RAN­DALL SUMAIRS­INGH

Some say that if you've been to one Harts Car­ni­val mas band launch, you've been to all. Last Fri­day night, how­ev­er, the Harts proved those peo­ple wrong by twist­ing their tra­di­tion­al style and throw­ing a fete that blew away its au­di­ence. Year af­ter year, fans and sup­port­ers of Harts Car­ni­val come out to at­tend the an­nu­al band launch. It tends to be tra­di­tion­al-nor­mal­ly stick­ing to the de­fault set­up. For at least five years con­sec­u­tive­ly, Harts band launch has been held in Trinidad Coun­try Club, Mar­aval.

This year, the switch to An­chor­age Beach Re­sort (in Ch­aguara­mas) didn't damp­en any spir­its; the turnout was as large as ever. Per­son­al­ly, I thought that the mu­sic was great, the vibe was good and the peo­ple had an amaz­ing time. In fact, the par­ty was so good that even dur­ing some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty, (the mu­sic cut­ting off for about 15 min­utes) pa­trons were still danc­ing, lim­ing and laugh­ing. It re­al­ly was a night to re­mem­ber.

What was dif­fer­ent?

Be­sides the change of venue, the dis­play of cos­tumes was not Harts' usu­al style. Usu­al­ly, for those who don't know, they arrange the cos­tumes in a room, lin­ing them up by sec­tion. The "walk-in" style dis­play had its ben­e­fits, but did not of­fer much ex­cite­ment. This year, how­ev­er, they de­cid­ed to pa­rade the cos­tumes on a red car­pet which was laid through­out the dance floor. Mod­els don­ning the C2K12 cos­tumes were car­ried on lit­ters, which were sup­port­ed by four men each.

The theme was Wrath of the Gods and each cos­tume rep­re­sent­ed an an­cient Greek god. The show­ing was im­pres­sive and the crowd re­act­ed with cheers and ap­plause. An­oth­er rea­son that peo­ple put their hands to­geth­er was for a bel­ly-dance per­for­mance, done by Kaya Monn (who pre­vi­ous­ly ap­peared on Amer­i­ca's Got Tal­ent). There was en­ter­tain­ment for every­one and per­son­al­ly, I was hap­py to en­joy the free dou­bles. De­spite what­ev­er changes and im­prove­ments, the Harts feel­ing was still very much present.