They start­ed lin­ing up from as ear­ly as 2 am. Res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain, par­ty­go­ers, tourists and na­tion­als mixed to­geth­er, some­times a bit un­com­fort­ably on Pic­cadil­ly Street to wit­ness the 20th an­niver­sary of Ein­tou Springer's Kam­bule.

Springer was not there this year; her daugh­ter Dara Healy said she was "rest­ing at home" but track­ing the pro­ceed­ings via What­sApp. A main­stay on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, it is seen by some as the re­al start of the fes­ti­val.

An en­er­getic per­for­mance of tra­di­tion­al mu­sic and dance, there were the oc­ca­sion­al au­dio is­sues, but the au­di­ence for the most part seemed ap­pre­cia­tive of the per­for­mances, in­clud­ing the Guyanese-Amer­i­can ac­tress CCH Pounder who is in Trinidad for a project that ex­am­ines the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the Car­ni­val cul­tures of T&T and New Or­leans, a place she says re­sem­bles Trinidad phys­i­cal­ly as well.

The play end­ed at 5:40 am with a tra­di­tion­al mas demon­stra­tion with stick fight­ers, moko jumbies, jab jabs and blue dev­ils that ex­tend­ed the show for at least an ad­di­tion­al 30 min­utes.