Brent Zephyrine

If the pop­u­lar mu­si­cal se­lec­tions from some of the big bands yes­ter­day were any in­di­ca­tion of what will be the most pop­u­lar mu­sic for the Pa­rade of the Bands to­day, then it will not be pre­ma­ture to de­clare ei­ther Machel Mon­tano or his arch ri­val Iw­er "The Boss" George the front run­ners in this year's Road March race. The words "come to meh" and "ad­van­tage" along with vary­ing spec­trums that ranged from red and pur­ple to both flu­o­res­cent or­ange and green, were all syn­ony­mous with the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions wit­nessed at the Adam Smith Square yes­ter­day.

Mon­tano, whose hit song earned him the Pow­er So­ca Monarch ti­tle on Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, was in a neck-to-neck bat­tle yes­ter­day with his clos­est com­peti­tor, George, who placed sec­ond in that com­pe­ti­tion. Rod­ney "Ben­jai" Le Blanc, the first run­ner-up at the Groovy So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, trailed both Mon­tano and George but had the dis­tinc­tion of re­ceiv­ing the air­play of two pan groups on trucks-Gon­za­les Sheik­ers Steel Or­ches­tra and Star­lift-who played his hit song Tri­ni as they crossed Ari­api­ta Av­enue venue. Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller's ren­di­tion of Wot­less, which earned him the ul­ti­mate prize at this year's Groovy So­ca, failed to de­liv­er on the road as it at­tract­ed on­ly a few "to­ken" re­cep­tions.

If noth­ing else, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the colour dis­played may have ap­peared to re­flect some­what, a shared vi­sion amongst the many mas mak­ers as both Tri­ni Rev­ellers and Har­vard Rev­ellers came out in a mul­ti­tude of pur­ple while Lega­cy, Gen­e­sis and Tribe held a strong pres­ence of red with a bit of or­ange from Lega­cy's band com­ple­ment­ing that of the Is­land Peo­ple's cos­tume. As is cus­tom­ary, while some of the mas­quer­aders were out­fit­ted in their full Car­ni­val garb, many of them opt­ed to don their band T-shirts, which for Skull­dug­gery meant a por­tray­al of what could be de­scribed as a kalei­do­scope of mul­ti-coloured Rossi T-shirts. The ex­u­ber­ance of the mas­quer­aders was af­fect­ed, how­ev­er, by the mid­day heat, which took a toll on some rev­ellers.

Then, as though to tidy up all the black and white paint and con­fet­ti left be­hind from Mac Far­lane's Band, work­ers from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) on stand­by at the cor­ner of Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Colville Street to en­sure mas­quer­aders and on­look­ers kept a clean scene. While the se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence was ef­fec­tive, for the most part, as the bands achieved some suc­cess in bar­ri­cad­ing mas mem­bers with ropes, the oc­ca­sion­al lapse was ev­i­dent where spec­ta­tors and oth­er mas­quer­aders got some "free play" amongst the sec­tions. If any­one had doubts, the en­thu­si­asm and the en­er­gy de­pict­ed on the first of­fi­cial day of na­tion­al ju­bi­la­tion con­firmed that Car­ni­val is very much alive in T&T.