Shereen Ali

While the dust from Car­ni­val has set­tled, many will re­call with a broad smile the in­fec­tious, ded­i­cat­ed mas played by a small group of rev­ellers from the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion: a knot of "sailors" with their own home-made float: a gun­metal grey war­boat called Bis­mar­ck, which sailed with the Massy Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra this year to help them win the Large Band of the Year prize in the por­tray­al Ships Ahoy at a French Fes­ti­val.

Led by Trevor Mc­Don­ald, this small sec­tion in All Stars tru­ly "played a mas," for they stayed in char­ac­ter all day long, to the de­light of all around.

As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Maria Nunes, who chron­i­cled the band on Tues­day, ob­served in her pho­to blog the next day: "All you could do was smile and mar­vel at the can­non that blew pow­der...the ra­dio phone made of a juice car­ton that blew pow­der out of its an­ten­nae...the two tele­phones at­tached on ei­ther side to the deck of their bat­tle­ship Bis­mar­ck that they spoke on all day...the ra­dio tow­er for the ship com­plete with plas­tic bot­tles for ei­ther end...the mech­a­nisms they made to make the can­non blow pow­der...the name of the can­non 'Look Trou­ble Now'...the time they must have tak­en to make this mas and make sure all their elab­o­rate pow­der puff­ing mech­a­nisms worked...oh my good­ness...all they did was fill my heart with joy. They were the spir­it of Car­ni­val for me yes­ter­day."

The T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the rev­ellers at their "head­quar­ters" at Mar­cel­la Street, Laven­tille–the back­yard garage of an old house, where the friends have been gath­er­ing to lime for years.

The float, say the men, was in­spired by the Ger­man bat­tle­ship Bis­mar­ck launched in 1939.

"The Bis­mar­ck name came from an old man I met lim­ing in a bar in Diego Mar­tin," said one of the men, Ko­ro Hills.

Bis­mar­ck was among the largest and most pow­er­ful bat­tle­ships ever built by Ger­many for World War II, with a rev­o­lu­tion­ary de­sign for its time.

At the Bat­tle of Den­mark Strait, Bis­mar­ck de­stroyed the bat­tle­cruis­er HMS Hood, then the pride of the Roy­al Navy. This lethal pow­er cap­tured the imag­i­na­tions of the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion rev­ellers, who, in true Tri­ni fash­ion, adopt­ed the Bis­mar­ck's myth of sin­is­ter, steely in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty, while en­joy­ing hours of se­ri­ous­ly sil­ly fun with the idea.

They built a sec­ond deck on their "war­ship" (its maid­en voy­age was ac­tu­al­ly in 2014 un­der an­oth­er name), and im­pro­vised a big­ger, al­to­geth­er more im­pres­sive pow­der gun than the more mod­est one they'd built last year. Their am­mu­ni­tion? Tubs of ba­by pow­der, of course!

Their gun or can­non, Look Trou­ble Now, took its name from a line in Machel Mon­tano's song Like a Boss; the Rhythm Sec­tion play­ers all loved its boun­cy en­er­gy.

Last year, their boat gun was a small­er af­fair, through which a hose chan­nelled pluffs of pow­der. "But we went to 'Sen­ate' and we got a lil mon­ey to im­prove the ar­tilleries..." said Col­in Mitchell, ex­plain­ing that the 'Sen­ate' re­ferred to Trevor Mc­Don­ald, the pres­i­dent of Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion, who stood be­hind every­body qui­et­ly, in red shirt, buzz cut hair, neat mous­tache, and a proud smile.

"We don't ask for hand­outs," em­pha­sised Mitchell; "We dip and we take out from our own pock­ets to do what we do."

"Yes, we spon­sor our own selves. We don't wait on peo­ple," con­firmed Mc­Don­ald.

A core of four peo­ple con­ceived of the Bis­mar­ck mas, with en­gi­neer­ing help from Ko­ro Hills, a mul­ti­tal­ent­ed welder, join­er and car­pen­ter.

Said Ko­ro: "Or­mand Mor­gan first came to me with the idea of tak­ing an old fridge on the road, make it look like a boat, and roll it on wheels through town...we could dis­card it lat­er...But I thought, I can't af­ford to build some­thing and just throw it away...So I de­cide I go­ing ba­sic, the re­al thing..."

So he built a re­al­is­tic look­ing ship from wood, on a wheels base, in 2014, and added the top deck this year. He even says that if you add fi­bre­glass and an en­gine, it could func­tion as a re­al boat.

"My part­ner Wayne 'Div­ing' Mitchell came up with the top deck and big gun idea this year. Then they came to me to fab­ri­cate it," said Ko­ro.

Kelvin Ser­rette was the wiring man. "It's a sim­ple 12-volt car bat­tery, hooked up to some fog lights, and a mo­torised 'boom' gun....and we ran some switch­es," he said.

The big gun was made from a length of four-inch PVC pipe, with a hole for in­putting pow­der am­mu­ni­tion, and an air con­di­tion­ing car blow­er fan to help blast the pow­der. Pow­der was not the on­ly am­mo–there were al­so ten­nis balls! �2 Con­tin­ues on Page A30

The boat's steer­ing wheel was made from a U-shaped piece of one-inch thin PVC pipe, with bat­tery pow­ered trig­gers to pump pow­der through the big "boom" gun.

For the whole of Car­ni­val Tues­day, from 9 am to 9 pm, the Bis­mar­ck crew shot strate­gi­cal­ly timed, im­pres­sive blasts of pow­der, and talked on their "phones," plan­ning bat­tle strat­e­gy. Their equip­ment nev­er once broke down.

"Div­ing's leg hurt him the next day, you know...whole day he fir­ing!...Man was stand­ing up on the top deck, and mean­while a part­ner on the phone was con­trol­ling the tar­gets, while the man op­er­at­ing the 'boom' tak­ing in­struc­tions: Coro say­ing, al­right 90 de­grees, or 45 de­grees, y'un­der­stan? And FIRE!"

In­clud­ed in their crew was a mu­si­cian and mas man "im­port­ed" from To­ba­go, An­son Beck­les, part of the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion, who blew his trom­bone to add to the mas.

Their mas had every­one from lit­tle chil­dren to big peo­ple com­ing up to touch their boat on the street, want­i­ng to play with the boat like a huge toy on the road. It was very in­ter­ac­tive, as peo­ple came up to spin the satel­lite ra­dio, ride along or take pho­tos.

The Rhythm Sec­tion mas play­ers wel­comed it all, stop­ping with a smile for any­one in­ter­est­ed, let­ting hun­dreds of peo­ple ex­plore and be­come part of their fun.

What made them de­cide to play with All Stars for the sec­ond year in a row?

"Well ac­tu­al­ly, we used to be play­ing with Mac­Far­lane...But he end­ed up paus­ing..." ex­plained a mem­ber, "And Car­ni­val is in our blood, so we de­cide we not stay­ing home. We want to do a cre­ation. And come out with Car­ni­val still. Be­cause it in­side ah we blood, as T&T. So that's what made us go and join with All Stars.

"We didn't have to go with All Stars. We coul­da go with Ex­o­dus, with Des­pers, with a band from South. We just feel to go with All Stars...And why not All Stars? We think of our­selves as stars al­ready...all of us are blink­ing stars! ...So..."–it was a case of a con­stel­la­tion of en­er­gies meet­ing.

But re­al­ly, the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion play­ers had al­ready played all oth­er kinds of mas­quer­ades in past years–ex­cept for sailor. They re­al­ly want­ed to play a sailor mas. And it was easy with All Stars, you just paid your very rea­son­able $100 band fee, and were to­tal­ly free to come with your own style.

"Ah was scrub­bing deck last year," said Mose­ly, with some pride.

"This year, on the Av­enue, so many peo­ple's chil­dren want­ed to play on the boat. So we gave them the green light, we lift­ed them up on the boat," shared Mitchell.

Many peo­ple from their own com­mu­ni­ty joined them, too, all decked out in white sailor's uni­forms. "They en­joyed them­selves. You know, you just see a hap­py en­joy­ment?"

Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion's sailor mas par­o­died sol­diers fight­ing a war.

"But a war in a nice way, man..." said Mitchell: "–be­cause is just love com­ing back at you. You pelt (ba­by pow­der) bombs, you get love."

�2 TO­MOR­ROW: Read about the his­to­ry of the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion.