Austin Fi­do

In the front yard of his house in Ari­ma, Nar­rie Ap­proo pre­pares for Car­ni­val. Chip-chip shells clus­ter like but­ter­flies on a low bench. Loops of wire, slung neat­ly over a hook on a wall, over­hang a ta­ble crowd­ed with paints, thin­ners and spray cans. Strips of black card wait pa­tient­ly to be bond­ed to the frame of a wire head­piece, home to a seine of beads, glit­ter­ing with in­tent."When that is fin­ished, it will be a beau­ty," says Ap­proo.It is two weeks be­fore his 80th Car­ni­val. It is a land­mark, though not one he is in­clined to dwell up­on. When it is men­tioned, it is as a re­buke to the im­per­ti­nent as­sump­tion that some of his cos­tume-mak­ing is out­sourced: "I have been play­ing mas since 1934. You think I need some­one to help me?"He first played black In­di­an mas when he was about 11. He de­signed and made his first cos­tume maybe a year lat­er, us­ing shells har­vest­ed from a day in the man­grove. He's been cre­at­ing and play­ing mas ever since.

His tu­nic, pants and skirt are wait­ing for last year's flow­ers and beads to be un­picked and re­placed by chip-chip shells. It seems like there is a lot to be done, but what­ev­er time there is be­fore Car­ni­val Mon­day will be time enough to fin­ish the task.Nar­rie Ap­proo is 86 years old. He knows what he is do­ing, and he is known for what he does. George Bai­ley sent men to watch Ap­proo play drag­on mas. He was the chief fire­man in Cito Ve­lazquez's Fruit and Flow­ers in 1959."Nar­rie guid­ed me around Port-of-Spain, show­ing me tra­di­tion­al mas," says Tony Hall, whose band this year was Miss Miles–The Woman of the World.Ap­proo is a man who en­joys the com­pa­ny of those who take their craft se­ri­ous­ly. "Every­thing I do, I want to do good," he says. "I am se­ri­ous in what I am do­ing."

Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, that led him in­to se­ri­ous trou­ble. As a young man, he played tenor pan on the front line for Cross of Lor­raine (now All Stars)–he bears the pan side's mark, tat­tooed on his arm.He was with the side on the day it got tan­gled up in the fight be­tween In­vaders and Tokyo on Char­lotte Street. (Some sources say it hap­pened Car­ni­val Mon­day 1946, oth­ers 1950.) It was one of the sem­i­nal pan ri­ots, de­scribed by Kim John­son as a defin­ing mo­ment of the "bad­john roots of pan" in his book If Yuh Iron Good You Is King."Me and a fel­la called Blakie, a ca­lyp­son­ian–man, we take off! He went in­to Char­lotte Street, in a yard, but I didn't fol­low him. I went home," Ap­proo re­calls.Lord Blakie chron­i­cled the day in the song Steel­band Clash: "Me friend run and left his hat/When they hit him a base­ball bat/Nev­er me again/To jump in a steel­band in Port-of-Spain."

Ap­proo speaks of nei­ther hat nor bat, but he stopped play­ing pan soon af­ter: "too much bac­cha­nal."He was a good singer him­self, us­ing a tenor voice to sing opera at Union Hall. He won prizes, but stopped com­pet­ing af­ter be­ing placed sec­ond in a cer­tain com­pe­ti­tion."I beat him, every­body said so, but the fel­la was a union man and the union ran the com­pe­ti­tion. I nev­er went back again."If things had worked out dif­fer­ent­ly, per­haps we would know Nar­rie Ap­proo for his voice or his pan. In­stead, we know him as a mas­man. Even with­out the afore­men­tioned provo­ca­tions, it might have been hard for him to be any­thing else. He is from a mas fam­i­ly. His broth­er played pan and sailor mas. His sis­ter played with Red Army. His fa­ther start­ed putting out a drag­on band in the first decade of the last cen­tu­ry, and kept it go­ing un­til the 60s or 70s. His god­moth­er was a Black In­di­an queen.

Young Ap­proo's first mas, in 1934, was as a small dev­il, hold­ing on to the tail of a big dev­il, mim­ic­k­ing its every move. When he start­ed play­ing Black In­di­an, it re­quired close at­ten­tion al­so: to learn the dances, rit­u­als and, most im­por­tant­ly, the lan­guage. Black In­di­an is a speech mas and "a war mas," says Ap­proo.When his god­fa­ther, Claudius Pierre, wrote out pas­sages of Black In­di­an speech for Ap­proo to learn, it wasn't sim­ply to ho­n­our the tra­di­tion of the mas."It is a fight­ing mas, and the on­ly way to de­fend your­self is talk­ing," says Ap­proo. In the days when there were sev­er­al Black In­di­an bands on the road, the threat to band mem­bers who couldn't speak the lan­guage was not mere­ly em­bar­rass­ment: "If you can't talk, you in pain."The Black In­di­an's lance and shield are not for show. If a ri­val band mem­ber couldn't find the words for peace, "you buss the man's head and he fall down."These are per­haps the less cel­e­brat­ed lessons of tra­di­tion­al mas: dis­ci­pline, con­se­quences, the im­por­tance of study and high stan­dards. "Every­thing is prac­tice," says Ap­proo, whose ex­pe­ri­ence shaped his pref­er­ence for "ac­tion mas."

"If it has no ac­tion, I ain't play­ing it," he says.

Be­fore he took over lead­er­ship of the Black In­di­an band he joined as a child, Ap­proo would play a dif­fer­ent type of mas on Car­ni­val Tues­day. He learned to play drag­on and imp, fire­man and mid­night rob­ber, re­peat­ing the jour­ney from stu­dent to mas­ter each time. When he thinks of to­day's Car­ni­val, he sees a sti­fling ho­mo­gene­ity: "Every­thing is win­ing, win­ing," and "naked mas."

He is not threat­ened or dis­gust­ed. "I like to watch J'Ou­vert, but that is not my kind of mas."Ap­proo lit­er­al­ly speaks a dif­fer­ent Car­ni­val lan­guage.He will al­ways be a Black In­di­an, but he gave up lead­er­ship of his band a few years go.He has a lit­tle more time now, and he re­mem­bers the days he played oth­er char­ac­ters fond­ly, though the body is not as will­ing as it used to be: "Imp is a ha­rass­ing mas–you have to do all kinds of an­tics and bend­ing. At my old age, you won't catch me bend­ing."Per­haps he could play fire­man again? "It's a mas I like," he says, "I have my pok­er and every­thing." If some­one asked him to play fire­man on a Car­ni­val Tues­day?"Yes. I would play."