Mark Lyn­der­say

Pre­sent­ing a Car­ni­val stage at the judg­ing points is chal­leng­ing enough. A band­leader is mov­ing a group of peo­ple with a con­tin­u­ous need for booze and an oc­ca­sion­al need for food in bat­tal­ion strength on a march in full cos­tume.

This gets done mov­ing through thick­ets of cu­ri­ous hu­man­i­ty–who can­not be sim­ply brushed aside–and in com­pe­ti­tion with oth­er units of sim­i­lar size along with many com­pa­nies, pla­toons and the oc­ca­sion­al squad and brigade along the route.

Size of­fers no ad­van­tages on the pa­rade route and a large band moves slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly, tak­ing care to cause no friend­ly fire with its mighty mo­bile units.Lay­er in­to this un­wieldy mad­ness the no­tion of cre­at­ing and pre­sent­ing an as­pi­ra­tional mas and it's a won­der that any­thing ever gets done. The typ­i­cal band must get their feath­ers in or­der to hit the stage. Bands like Mac­Far­lane Car­ni­val and K2K must al­so or­gan­ise dancers, props and a sense of co­her­ence that mar­ries planned move­ment with the care­ful de­sign.

This is what that looked like just be­fore they hit the stage at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.