SPIR­IT Mas is set to un­veil its pre­sen­ta­tion for Car­ni­val 2024, “King­dom of SPIR­IT”, on Mon­day at Drew Manor, San­ta Cruz.

The newest band to en­ter the Trinidad car­ni­val land­scape will in­tro­duce its in­au­gur­al sec­tions, Akasha, Na­iad, Solana, No­va, La Luz, and Sylph. The col­lec­tion al­so in­cludes an all-male sec­tion de­signed specif­i­cal­ly for male mas­quer­aders look­ing for func­tion and fash­ion.

The show will fea­ture a se­ries of mi­ni-pro­duc­tions that show­case the cos­tumes cre­at­ed by SPIR­IT de­sign­ers Rhion Ro­many, Dou­glas John, Ale­jan­dro Gomez, San­dra Hor­datt, and Levi Mar­cus. As the band pre­pares for its de­but, the team is fo­cused on its mis­sion to ush­er Trinidad Car­ni­val in­to a new era.

“SPIR­IT is all about bring­ing a fresh ap­proach to the all-in­clu­sive band ex­pe­ri­ence,” ac­cord­ing to band leader, Adri­an Scoon. “We are a band cre­at­ed by mas­quer­aders for mas­quer­aders. Col­lec­tive­ly we’ve spent decades on the road and we’ve loved every mo­ment of it. But hav­ing ob­served how oth­er Caribbean car­ni­vals have grown in re­cent years, we be­lieve there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Trinidad’s prod­uct to evolve. That’s what led us to the con­cept of turn­ing the band in­to a mov­ing sto­ry with dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences to ex­cite both mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors.”

SPIR­IT mas­quer­aders can look for­ward to sev­er­al new el­e­ments, in­clud­ing a brunch and the in­clu­sion of tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters on Car­ni­val Mon­day; a no-chit, all-in­clu­sive lunch and cli­mat­ic grand fi­nale con­cert on Car­ni­val Tues­day; as well as floats that will re­flect the themes of each of the sec­tions.

With a tar­get of 2,000-2,500 mas­quer­aders, Scoon ex­pects the band to at­tract a wide cross-sec­tion of peo­ple.

“SPIR­IT is a band for any­one look­ing for a more im­mer­sive car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence that takes the mas be­yond the cos­tumes,” he said. He added, “So far, we’ve been gen­er­at­ing in­ter­est across dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics and we’ve en­sured that our cos­tumes ac­com­mo­date a va­ri­ety of mas­quer­ad­er tastes and pref­er­ences so we’re ready to wel­come them all.”