Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Afrobeats su­per­star Davi­do (David Adeleke) and new­ly crowned Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and Road March champ Machel Mon­tano ap­peared at Sun­na­tion’s Sun­rise Break­fast Par­ty in Mo­ka last Fri­day. They ig­nit­ed a wave of ex­cite­ment at the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed event.

Rat­ed one of the best fetes on the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar and pro­duced by a Ja­maican pro­mo­tion team, the event typ­i­cal­ly blends the two cul­tures ef­fec­tive­ly and at­tracts hun­dreds of vis­it­ing tourists in ad­di­tion to lo­cal fete-lovers.

“It’s my first time in Tri­ni,” said Davi­do. “I’m hav­ing a great time and I’ve been up since 8 am par­ty­ing and I’ve no­ticed that a lot of Africans are here as well cel­e­brat­ing—it’s all so good to see so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple to­geth­er, en­joy­ing good food, good mu­sic, good en­er­gy.

“I did a Caribbean tour many years ago,” he added when asked about his knowl­edge of and re­la­tion­ship with so­ca mu­sic. “So I got a taste of it then, but al­so it plays back home in Nige­ria and well, Machel has been rip­ping it for years so it was time to get to­geth­er and I’ve been hear­ing it all over the ra­dio since I got here and we just per­formed it and are shoot­ing the video this week­end.”

For­mer Road March champs Patrice Roberts and Bun­ji Gar­lin had al­ready en­livened the gath­er­ing with their per­for­mances be­fore Machel and his en­tourage ar­rived with Davi­do and his team. They were fresh from land­ing at Pi­ar­co Air­port a few hours ear­li­er and prepar­ing for their Car­ni­val Fri­day night CLASS event at QRC Grounds.

The north­ern sec­tion of the Mo­ka Golf Course was trans­formed in­to an oa­sis of fes­ti­val and cul­tur­al in­dul­gences and Sun Na­tion di­rec­tors, Phillip Palmer, An­drew Bel­lamy and com­pa­ny presided over the ac­tiv­i­ties, en­sur­ing all wants and de­sires were ful­filled.

From brand­ed cups, charge­able fans, hats, rags and the ever-pop­u­lar (and much cov­et­ed) brand­ed para­sols, to self­ie signs and sta­tions, all man­ner of food dish­es and brand­ed cock­tail booths, an­oth­er colour­ful sun­screen mo­tif over­head and of course, the best en­ter­tain­ers pass­ing through, Sun­rise de­liv­ered amaz­ing val­ue yet again.

A tes­ta­ment to the on­go­ing cross-pol­li­na­tion be­tween Trin­bag­on­ian and Ja­maican cul­tures and au­di­ences, the Sun­rise Break­fast Par­ty has carved a per­fect niche in the T&T Car­ni­val cal­en­dar. Or­gan­is­ers just need to fig­ure out a more ef­fec­tive traf­fic man­age­ment plan af­ter the event to mit­i­gate the now cus­tom­ary and un­for­tu­nate­ly ar­du­ous ex­it for so many pa­trons via the Mo­ka Road stretch out to Per­se­ver­ance Road and be­yond.