Ian Wa­son

The Tribe Group, which con­sists of the mas bands Tribe, The Lost Tribe, Bliss and Harts, un­veiled their com­bined 42 sec­tions at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sat­ur­day evening.

The venue was con­vert­ed in­to a sea of colour, as mod­els dis­played cos­tumes of feath­ers, beads and biki­nis.

Tribe will por­tray Agra which will have 12 sec­tions, the same num­ber as Bliss, which will have as its theme Au­ra. Harts pre­sen­ta­tion is Gem­stone Dreams with eight sec­tions, while The Lost Tribe is por­tray­ing Lost in Time in ten sec­tions.

Group Lead of the Tribe Group Valki­mi Ma­haraj gave an in­sight in­to the themes cho­sen by the four bands.

“We met with our de­sign teams, our cre­ative teams, and we de­vel­op through many, many, many dif­fer­ent themes, which will be the best one for that par­tic­u­lar year,” he ex­plained. “Some­thing that takes you as deep as Lost Tribe’s ten years on the road, ten years of themes, to sim­ple but as ef­fec­tive as Gem­stones from Harts.”

Harts was able to go through many gem­stones that are rep­re­sent­ed well in the ac­tu­al ma­te­r­i­al the band us­es, in­clud­ing gems to make cos­tumes that give the rev­ellers some­thing “beau­ti­ful and flow­ery.”

Ma­haraj added, “And with Tribe, Agra goes to the core of what Tribe is, giv­ing you some­thing that’s cul­tur­al­ly in­spired.”

A model in a costume from the Morganite section in the Harts presentation Gemstone Dreams.

KERWIN PIERRE

The set-up for the band launch was a unique ex­pe­ri­ence, with the or­gan­is­ers opt­ing for con­tain­ers to add to the au­ra.

“Twen­ty-one years ago, Tribe pi­o­neered the idea of a trail­er trans­formed in­to a bar con­tain­er,” Ma­haraj point­ed out. “Since that time, we have used the con­cept of the bar con­tain­er, and the con­cept of the ship­ping con­tain­er, in so many dif­fer­ent things, like VIP trail­ers, and bath­room trail­ers. We use it as a tem­plate to be able to trans­form what the Trinida­di­an Car­ni­val road ex­pe­ri­ence re­al­ly is, in terms of con­ve­nience, man­age­ment, and lo­gis­tics.”

The or­gan­is­ers took the idea of the ship­ping con­tain­er to the Sa­van­nah for Sat­ur­day’s launch.

“So even our en­trance, as you en­tered the first thing you walked in­to was a se­ries of con­tain­ers that cre­at­ed al­most a maze, so you didn’t see the par­ty first, you just saw ex­pe­ri­ences. In­side each con­tain­er, we had a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences. One of them be­ing a re­lief for Hur­ri­cane Beryl that we are send­ing up the is­land to dif­fer­ent spaces, we’re pack­ing a con­tain­er tonight,” Ma­haraj said.

“Oth­ers be­ing con­tain­ers that have themes for each of the bands. So Tribe had a pho­to op, The Lost Tribe had a club, Bliss had oral read­ings and Harts had a space for you to play games, lit­er­al­ly play gem­stone games.

“We want­ed our mas­quer­aders to ex­pe­ri­ence the themes in a dif­fer­ent way, apart from just see­ing the cos­tumes on the stage.”

Models from the band Bliss in costumes from the Aura sections Oxun and Wyld Fleue.

KERWIN PIERRE

Mas­quer­aders won’t have to wait long to or­gan­ise their cos­tumes as Ma­haraj point­ed out, “We start­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago reach­ing out to our mas­quer­aders with our ear­ly se­cur­ing pro­gramme.

“Peo­ple who played mas with us be­fore have been able to se­cure their pro­gramme al­ready for some of our bands. That be­ing said, we open our show­rooms by next week.”

The bands want to make sure mas­quer­aders get a close view of the de­tails of their cos­tumes so that by the time reg­is­tra­tion opens they will know ex­act­ly what they’re pur­chas­ing.

All that be­ing said, with­in the next two weeks, reg­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue,” Ma­haraj said.