Nigel Teles­ford

Free­lance Writer

“A con­stant roller­coast­er” is how Pa­parazzi Car­ni­val mas de­sign­er Ale­jan­dro Gomez re­ferred to his life as a Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­er mere min­utes be­fore the Wood­brook-based band launched their theme for Trinidad Car­ni­val 2024, “Iho­ka: The For­got­ten Trail”.

“We ba­si­cal­ly took ref­er­ences from the in­dige­nous peo­ple of T&T and all the im­port­ed cul­ture, tra­di­tions and roots from all the dif­fer­ent peo­ple who were brought here over time,” Gomez said, ex­plain­ing the theme.

“I think all of the de­sign­ers are look­ing to cre­ate a prod­uct us­ing the ma­te­ri­als they’re com­fort­able us­ing, but al­so trans­form­ing them in­to some­thing new and fresh that the con­sumers will love. Pa­parrazi al­ways has a good time on the road and the cos­tumes this year are above and be­yond what we typ­i­cal­ly do. Peo­ple think it’s just one band or one set of de­signs, but this in­dus­try is a con­stant roller­coast­er and we have to move from coun­try to coun­try and Car­ni­val to Car­ni­val, while al­ways try­ing to make our next de­signs bet­ter than the last one.”

Venezue­lan-born, but raised in Trinidad, Gomez was in­ter­viewed by CNC3 video­g­ra­ph­er Michael Ram­s­ingh ahead of the launch, which took place last Sat­ur­day night at the Sound­forge venue off Mu­cu­rapo Road in St James.

A re­lease from the band said that Pa­parazzi Car­ni­val was cel­e­brat­ing its tenth an­niver­sary by pay­ing homage to the in­dige­nous peo­ple who in­hab­it­ed and tra­versed the re­gion, as well as their cul­ture and folk­lore.

Sport­ing ex­ot­ic sec­tion names such as Luma, Tabe, Ayahuas­ca, Masiku­ru, Sibik­it, Wai Wai, Taya, Nepuyo and Ze­mi, one would ex­pect some­what Aztec/Mayan, Carib or Arawak-look­ing de­signs maybe, but the ma­jor­i­ty re­sem­bled cos­tumes of years past in all too fa­mil­iar colours and pat­terns.

Still, the screams were pas­sion­ate and the en­er­gy was high and fes­tive through­out the night as sev­er­al hun­dred pa­trons en­joyed the mu­sic and host­ing of TBC’s Ken Sim­mons, the big Hen­nessy bar built on a mu­sic truck parked ad­ja­cent to the space and all the oth­er snacks, treats, food and give­aways made avail­able at the launch event.

“The pan­dem­ic was good be­cause it gave me time to re­set, re­fo­cus and re-en­er­gise and get back to where I was be­fore every­thing just took off,” added Gomez.

“We learnt about all these places that were trails used by the in­dige­nous peo­ple and what ma­te­ri­als they used and their tech­niques of weav­ing. It was a great learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence cause I’m al­so not Trinida­di­an, so it gave me a deep dive in­to the his­to­ry and the cul­ture here.

“I draw in­spi­ra­tion from Wayne Berke­ley and Pe­ter Min­shall. My thing is colour. That’s what draws me and makes me pas­sion­ate about do­ing this and the thing I like about Pa­parazzi is that they keep go­ing re­gard­less if you’re tired or dis­tract­ed or what, they will al­ways en­cour­age you to keep go­ing.”

Re­silience and per­se­ver­ance are def­i­nite­ly two traits nec­es­sary to sur­vive and be suc­cess­ful in T&T and per­haps even more so in the mas band/Car­ni­val in­dus­try. The Pa­parazzi Car­ni­val crowd has al­ways been and re­mains a fun-lov­ing bunch which hails from as­sort­ed walks of life and de­fies typ­i­cal de­mo­graph­ics and so­cial cliqueism.

This fol­low­ing usu­al­ly sup­ports and en­joys the band’s launch events an­nu­al­ly re­gard­less, be­fore de­cid­ing on their cos­tumes and ac­tu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion come Car­ni­val time.

Whether con­vinced by pric­ing, pay­ment plans, friends, fam­i­ly or the ac­tu­al de­signs, colour schemes and cos­tumes them­selves, we are sure to see them on the road for Car­ni­val 2024.