Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

For Lost Tribe’s Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, the third Band of the Year ti­tle is no less sweet.

The band copped both the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and Down­town Car­ni­val’s top ho­n­ours with the pre­sen­ta­tion Fly.

“It’s a bless­ing,” Ma­haraj said dur­ing a cel­e­bra­tion at the band’s Wood­brook mas camp last evening.

He not­ed that this Car­ni­val was a dif­fer­ent en­er­gy for him and his team. He said it end­ed with one of the best road ex­pe­ri­ences he’s ever had.

“I felt a sense of peace at the end of it. When you end up in a sit­u­a­tion where you re­ceive the ac­co­lades and re­spect from your co­horts from the in­dus­try, that’s a great feel­ing,” Ma­haraj said.

Some of those ac­co­lades al­so came from leg­endary lo­cal de­sign­er Pe­ter Elias, who made it a point to say Ma­haraj was more than a de­sign­er but was a born leader who has the ado­ra­tion and re­spect of a large team, with­out whom there would be no band.

While por­tray­ing birds aren’t new to the Car­ni­val land­scape, the band’s theme used birds from Trinidad and To­ba­go, which he said was to ex­press free­dom.

“The birds that we used weren’t the birds of the world which are equal­ly as beau­ti­ful, but rather the birds of Trinidad and To­ba­go we in­ter­act with on a dai­ly ba­sis like the Scar­let Ibis, which we love as our own, and the wild par­rots which fly around the mas camp every day, and, of course, the cor­beaux which I pass every day com­ing in­to town!”

He called 2023’s Car­ni­val, the first af­ter a two-year COVID-19 hia­tus, chaot­ic. In com­par­i­son, he said this year was peace.

“It was much bet­ter. You felt it not on­ly in the mu­sic but in the per­son­al­i­ty and en­er­gy of the peo­ple you met and in­ter­act­ed with.”

He said he can’t for 2025.

Mean­while, a short dis­tance away, the Ki­net­ic Mas camp was al­so elec­tric.

Lead de­sign­er Ronald Guy James was cel­e­brat­ing his medi­um cat­e­go­ry win.

The por­tray­al, Yokoso, which means ‘wel­come’ in Japan­ese, was the sec­ond vic­to­ry for the band. For Guy James, the cos­tumes were meant to stand out in a way that any­one see­ing a lone mas­quer­ad­er walk­ing through Port-of-Spain could im­me­di­ate­ly know to which band they be­longed.

While the in­spi­ra­tion came from Japan, it was im­por­tant not to be of­fen­sive to Japan­ese cul­ture, so from the get-go, the Japan­ese em­bassy was con­sult­ed, he said.

“We were con­sult­ing with them be­fore we even did any­thing be­cause we didn’t want to of­fend them,” James said.

“At the same time, we want to bring a band that’s pleas­ing and au­then­tic.”

He said he hopes this type of mas will bring spec­ta­tors back in­to seats and in­to the streets.

“Hope­ful­ly, they bring peo­ple back in­to the Sa­van­nah to watch mas. Be­cause at the end of the day, let’s face it, a biki­ni is a biki­ni is a biki­ni. When you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.”