Parang en­thu­si­asts will gath­er to cel­e­brate the Feasts of the Epiphany and the Bap­tism of the Lord when Par­ran­deros meet at St Michael’s Ro­man Catholic Church, Mara­cas, St Joseph, to­day.

The Feast of the Epiphany—al­so known as Lewah, Les Rois, or Los Reyes—is ob­served on Jan­u­ary 6 and com­mem­o­rates the vis­it of the Wise Men who came to wor­ship the in­fant Je­sus. The Feast of the Bap­tism of the Lord, cel­e­brat­ed on the Sun­day fol­low­ing Epiphany, marks the end of the Christ­mas sea­son and re­calls Je­sus’ bap­tism by John the Bap­tist in the Jor­dan Riv­er, sig­nalling the be­gin­ning of His pub­lic min­istry.

The event is host­ed by the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPATT), in part­ner­ship with St Michael’s RC Church, and will serve as the of­fi­cial close of the 2025 parang sea­son.

The cel­e­bra­tion be­gins with Mass at 6 pm, fol­lowed by per­for­mances from 8 pm in the church­yard. Sched­uled to ap­pear are Los Par­ran­deros de San Miguel, Vi­va Je­sus, La Fa­mil­ia de Car­mona y Ami­gos, Los Par­ran­deros de UWI, Amantes de Par­ran­da, Los Buenos Par­ran­deros, Los Ruiseñores, and Los Sonidos.

A spe­cial guest ap­pear­ance will be made by the “First La­dy of Parang,” Ali­cia Jag­gasar, who is al­so pres­i­dent of NPATT.

Re­flect­ing on the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed sea­son, Jag­gasar said 2025 reaf­firmed the pow­er and rel­e­vance of parang mu­sic. She not­ed that new ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion and a lyrics work­shop, were in­tro­duced and well sup­port­ed.

“Next sea­son, we hope to ex­pand on these events to share our knowl­edge of the parang art­form with oth­ers,” she said.

Jag­gasar al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the me­dia for its con­sis­tent cov­er­age of NPATT’s ac­tiv­i­ties. “It was heart­warm­ing to have the me­dia sup­port­ing our events, en­sur­ing we re­mained in the pub­lic eye through­out the sea­son,” she said.

She thanked mem­bers of the NPATT ex­ec­u­tive, spon­sors such as Pen­ta Paints, as well as par­ents, teach­ers, stu­dents and the wider pub­lic for their strong sup­port of El Poder de la Par­ran­da – Parang Fes­ti­val 2025, and So­mos Un So­lo Pueblo, the Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools fes­ti­vals.

Look­ing ahead to 2026, Jag­gasar said her vi­sion is for a more unit­ed parang fra­ter­ni­ty. “Part of my vi­sion is to see a fra­ter­ni­ty that gen­uine­ly em­bod­ies the spir­it and mean­ing of So­mos Un So­lo Pueblo—We Are One Vil­lage. Uni­ty with­in the parang com­mu­ni­ty is not on­ly es­sen­tial for har­mo­ny, but for the preser­va­tion, growth and re­spect­ful trans­mis­sion of our tra­di­tions to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” she said. “I strong­ly be­lieve parang has the ca­pac­i­ty to be po­si­tioned as a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al cul­tur­al as­set.”

She al­so ex­pressed op­ti­mism about col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism. Ac­cord­ing to Jag­gasar, parang can be de­vel­oped in­to a high-val­ue cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ence that at­tracts both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences.

“Parang of­fers more than mu­sic; it is a liv­ing ex­pres­sion of faith, his­to­ry, lan­guage and His­pan­ic her­itage. When strate­gi­cal­ly sup­port­ed and au­then­ti­cal­ly pre­sent­ed, it can serve as a pow­er­ful gate­way for cul­tur­al ed­u­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­able cul­tur­al tourism,” she said.

Equal­ly im­por­tant, Jag­gasar high­light­ed the need for col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to for­mal­ly in­te­grate parang in­to the school sys­tem as a prac­ti­cal and en­gag­ing tool for teach­ing Span­ish.

“This ini­tia­tive sup­ports cul­tur­al ap­pre­ci­a­tion and aligns di­rect­ly with our na­tion­al goal of be­com­ing a bilin­gual na­tion, al­low­ing stu­dents to learn lan­guage through her­itage, mu­sic and lived cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion,” she said.

Fi­nal­ly, Jag­gasar said she hopes to strength­en part­ner­ships with oth­er cul­tur­al groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions to en­cour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion and shared learn­ing. “Through uni­ty across cul­tur­al spaces, we can en­sure parang con­tin­ues to evolve while re­main­ing root­ed in its au­then­tic­i­ty and tra­di­tions,” she said.