Michelle Loubon

Strum­ming cu­a­tros and man­dolins, par­ran­deros from Vo­ces Jovenes, Los Alum­nos de San Juan, La Rue­da Del Agua, Vo­ces de Prome­sa, Re­nac­er and La Fa­mil­ia y Ami­gos thrilled an in­ti­mate au­di­ence at UWI Se­nior Com­mon Room, St Au­gus­tine, last Sat­ur­day. The theme was 2012 Parang:?The Re­nais­sance. The event was dubbed Vin­tage Parang Night. Wear­ing coloured shirts, parang artistes belt­ed out sweet songs like Sereno. It fea­tured a mar­riage of Span­ish and Eng­lish words and phras­es which dealt with the an­nun­ci­a­tion (birth of Christ).

Women looked fetch­ing in their flow­ing skirts en­hanced with chunky neck­laces. Among those en­joy­ing the per­for­mances were UWI lec­tur­er Rawle Gib­bons, jour­nal­ist Lennox Grant, cul­tur­al ac­tivist Pearl Ein­tou Springer, To­co coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don and the Juani­ta Al­cala house­hold. There were treats like pastelles, black cake, em­panadas, wild meat and pro­vi­sions on sale.

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view (Sep­tem­ber 16) Michael Leza­ma, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPATT), said they were ex­per­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent break­out events in­stead of rolling in­to the stomp­ing grounds like San Rafael, Los Iros and Paramin. To date, Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism do­nat­ed $620,000. It was launched at Lopinot on Oc­to­ber 6.

Asked what he thought about Vin­tage Night, Leza­ma said, "We were look­ing for a bet­ter turnout at the oth­er events. It's a start in the right di­rec­tion. We are hop­ing this for­mat would de­vel­op in a quick space. We have Vin­tage Night. It's a dif­fer­ent feel and a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to parang gen­res."

Leza­ma added, "We are look­ing at the oth­er events and how the crowd would re­spond. We don't want to just have a parang fes­ti­val. We want to make events like Champs in Con­cert work. We are try­ing to re­sus­ci­tate some of the more tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments. We are hav­ing the in­stru­men­tal com­pe­ti­tion. To­day, some parang groups have am­pli­fied songs."

Leza­ma feels more work needs to be done to bring young peo­ple in­to main­stream parang. He added, "We are bring­ing it to young peo­ple. We want them to have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the parang art form. We have a lot of work to do par­tic­u­lar­ly with the ed­u­ca­tion of the groups. We need book­lets, pam­phlets, lec­tures and work­shops. "Young peo­ple need to un­der­stand the his­to­ry, mu­si­cal for­mat and gen­res of the parang art form. This is an ex­er­cise the new ex­ec­u­tive has un­der­tak­en. We are hop­ing it would be com­plet­ed by 2013."?

About parang

Parang is a pop­u­lar folk mu­sic brought here by Venezue­lan mi­grants com­mon­ly called "co­coa pe­ons." They were pri­mar­i­ly of Amerindi­an and African her­itage. The word is de­rived from two Span­ish words: "par­ran­da" mean­ing "a spree or fête" and "parar" mean­ing "to stop."

Among the tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments are the vi­o­lin, gui­tar, claves (lo­cal­ly known as toc-toc), box bass (an in­dige­nous in­stru­ment), tam­bourine, man­dolin, ban­dolin, ca­ja (a per­cus­sive box in­stru­ment) and marim­bo­la (an Afro-Venezue­lan in­stru­ment).

To­day, parang is es­pe­cial­ly vi­brant in ar­eas such as Paramin, Ari­ma and Rio Claro. Parang con­nois­seurs can ex­pect vi­brant per­for­mances from Rio Suave, Los Alum­nos de UWI, Los Di­nam­i­cos, Los Niños De San­ta Rosa and oth­er large and small com­mu­ni­ty-based bands.

Parang itin­er­ary

No­vem­ber 3: In­stru­men­tal Com­pe­ti­tion-Ari­ma Ten­nis Club

No­vem­ber 10: Trib­ute to Icons-Tabaquite High School

De­cem­ber 1: Tune of Choice Com­pe­ti­tion-YW­CA, St Au­gus­tine

De­cem­ber 8: Parang in the Val­ley-Mara­cas Val­ley

De­cem­ber 15: Peo­ple's Choice Com­pe­ti­tion-Ari­ma Ten­nis Club

Tick­ets:?$60. Fi­nal night $75.

Con­tact: 355-5648/315/7891/737-5698/772-2901