Gillian Moore

"There is an as­sump­tion that mas has to be a cer­tain way. But no-it's ours," said de­sign­er Robert Young of The Cloth, at Mas As­sem­bly: Con­ver­sa­tions on Car­ni­val. Young leads Vul­gar Frac­tion, a small, in­de­pen­dent mas band that has been bring­ing out bands for the last 15 years. Un­like the cur­rent repet­i­tive trend of biki­nis and beads in T&T Car­ni­val, Vul­gar Frac­tion en­cour­ages cre­ativ­i­ty, hit­ting the road with masked band mem­bers in eye-catch­ing and de­cid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent-look­ing cos­tumes. The event, held on March 13, was a dis­cus­sion about in­de­pen­dent mas, and fea­tured sev­er­al mas cre­ators who work out­side the con­ven­tion­al Car­ni­val mould. The ses­sion was the sec­ond post-Car­ni­val gath­er­ing of mas de­sign­ers and was staged at the Cloth Pro­pa­gan­da Space on Erthig Road in Bel­mont. Young spoke on the ex­pe­ri­ence of bring­ing out his band, along with Lupe Leonard of the chil­dren's band Al­ice Yard Play­ers, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Maria Nunes, who showed a short video of her work, and Wen­dell Man­war­ren of 3Canal. "J'Ou­vert is an open space, where peo­ple can claim their space and make a state­ment," said Man­war­ren.

He re­called his child­hood in­tro­duc­tion to "the rough, rit­u­al­is­tic space" of J'Ou­vert, and spoke on his in­sights in­to to fes­ti­val learned over al­most two decades of bring­ing out the 3Canal band. "You can't make mon­ey from J'Ou­vert but we get back a lot," he said, adding that enough peo­ple pay to play each year to make it pos­si­ble. He said their phi­los­o­phy was a not about ex­clu­siv­i­ty or ex­clu­sion: "We don't have rope, there's no seg­re­ga­tion; it's J'Ou­vert morn­ing!" Vet­er­an King Sailor per­former and Bel­mont res­i­dent Ralph Dy­er gave an im­promp­tu pre­sen­ta­tion, dur­ing which he ap­pealed for the tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val arts to be pre­served and trea­sured. He de­cried in­ter­ests he called "vam­pires of the cul­ture" who were fo­cused on­ly on the rev­enue-earn­ing po­ten­tial of big bands, while foun­da­tion­al mas forms fell by the way­side. He demon­strat­ed the moves and dances of sev­er­al tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters, in­clud­ing Fire­man Rob­ber and In­di­an, hold­ing the at­ten­tion of the au­di­ence. "I am the yes­ter­day; we have to see about to­mor­row," Dy­er said. "We have to love what we pro­duce."