A blast of colour in Sando

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Un­der sun­ny skies, colour­ful cos­tumes glit­tered on the streets of San Fer­nan­do on Car­ni­val Tues­day—all un­der the watch­ful eye of a heavy po­lice pres­ence—as mas­quer­aders danced, waved and chipped through the sec­ond city yes­ter­day.

From ear­ly morn­ing, po­lice of­fi­cers lined key points along the route, a vis­i­ble re­minder of height­ened se­cu­ri­ty fol­low­ing Mon­day night’s abrupt shut­down of Mid­night Mas. But de­spite the ten­sion lin­ger­ing from the pre­vi­ous evening, bands rolled out steadi­ly, sig­nalling that South Mas was very much alive.

Tra­di­tion­al Blue Dev­ils added dra­mat­ic flair as they joined Fyr­na­tion in its pre­sen­ta­tion “So­lara.” The blue bod­ies brought a strik­ing con­trast against the bright feath­ers and beads as mas­quer­aders moved along Sut­ton Street, backed by a 60-mem­ber pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty team.

Fyr­na­tion band­leader Sasha Sinanan said safe­ty was the top pri­or­i­ty for the rel­a­tive­ly young band, now in its sec­ond year, which ini­tial­ly came un­der Fire­works Pro­mo­tions.

“We don’t like the rope de­sign. We don’t want to be like a herd,” Sinanan said.

“Our se­cu­ri­ty, we are 60 strong in se­cu­ri­ty. We want to just make sure that our mas­quer­aders—the most im­por­tant thing in our place for now—is the se­cu­ri­ty.”

They made their way to Skin­ner Park, where Black Hart Pro­duc­tions crossed the stage at 11.45 am, fol­lowed by Jages­sar Cos­tumes at 12.25 pm with its pre­sen­ta­tion On The Eve of Bat­tle.

Among the most played songs were Machel Mon­tano’s En­core and Aaron “Voice” St Louis’ Cyah Be­have.

May­or Robert Par­ris said this year’s cel­e­bra­tions re­flect­ed growth de­spite chal­lenges.

He not­ed that 17 bands par­tic­i­pat­ed in J’Ou­vert, at­tract­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 8,000 pa­trons on Har­ris Prom­e­nade, with more than 13,000 peo­ple in the city over­all. He main­tained that the events were large­ly in­ci­dent-free.

A to­tal of 54 in­di­vid­u­als and bands reg­is­tered across four ma­jor cat­e­gories.

Par­ris said the Ju­nior Pa­rade led the cel­e­bra­tions with 16 chil­dren’s bands, in­clud­ing Kar­ni­val Kid­dies, Trib­al Con­nec­tion and Jages­sar Cos­tumes, as well as par­tic­i­pa­tion from St Brigid’s Girls’ RC School.

In the Tra­di­tion­al Mas band cat­e­go­ry, 12 se­nior bands took to the streets, among them Fyr­na­tion Car­ni­val, Prime Mas, Rebel Na­tion and South­ern Mas As­so­ciates.

Par­ris, who had com­plained about the re­duced gov­ern­ment fund­ing they re­ceived for the fes­tiv­i­ties, not­ed that J’Ou­vert morn­ing record­ed the largest turnout with 17 bands, while the Mid­night Mas seg­ment fea­tured nine bands but was shut down by the po­lice.

Among those en­joy­ing the mas was spec­ta­tor Emi­ly Rooplal, who came with her dog Duke. Rooplal said it was re­fresh­ing to see more tra­di­tion­al mas on dis­play and called on band­lead­ers to bring back more Moko Jumbies and tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters to en­hance the spec­ta­cle.

Jages­sar Cos­tumes band­leader Aaron Jages­sar al­so urged San Fer­nan­di­ans to ral­ly be­hind their cul­ture, say­ing sus­tained sup­port was crit­i­cal to re­build­ing South Car­ni­val.

Mean­while, band­leader Sinanan ac­knowl­edged con­cerns about de­clin­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion over the years but said ef­forts are un­der­way to rein­vent the ex­pe­ri­ence and at­tract younger mas­quer­aders.

“We’re try­ing to get back the younger peo­ple in­to San Fer­nan­do,” he said.

“What we’re re­al­ly sell­ing is the ex­pe­ri­ence. We want to bring that Port-of-Spain ex­pe­ri­ence to San Fer­nan­do.”

While reg­is­tra­tion num­bers were ini­tial­ly slow, late sign-ups brought the band close to its tar­get. His wife, In­dra Sinanan, said many first-time mas­quer­aders joined this year.

“If we could give them that ex­pe­ri­ence of feel­ing safe and hav­ing a fun time in South and get close to that qual­i­ty you get up North, then that would be a new gen­er­a­tion of mas­quer­aders in San Fer­nan­do,” she said.

June An­drews said she did not bring out a band this year, but not­ed that the or­gan­is­ers of Car­ni­val in San Fer­nan­do could do bet­ter to re-ig­nite pride in San Fer­nan­do’s Car­ni­val, one band at a time.