NIGEL TELES­FORD

“Skin en­hance­ments” is the term one ma­ture pa­tron used to de­scribe the slate of sleek, sexy, and “ul­tra-re­veal­ing” cos­tumes pre­sent­ed by mas band YU­MA (Young + Up­ward­ly Mo­bile Adults) at the launch of their 2024 pre­sen­ta­tion, “On Tour” on Sat­ur­day night.

Held at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre on Wright­son Road in Port-of-Spain, the event was well-at­tend­ed and at­tract­ed hun­dreds of mas, fete, so­ca, and Car­ni­val lovers to the sea­side venue.

In­ter­mit­tent show­ers through­out the day threat­ened to short cir­cuit the band’s plans but on­ly served to spike the hu­mid­i­ty lev­el as YU­MA’s de­sign team brought ex­tra heat to the first of­fi­cial ma­jor band launch for the 2024 Car­ni­val sea­son.

A mas­sive el­e­vat­ed stage was erect­ed to con­ceal the cen­tre’s cen­tral wa­ter foun­tain and com­mand the at­ten­tion of those gath­ered to ex­pe­ri­ence the long-await­ed un­veil­ing. Light­ing such a huge stage was an in­sur­mount­able chal­lenge re­sult­ing in pock­ets of dark­ness through and around which the mod­els were com­pelled to nav­i­gate their cos­tume-clad physiques as me­dia per­son­nel scur­ried around the cir­cum­fer­ence try­ing to cap­ture the best im­ages.

So­ca and ca­lyp­so mu­sic pro­vid­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of the night’s sound­track with sprin­kles of pop, rock, dance, hip-hop, dance­hall, zess and Trini­bad se­lec­tions for good mea­sure and much to the au­di­ence’s de­light. Ku­dos to YU­MA for as­sem­bling a dy­nam­ic and di­verse gamut of mod­els rep­re­sent­ing a wide spec­trum of races and eth­nic­i­ties and all seem­ing­ly in pos­ses­sion of In­sta­gram-wor­thy bod­ies—waxed, tanned, and toned to per­fec­tion, as they show­cased each sec­tion in turn, wine, wave, step, and high-heeled swirl.

Screams, shrieks, and cat­calls cer­tain­ly echoed across the Gulf of Paria as the au­di­ence re­act­ed to their favourite mod­els ap­pear­ing on­stage and/or their pre­ferred cos­tumes be­ing il­lu­mi­nat­ed and re­flect­ing a rain­bow of colours in­to the still night air.

“Is more skin we see­ing than cos­tumes,” said the ma­ture fe­male pa­tron, who in­sist­ed on re­main­ing anony­mous. “That’s why I call them skin en­hance­ments, but this is the norm now and the stan­dard for mas, so I’m sure these will sell well. I don’t have the body for that any­more, but if I did, I can see why I might want to show it off like that once a year maybe ...”

The band’s 13 sec­tions were re­vealed just af­ter mid­night fol­low­ing an ex­ten­sive drum in­tro­duc­tion fea­tur­ing Ker­nal Roberts, Deni­son Gul­ston, and sev­er­al oth­er lo­cal drum­mers, who rep­re­sent­ed var­i­ous parts of the globe with their drum pat­terns and were meant to in­tro­duce the con­cept of YU­MA tak­ing T&T’s cul­ture “On Tour” as per the band’s 2024 Car­ni­val theme.

YU­MA’s 13 sec­tions are as fol­lows: Lu­cid (de­signed by Rawle Per­manand for Ra­ma­jay Mas); Rave (de­signed by Marie Col­lette); Psy­che­del­ic (de­signed by Ale­jan­dro); Chel­la (de­signed by Marie Col­lette); Won­der­land (de­signed by Kwasi Mc­Don­ald); Vogue (de­signed by Chris­t­ian Chow Chung from Grena­da); Rebel (de­signed by Krave The Band); Nuri (de­signed by Rawle Per­manand, pow­ered by Dig­i­cel); Car­ni­val (de­signed by Marie Col­lette); Oil and Mu­sic (de­signed by Tim­o­thy Chin Fatt); Boom­bas­tic (de­signed by Rawle Per­manand); Macuele’ (de­signed by Ale­jan­dro) and Mom­basa (de­signed by Kwasi Mc­Don­ald).

This year, YU­MA in­tro­duced two new de­sign­ers to the fold—T&T-based de­sign­er and pro­duc­er, Tim­o­thy Chin Fatt and Chris­t­ian Chow Chung from Grena­da.

Sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 12 and 13, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion is des­tined to re­turn to its pre-pan­dem­ic great­ness come 2024, and over the next few months, a slew of mas bands are sched­uled and ex­pect­ed to launch their col­lec­tions in the an­nu­al pitch to at­tract the mas-parad­ing pub­lic. Keep read­ing The Guardian for com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of these launch­es as they oc­cur.