Brent Pin­heiro

On Au­gust 29, just over 70 peo­ple from T&T took to the Grand Mar­ket Hall stage at Car­ifes­ta XV in Bar­ba­dos with one pur­pose—to show the re­gion and the world what Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture is.

And show them they did. Be­gin­ning with the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra, the au­di­ence was seam­less­ly led through an hour-long show­case of the unique el­e­ments that de­fine T&T.

Free­town Col­lec­tive’s ren­di­tion of their song Take Me Home and cov­er of David Rud­der’s “High Mas” hit all the right notes.

Neval Chate­lal’s per­for­mance, a trib­ute to Ogun, the Yoru­ba god of steel, spread the mes­sage of uni­ty.

For­mer ca­lyp­so monarch Ter­ri Lyons fol­lowed with her per­for­mance of Obeah, a love let­ter to ca­lyp­so. Her flared, colour­ful skirt added dra­ma to her en­er­getic ap­pear­ance, com­ple­ment­ing the fes­tive spir­it.

Next, bélé dancers high­light­ed T&T’s Cre­ole her­itage. The rhyth­mic beats of the FCB Drag­on Boys Tas­sa Band and the Am­ri­tam Shak­ti Dance Com­pa­ny en­riched the pro­gramme, il­lus­trat­ing the na­tion’s cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty.

Aman­da Gould, a Trinida­di­an vis­it­ing Bar­ba­dos, told Guardian Me­dia the pre­sen­ta­tion left her feel­ing im­mense­ly proud.

“We are in the sea­son of Re­pub­lic and In­de­pen­dence, (and) to know that we have come so far as a peo­ple, both African and In­di­an, and we could fuse all these cul­tures to­geth­er and rep­re­sent on this big state. I was very proud,” she said.

The pro­duc­tion was a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion Di­vi­sion of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties, and Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the show that it was all about uni­ty.

“One thing that we can agree on is when we come out to face the world, we are Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are stronger to­geth­er and we are able to show­case the best of who we are for the rest of the world to wish that they were from Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

It was a mu­si­cal re­minder that in T&T, every creed and race finds an equal place.