Holy Cross Col­lege gave a thrilling per­for­mance to emerge sec­ondary school cham­pi­ons of the bpTT-spon­sored Na­tion­al Ju­nior Parang Fes­ti­val 2011, which took place at the St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School on No­vem­ber 12 and 13.

The boys from Ari­ma won the favour of the judges with a rous­ing ren­di­tion of their two tunes, La Ded­i­ca­cion and El An­gel Gabriel, scor­ing 175 points. Led by their en­er­getic lead singer, Mick­el Besson, Holy Cross earned thun­der­ous ap­plause from the ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence.

Holy Cross' mu­sic teacher, Joseph Rivers, said his stu­dents put in long hours of prepa­ra­tion which paid off hand­some­ly in the end. They re­ceived $8,000 for their cham­pi­onship per­for­mance.

Go­ing af­ter a hat-trick of ti­tles this year, de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Bish­op Anstey/Trin­i­ty Col­lege East had to set­tle for sec­ond place de­spite a de­light­ful mu­si­cal per­for­mance of their two songs, Los Va­mos a Can­tar and El Sal­vador. They took home $6,000. St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary placed third, cop­ping $4,000.

There was fierce com­pe­ti­tion in the pri­ma­ry schools di­vi­sion, with the judges un­able to sep­a­rate joint first place win­ners, Cara­po RC and St Joseph Boys RC with each school tak­ing $8,000. There was al­so a dead heat for third place with Va­len­cia RC Gov­ern­ment and Ari­ma Boys RC singing their hearts out to the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the packed au­di­ence. A con­fi­dent Ma­yaro-based Or­toire RC round­ed off the top in fifth place.

En­joy­ing the per­for­mances was the Venezue­lan am­bas­sador to T&T, Maria Mar­cano.

For the first time ever, a $2,500 Peo­ple's Choice Award was be­ing of­fered for each di­vi­sion, with vot­ing done by tex­ting spe­cif­ic codes, as well as us­ing the so­cial me­dia Face­book via bpTT Com­mu­ni­ty En­er­gy.

A to­tal of 15 schools showed off their mu­si­cal tal­ents in the sec­ondary schools di­vi­sion on the Sat­ur­day, while 27 pri­ma­ry schools com­pet­ed on the Sun­day.

En­er­gy com­pa­ny bpTT has part­nered with the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPATT) for the past 21 years in stag­ing the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Parang Fes­ti­val. Rep­re­sent­ing bpTT at the fes­ti­val were Ru­pert Mends, se­nior ad­vi­sor, Mar­kets; and Joann Car­ring­ton, Brand/Ad­ver­tis­ing ad­vi­sor.

"It is im­por­tant that we keep our cul­tur­al tra­di­tions alive and the young peo­ple who will per­form this week­end are do­ing just that. We must al­so ap­pre­ci­ate that mu­sic, in what­ev­er genre, cre­ates a bal­ance in our chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion," Mends not­ed.

In­grid Ryan-Reuben, of the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, said that great mu­si­cal forms, such as parang, were cre­at­ed out of so­cial hard­ships faced by our an­ces­tors.

NPATT's Ri­car­do Ram­bal­ly, sec­re­tary, and Ja­son Gan­pat, youth of­fi­cer, of­fered greet­ings on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion. They laud­ed bpTT for its long-stand­ing com­mit­ment in keep­ing parang alive at the school lev­el.

This year's fes­ti­val ho­n­oured Los Alum­nos de San Juan, which start­ed off with teach­ers and stu­dents of San Juan Com­pre­hen­sive School in 1986.