Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Mas­quer­aders "palanced" be­fore judges dur­ing yes­ter­day's Pa­rade of the Bands in down­town Port-of-Spain soak­ing up the swel­ter­ing heat. Each time the DJ trucks blast­ed the pop­u­lar so­ca tune, Palance, mas­quer­aders jumped in a fren­zy from left to right, singing along. The song seemed to in­tox­i­cate them as they let loose and went in a trance.

Sung by ra­dio pre­sen­ters JW and Blaze, the in­fec­tious tune cap­tured the Pow­er So­ca Monarch last Fri­day. At all points around South Quay, there were po­lice of­fi­cers–on foot, in jeeps and mount­ed on hors­es. There was al­so tight se­cu­ri­ty in the bands. Re­ces­sion or not, the en­er­gised mas lovers showed their loy­al­ty to Car­ni­val, as thou­sands of them made their way to South Quay be­fore the fi­nal judg­ing point. Bands be­gan mak­ing their ap­pear­ance around 1.30 pm be­fore a scanty crowd of spec­ta­tors who were busy tak­ing their pho­tos as some "wined" low to the ground.

Among the scant­i­ly-clothed mas­quer­aders there were in­di­vid­ual por­tray­als of tra­di­tion­al sailors, mid­night rob­bers and Red In­di­ans. The Lord Kitch­en­er Stand was not en­tire­ly full and the erect­ed stand op­po­site the judges was al­most emp­ty. How­ev­er, about two hours lat­er the crowd be­gan to in­crease as in­trigued tourists with cam­eras in hand, smil­ing Chi­nese labour­ers try­ing to "wine" and lo­cals came trick­ling in­to the live­ly scene. At 3 pm Bri­an Mac Far­lane's band Res­ur­rec­tion The Mas stormed the street "palanc­ing" in their dry mud­died bod­ies. The band took about 15 min­utes be­fore turn­ing off on­to Broad­way.