Kevon Felmine

The spir­it of Car­ni­val was evoked in Siparia, as 90 groups na­tion­wide con­verged at Ir­win Park on Sat­ur­day for the launch of the Prime Min­is­ter's Best Vil­lage Tro­phy com­pe­ti­tion.It was the first time that the Tra­di­tions of Car­ni­val cat­e­go­ry of the com­pe­ti­tion was held in the con­stituen­cy of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, as par­tic­i­pants seek to cash in on part of the $90,000 in prize mon­ey be­ing giv­en for 2011.

Many gath­ered from ear­ly morn­ing as groups from all coun­ties par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the com­pe­ti­tion, which in­cor­po­rat­ed many of the tra­di­tion­al mas el­e­ments and the reg­u­lar events. Among them were Fan­cy Sailors, Jab­mo­lassies, and Dame Lor­raines, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous cat­e­gories.The tra­di­tion­al mas seg­ment in­clud­ed a lit­er­ary com­pe­ti­tion where­by par­tic­i­pants re-en­act­ed the per­for­mance of the orig­i­nal mas char­ac­ter.A fine piece was done by Za­kiya Gill of Guayagua­yare, as she mim­ic­ked a true Mid­night Rob­ber and sought to in­still fear in the au­di­ence with her ex­trav­a­gant out­fit and blood cur­dling speech.

The Pier­rot Grenades, known for there prowess in speech and their Shake­speare­an na­ture, demon­strat­ed fine ar­tic­u­la­tion of words and en­gaged in a colour­ful bat­tle of lit­er­a­ture.There was al­so a So­ca Dance cat­e­go­ry, where the girls of the Caratal Youth Cre­ation made their mark in the com­pe­ti­tion with some ath­let­ic moves and skil­ful rou­tines. The Chut­ney So­ca dance cat­e­go­ry was equal­ly thrilling with the Am­ri­tan Shak­ti Dance Com­pa­ny giv­ing a won­der­ful dis­play of a com­bi­na­tion of Bol­ly­wood and lo­cal dance moves.

This was then fol­lowed by the Mu­si­cal cat­e­go­ry, in which there was a live­ly per­for­mance by the Ca­lyp­so Girls from San­ta Flo­ra, who re­ceived a cheer­ful re­sponse from the au­di­ence.A ca­lyp­so med­ley of songs from 1931 to 1979 was al­so part of the com­pe­ti­tion, along with the resur­gence of the tra­di­tion­al Tam­boo Bam­boo. The North West Laven­tille Cul­tur­al Move­ment and the Re­flex Per­form­ing Arts were quite en­ter­tain­ing.At the end of the day the com­pe­ti­tion was turned in­to a jam­ming at­mos­phere, as it was the rhythm sec­tions' turn to com­pete in a shoot-out of iron beat­ing and shak­ing of mara­cas, to which spec­ta­tor felt oblig­ed to move their feet.

The event was at­tend­ed by Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter, Nizam Baksh, who gave greet­ings, and ex­pressed his de­light with how much the com­pe­ti­tion had grown. He said the com­pe­ti­tion had done a lot for com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and the theme-Wel­come to the Tra­di­tions of Car­ni­val 2011-was in­tro­duced to help the younger gen­er­a­tion de­vel­op a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of long-time mas.He stressed that it was im­por­tant to bring back tra­di­tion­al mas, as this could be the on­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty the young­sters got to ex­pe­ri­ence Car­ni­val of the past.