One parang queen says while the art form would have been im­pact­ed by COVID 19, she was pleased to see the ef­forts tak­en to keep the cus­tom­ary mu­sic alive dur­ing the Christ­mas pe­ri­od.

Ac­cord­ing to the lead singer of Los Alum­nos de San Juan, Ali­cia Jages­sar, in a year punc­tu­at­ed by a pan­dem­ic, even “par­ran­deros” were forced in­to ac­tion to pre­serve the pop­u­lar tra­di­tion.

“One of the beau­ti­ful things about parang this year that I saw was the pas­sion par­ran­deros had to en­sure their mu­sic and their band were heard, they did a lot of home videos in their own spaces, they had their vir­tu­al shows, they were so cre­ative in it.”

But it was a dou­ble blow to Jages­sar’s Christ­mas spir­it af­ter Wayne Jagdeo, one the band’s found­ing mem­bers took on a new bat­tle, “he was di­ag­nosed with lung can­cer, he has not been per­form­ing in the shows we ac­tu­al­ly had, he has had every­thing that goes along with the dis­ease its been very hard for me emo­tion­al­ly.”

On Wednes­day, the band staged a vir­tu­al trib­ute con­cert for Jagdeo and has al­so start­ed a Fund me TnT page to raise the mon­ey need­ed to cov­er his med­ical ex­pens­es.

Jages­sar said, “He was a teacher so you can imag­ine how many stu­dents passed through him, he was a CIC boy and Fa­ti­ma boy, so there are a lot of peo­ple out there who don’t know he is un­well and we just want to make sure he knows that we love him.”

Per­sons wish­ing to as­sist Jagdeo can make con­tri­bu­tions to Re­pub­lic Bank AC# 340000991601.

Mean­while, pri­or to the pan­dem­ic, Jages­sar has al­so been work­ing to safe­guard the tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments of the mu­sic and is ex­cit­ed about what the fu­ture holds.

“I’m see­ing it just blos­som­ing in­to a mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion that it will no longer be con­sid­ered the bot­tom of the totem pole in terms of a mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion.”

Jages­sar said there were many el­e­ments to tra­di­tion­al parang­ing which were im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly on Christ­mas Day.

She ex­plained, “There is a se­quence, you can­not just end up in some­body’s home. When you reach in front the gate you have to sing a ser­e­nade ask­ing them to let you in and re­al tra­di­tion­al par­ran­deros will not open their doors if you don’t sing the cor­rect thing. You must give that gift, the an­nounce­ment, it is very im­por­tant when parang­ing.”

“Can­tan­do Glo­ria” is one of the most pop­u­lar songs by the award-win­ning band, and with a thrust to pre­serve the art form, Jages­sar was more than will­ing to share a few tips and lessons on the tra­di­tion­al mu­sic to this re­porter.

How­ev­er, af­ter at­tempt­ing to make my parang de­but, I was told some more prac­tice was need­ed.