Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Re­porter

There was an ar­ray of colours, feath­ers and his­to­ry at the Hy­att Re­gency com­pound on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day evening when ‘Echoes of Iere—Wel­come Back to Beau­ty’ was launched by Car­ni­val band, YU­MA.

With 14 sec­tions, YU­MA’s faith­ful and even those who wish to join the large band will be thrilled with the choic­es in the var­i­ous colours and cos­tumes that graced the run­way in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing.

Me­dia of­fi­cer for the band, Aca­cia De Ver­teuil told Guardian Me­dia YU­MA de­cid­ed as a band to get back to T&T’s roots and por­tray its rich his­to­ry in 2025.

“Iere was one of the ini­tial names for the in­dige­nous name of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” De Ver­teuil ex­plained.

“Our in­tent was to re­al­ly sort of cap­ture what our ini­tial roots were. If you were to look at these sec­tions you’d see we have every­thing, or as many things en­com­pass­ing what is Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The band launch, al­ways one of the more an­tic­i­pat­ed events in the lo­cal Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, start­ed be­fore mid­night with the house DJs en­ter­tain­ing par­ty­go­ers and band mem­bers un­til the MCs, so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer Ju­nior Lee and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Whit­ney Hus­bands, graced the stage just af­ter mid­night and wel­comed the mod­els on stage to show­case the dif­fer­ent sec­tions.

De­sign­er Rawle Per­manand said he was in­spired by To­ba­go for the two sec­tions he de­signed.

“So I use a lot of ken­sie fab­ric, shells, very close to us,” he ex­plained. 

“I did or­ange. For me, or­ange sig­ni­fies that love, that uni­ty among all of us. And then I did, the sec­ond is the Buc­coo Reef. Three shades of blue. I added a splash of colour in there, some coral, some lime green, some laven­der, just to kind of raise the el­e­ment of what we knew the Buc­coo Reef to be, you know, very colour­ful.”

One of the fea­tures of any band launch is live per­for­mances.

Patrice Roberts, who was a sur­prise mod­el per­formed some of her hits while dressed in one of the cos­tumes.

De Ver­teuil promised the cos­tumes would be af­ford­able and the band will as­sist rev­ellers to be part of the band in 2025.

“We re­al­ly try to en­sure that our mas­quer­aders can af­ford a lux­u­ry ex­pe­ri­ence,” De Vertueil said, be­fore adding, “In ad­di­tion to the fact that the reg­is­tra­tion will be open­ing very soon, you have a lot of time to span out your pay­ments in or­der to make it com­fort­able for you. We try to en­sure that we can ac­com­mo­date peo­ple as best as pos­si­ble.

“We’ve been known for hav­ing a bud­get sec­tion. One of the things we’ve ex­pe­ri­enced over time is we have peo­ple who we put some­thing out there in terms of a bud­get sec­tion, but every­body wants the front line, every­body wants the hard line.”