JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Car­ni­val 2014

Raising a new generation of Devils and Demons

by

20140224

"That was the weird­est ex­per­i­ment I've had in my ten years," my son mur­murs, dazed, as we step out of the dim­ness of Roger Hold­er's Nel­son Street mas camp in­to the bright light out­side. He'd just been sur­round­ed by a hand­ful of neigh­bour­hood boys his age, rhyth­mi­cal­ly beat­ing old bis­cuit tins, and men­aced by a few wear­ing hairy, grotesque masks, un­til I bribed them off with a $5 bill.

The mas camp is a house of hor­rors. Dev­ils, demons, zom­bies and corpses stare down from hooks on the walls. Clut­tered desks look like San­te­ria work­shops, with can­dles, icons, and mys­te­ri­ous tools.

"I wore this one at the pre­lims, last night," says Hold­er with great pride. The huge, dev­il­ish head grins evil­ly back at me, and when he press­es a but­ton, red lights flash from a small skull.

Near­by, the torn-off heads of ba­by dolls are smeared with paint and nailed on­to some­thing that looks like a cape. My son, for once in his life, is speech­less.

I ask to see his main king, but he re­fus­es. It's a se­cret. No­body gets to see it un­til it hits the street. Plus it would scare me, he says with a laugh.

This year, most of the cos­tumes have wings; tall, spare, with pointy tips and promi­nent ribs. These are not but­ter­fly wings, but were in­spired by them.

"I was tak­ing a walk in the moun­tains," ex­plains Hold­er, a Paramin na­tive and lover of the out­doors. "I saw a big but­ter­fly...I put my fin­ger out and it land­ed on it. It was like the but­ter­fly pulled on my fin­ger and led me up the moun­tain."

He's one of those peo­ple who are just born with an affin­i­ty for an­i­mals, and they seem to love him back. He's got tame birds who sing at mid­night, when he's up mak­ing cos­tumes. He boasts that he can keep any bird from fly­ing away. Some­one brought him a bird that was a no­to­ri­ous es­cape artist.

"I put him by my heart, and my heart­beat and the bird's con­nect­ed. He nev­er flew away again."

He al­so has a wild agouti that he caught in the for­est with­out the aid of dogs.

This doesn't mean he's op­posed to the idea of cap­tur­ing his own wild meat. The skull of a wild boar sits on a counter, fangs sharp and scary, bear­ing a hint of glit­ter and paint that say it has served time as part of a cos­tume. "I killed that one my­self," says Hold­er.

The skin of a caiman is nailed to a wall, cut in a way that sug­gests it has been worn as a shoul­der adorn­ment one year. "Yeah. We ate that one, too."

Hold­er is a shoe­mak­er by trade, the de­scen­dant of Sobo Hold­er, who made shoes on the same spot on Nel­son Street 100 years ago.

They sup­ply the T&T po­lice and mil­i­tary ser­vices with shoes, hol­sters, and oth­er leather items. But as times change, many of his con­tracts have gone else­where, and the once buzzing Hold­er Broth­ers Shoe Fac­to­ry has dwin­dled to a staff of one–him.

"Work­ers died. The ma­chines got old." Al­though he has a home in Bel­mont, he prefers to sleep in his fac­to­ry. He shows me a sheath he has made.

"I go all over the coun­try sell­ing these." The "cut­lass hold­ers", as he calls them, are his pri­ma­ry source of fund­ing for his cos­tumes, since he doesn't ask for mon­ey from any of the 50 play­ers in his band.

Most of them are rel­a­tives from Paramin; un­cles, cousins, nephews, from more than one gen­er­a­tion. "Fam­i­ly is very im­por­tant to me," he clar­i­fies un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

"Every­thing you see here is made by me. No­body ever put a dol­lar or give a piece of cloth. No­body pays for a cos­tume. I don't even mind if a stranger comes. He will get a cos­tume." He shows me an or­nate Red In­di­an mas that he hopes some­one will take on be­fore Car­ni­val.

Not on­ly does he fi­nance the band him­self, but any mon­ey earned is shared among the mem­bers. He plays for love and love on­ly.

"The oth­er night, two of them were fight­ing over who gets to wear a wig. I love that!" Nonethe­less, he's quite open to any sort of sup­port or spon­sor­ship–hint, hint–"even if it's just a piece of cloth or a pitch-oil tin."

As we leave, Hold­er and his troupe of lit­tle dev­ils-in-train­ing wave an en­thu­si­as­tic good­bye. I feel a trick­le of joy and hope run through me. I look at the won­der on my son's face.

He was born on the cusp be­tween old-style mas and the new. I, on the oth­er hand, am the child of two band­lead­ers and lit­er­al­ly grew up in mas camps. My sib­lings and I spent a chunk of our child­hood play­ing the fool with smelly Dun­lop glue, steal­ing feath­ers, and try­ing in vain to wash glit­ter out of our hair.

I have won­dered about my fu­ture grand­chil­dren, and asked my­self how I will be able to de­scribe to them the smell of a "re­al" mas camp: stale cof­fee, smoke, vel­vet and dust.

How I will con­vince them that once up­on a time peo­ple made cos­tumes by hand; cut out shapes, glued them on, bomb-sprayed them and stuck on se­quins. That since they were hand-made, each one was a tiny bit dif­fer­ent. That once up­on a time, cos­tumes were made by re­al peo­ple, not stamped out on as­sem­bly lines by ro­bots. And I thank God for peo­ple like Roger Hold­er.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored