­day. This year we had our first al­liance with Best Vil­lage and we came sec­ond in the medi­um cat­e­go­ry, I was thrilled," she said. Gabriel's band was al­so the first to have its own mu­sic truck. While the av­er­age kid­die's band re­lies on DJs placed along the routes, Gabriel felt hav­ing her own mu­sic would al­low her to keep the clean, fam­i­ly-type at­mos­phere her band is renowned for.

"Par­ents grav­i­tate to the band be­cause of the rules and reg­u­la­tions in place, no al­co­hol, play­ing of clean mu­sic. It's a chal­lenge to keep the mu­sic clean, we usu­al­ly have to take tunes from oth­er years," she said. It's those fac­tors as well as her pas­sion for Car­ni­val that Gabriel be­lieves con­tributes to her suc­cess. "I nev­er re­al­ly thought about the band or the mas as a busi­ness. I would start a cos­tume from scratch and do it over if it's not to my lik­ing. Be­cause of my rep­u­ta­tion for good cos­tum­ing I would not put some­thing on the road I am not hap­py with," she ex­plained. "The theme is im­por­tant to me, it must be na­tion-build­ing and ed­u­ca­tion­al. Now that we have emerged in adult mas I am look­ing for a theme that has a deep mean­ing and cos­tume of the stan­dard I do for the chil­dren," said Gabriel who is al­ready in plan­ning mode for 2011. Bring­ing out a band is not with­out its chal­lenges and Gabriel be­lieves the chal­lenges have in­creased in re­cent years. "In the last three years, the skilled labour is re­al­ly hard to come by. Be­fore there were a wealth of peo­ple com­ing to your doorsteps ask­ing for em­ploy­ment but those days are gone and the few peo­ple you do get you have to hold on to," she said.

As a per­son who came out of an era when cos­tumes were made from scratch, Gabriel is al­so crit­i­cal of the new trend of im­port­ing cos­tumes. "I think it is caus­ing the ar­ti­sans we do have to not do what they did be­fore. It will ham­per the cre­ativ­i­ty and it caus­es every­thing to look the same. I do not be­lieve there is a care for the cul­ture by some bands I like to call mov­ing par­ties. They aren't sell­ing cos­tumes to en­hance our cul­ture, they sell a par­ty­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, they don't have a thought to help the cul­ture along the way," she said. Since ad­vo­cates for biki­ni mas like to jus­ti­fy their ar­gu­ments with com­par­isons to Brazil, Gabriel said peo­ple need to look be­hind the floats where half-naked sam­ba queens ride. "Look be­hind the float, you would see re­al cos­tumes with cre­ativ­i­ty. We have tak­en the skimp­i­est of Brazil, which is the mi­nor­i­ty there and made it the ma­jor­i­ty here. In adult mas, the par­ty bands have reached; I don't think we can't get any worse with lack of iden­ti­ty. You can­not tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween those bands and to my hor­ror I learned there is a com­pa­ny in Mi­a­mi mak­ing head­pieces," she said, stat­ing that in oth­er is­lands there is a man­date that a cer­tain per­cent­age of the cos­tumes be made in those coun­tries.

Gabriel is al­so crit­i­cal of the con­ges­tion ex­pe­ri­enced on the street on Car­ni­val Tues­day. Like Bri­an Mac­Far­lane, her band wait­ed five-hours be­fore reach­ing the Sa­van­nah stage and she blames bands that went off-route to cut in front of oth­er bands. "We go through the same prob­lem year af­ter year. I think we need a lot of help and a lot of plan­ning," she said. Still, de­spite the prob­lems, Gabriel is an op­ti­mist who be­lieves Car­ni­val can nev­er die. "I am the supreme op­ti­mist and I do not be­lieve, they may try, but no­body can kill our Car­ni­val. It won't hap­pen."