Pe­ter Ray Blood

?As quick­ly as it be­gan, it end­ed. Car­ni­val 2010 is now in the books and we are col­lec­tive­ly re­turn­ing to the re­al­i­ty of co-ex­ist­ing with the rest of the world. It all start­ed al­most two months ago in the South, when Tri Star Pro­mo­tions staged its an­nu­al Box­ing Day fete. This was soon fol­lowed by Trin­i­ty Col­lege's So­ka in Mo­ka all-in­clu­sive. A dizzy­ing flur­ry of sim­i­lar events, shows and com­pe­ti­tions en­sued. In rel­a­tive terms, this was pret­ty much an in­ci­dent-free Car­ni­val, with a min­i­mum of bac­cha­nal over re­sults. Pan peo­ple have re­al­ly changed with the times, so much that de­spite seem­ing­ly be­ing the re­cip­i­ent of an un­fair and harsh judge­ment, an un­nerv­ing qui­et has been main­tained in the East at Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus' pan the­atre. The be­hav­iour of all the ma­jor play­ers in mas, pan and ca­lyp­so, as well as the wider pub­lic, has been noth­ing short of ex­em­plary.

LEFT: ?Beau­ti­ful­ly feath­ered women of mas.

C-ing is be­lievin'

On Ash Wednes­day morn­ing, I heard much said on the air­waves about the qual­i­ty of the ex­clu­sive cov­er­age of the fes­ti­val by CN­MG (C TV). I man­aged to view a great deal of it and found it to be a mixed lot of pro­gram­ming. For starters, and in plain talk, the cov­er­age of the Re­pub­lic Bank Ju­nior Pa­rade of the Bands on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day was noth­ing short of a dis­as­ter and an em­bar­rass­ment for all of T&T. The or­gan­is­ers of this event must take full blame for al­low­ing the adults to take away the fun time that was sup­posed to be the kids', for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year. By mid-af­ter­noon, the lit­tle mas­quer­aders were forced to en­ter and ex­it the judg­ing point in sin­gle file as there seemed to be ab­solute­ly not an io­ta of se­cu­ri­ty man­age­ment present. Per­haps the se­cu­ri­ty firm hired needs to be sent to the same place Man­ning sent his land­scap­ing com­pa­ny.

On the screen, for most of the af­ter­noon, one was left to wit­ness the danc­ing prowess of one par­tic­u­lar, ap­par­ent­ly ine­bri­at­ed spec­ta­tor, and an­oth­er who seemed de­ter­mined to in­ter­act with the peo­ple's chil­dren in a sus­pi­cious man­ner as they pa­rad­ed. If this is what CN­MG streamed to the rest of the world, in its quest to en­ter­tain, en­light­en and ed­u­cate a glob­al au­di­ence, it fell quite short of the mark. Over­all, for most of the en­su­ing cov­er­age, the pre­sen­ters sore­ly lacked suf­fi­cient back­ground on many of the things they spoke about, with no his­tor­i­cal terms of ref­er­ence as far as T&T Car­ni­val was con­cerned.

?Youth run things

This Car­ni­val was one in which youth was cel­e­brat­ed big time. From Kurt Allen and Bri­an Lon­don se­cur­ing the top plac­ings of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion to JW & Blaze oblit­er­at­ing all com­ers in the Road March race; Kizzie Ruiz win­ning the Ca­lyp­so Queen ti­tle, fol­lowed by Nicole Greaves; and, the nu­mer­ous young, tal­ent­ed Panora­ma arrangers and com­posers. I ap­plaud all the win­ners. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­pressed as well by the re­mark­able im­prove­ment shown by the re­gion­al singers in the In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca fi­nal, es­pe­cial­ly Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Mr Kil­la and Tall­pree.

In the Groovy So­ca fi­nal, while Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter did all the right things to win yet an­oth­er ti­tle, I was root­ing for Farmer Nap­py and Ker­win DuBois for their fine per­for­mance of Chip­pin' last Fri­day night at the Queen's Park Oval. This sin­gle was one of the most played songs on the road, along with Rik­ki Jai's Bar­man (Guin­ness and Pun­cheon). On Fri­day, it seemed that the fi­nal­ists scaled down their pro­duc­tions, com­pared to those seen in pre­vi­ous years, with the ex­cep­tion of Fay Ann Lyons' Trans­form­ers pre­sen­ta­tion. I was al­so im­pressed by the pro­duc­tion of Zom­bies by Blaxx.

I must thank Bri­an Mac Far­lane for res­ur­rect­ing so much of our rich and glo­ri­ous Car­ni­val past with his win­ning Band of the Year pre­sen­ta­tion. As I played mas on Mon­day and Tues­day, there were oth­er vi­gnettes of T&T Car­ni­val I sore­ly missed as well, like a ven­dor sell­ing or­anges in Port-of-Spain, or a mas band be­ing served by a live brass band. I sim­ply don't have enough space to ex­pa­ti­ate much more about this year's Car­ni­val than to say C2K11 is on March 7-8, and your first all-in­clu­sive fete (So­ka in Mo­ka) is sched­uled ten­ta­tive­ly for Jan­u­ary 26.

BLOOD­NOTES

?C2K10 Triv­ia

In an al­pha­bet state of mind

Who would think that the place­ment of a let­ter could mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween vic­to­ry and de­feat. In case you're won­der­ing where I'm com­ing from this first Fri­day af­ter Car­ni­val, fo­cus on the let­ter "N" for a while. For yet an­oth­er year, De Orig­i­nal De Fos­to Him­self failed to cap­ture the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle, singing In a Palace State of Mind. Yet, with the in­ser­tion of the let­ter "N", JW & Blaze reg­is­tered a re­sound­ing and his­toric win in the Road March Race with a dit­ty called PalaNce. Get it?Speak­ing of his­to­ry, in my mem­o­ry, Sun­day night was the first time that three par­tic­i­pants from South Trinidad copped the top three places in the Queen of Car­ni­val fi­nal. Rose­marie Ku­ru-Jages­sar won as Wa­ka-Nisha-The Sa­cred Wa­ter Bear­er, fol­lowed by Pe­o­la Marchan and An­ra Bobb.

Al­ways a queen

Just how she does it con­tin­ues to be­fud­dle me. As I watched for­mer Miss Uni­verse, our beloved Wendy Fitzwilliam lead Harts Int on­to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah judg­ing point ear­ly on Tues­day morn­ing, my eyes fell on her footwear and I was agog. Grace­ful and al­lur­ing, she palanced her way across the stage with the great­est of ease in what seemed to be the tallest pair of high heels I saw all Car­ni­val. Wendy, take a bow, you are in­deed a queen.

Pa­gani­ni of the steel­pan

While his name wasn't among the bright lights this Car­ni­val, Liam Teague is lit­er­al­ly mak­ing mas on the US mu­sic cir­cuit. The As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic/Co-di­rec­tor NIU Steel­band at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty is billed to be fea­tured with the Akron Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra to­mor­row, on a spe­cial pro­duc­tion ti­tled Schu­bert and Steel. Wide­ly known in the States as "Pa­gani­ni of the steel pan", Teague has head­line billing to per­form JS Bach's Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to No 3; Jan Bach's Steel Drum Con­cer­to and Schu­bert's Sym­pho­ny No 9, The Great. The con­cert ad, en­tic­ing Amer­i­can mu­sic lovers to at­tend, reads: "En­joy a kalei­do­scope of mu­si­cal colour and styles from Vi­en­na to the Caribbean, as well as world-class vir­tu­oso Liam Teague." Venue for the con­cert is EJ Thomas Hall in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron, Ohio.