Melis­sa Doughty

For many, Christ­mas might be about get­ting the best gift or hav­ing the most de­li­cious food, but for the Guer­rero fam­i­ly, Christ­mas mag­ic comes from shar­ing mu­sic with fam­i­ly and loved ones.

Nes­tled in the lush hills of Lopinot, 58 Lopinot Set­tle­ment to be ex­act was buzzing with life: Baron's "Span­ish Woman" hummed in the back­ground; voic­es sang in deep rev­er­ence; songs of parang queen Daisy Voisin could be heard; the smell of bread pud­ding and co­coa tick­led one's ol­fac­to­ry mem­o­ry; and rush­ing im­ages of a large fam­i­ly, laugh­ter and Christ­mas came to mind.

At any mo­ment, Guer­rero fam­i­ly mem­bers would erupt in­to song–from parang, for which the fam­i­ly has be­come most known, to pop­u­lar mu­sic of yes­ter­year, such as Swedish group AB­BA and Neil Di­a­mond.

'Re­spect paren­deros'...peo­ple think of you as tooth­less rum drinkers

Six (out of eight) fam­i­ly mem­bers were present for Fri­day's in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

The bond be­tween the close-knit group was ev­i­dent as the fam­i­ly gath­ered at their restau­rant and guest house, Cafe Mari­posa, to tell of their love for mu­sic. It all start­ed with a fa­ther who shared his love for mu­sic with his eight chil­dren (sev­en girls and one boy). It's a tra­di­tion they tight­ly cher­ish: singing has bond­ed them deeply as a fam­i­ly, just as the fam­i­ly are unit­ed in their dream to de­vel­op their restau­rant.

The Guer­rero's sto­ry reads like a pull-out from The Sto­ry of the Von Trapp Fam­i­ly Singers, on­ly it was unique­ly Trin­bag­on­ian, with parang as the cen­tre­piece.

It be­gan with the fam­i­ly's ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, Cor­nelius Cipri­an Ruiz, who taught "au­then­tic" parang to UWI stu­dents, vis­i­tors and even to some of to­day's pop­u­lar parang singers. The six girls (Bren­da Guer­rero-Sali­na, Gail Guer­rero Tsoi-a-Sue, Mar­got Guer­rero, Mar­cia Guer­rero, Bian­ca [Guer­rero] Hamel-Smith, Hy­acinth Guer­rero-Hug­gins) who sat in the in­ter­view, re­called that Ruiz would of­ten use his Span­ish bible to com­pose "au­then­tic" parang. (Arthur Guer­rero and Gillian Guer­rero-de la Bastide, who played the gui­tar and cu­a­tro, and who were the first and last of the chil­dren, were both ab­sent from the in­ter­view.)

The group's mu­si­cal lin­eage did not stop there. The fam­i­ly's moth­er and fa­ther, Bene­dict (now de­ceased) and Hil­dred Guer­rero, met in the Lopinot RC Church choir. How­ev­er, the group's fa­ther did not want his chil­dren to have a ca­reer in mu­sic. While, they said, he was proud of his chil­dren singing, he was un­cer­tain whether they could earn a liv­ing from the art.

"My fa­ther al­ways saw that (mu­sic ca­reer) as not a good pro­fes­sion," Mar­got said. She said he wished for all of his chil­dren to be­come teach­ers (he was an agri­cul­ture teacher).The group be­gan singing, they said jok­ing­ly, "straight out of the womb." The group was a sta­ple on the lo­cal mu­sic and parang scene in the 70s and 80s. The group could not of­fer an ex­act start date but said that they of­ten sang around the house and "the bed was their stage." Moon­lit nights, in Lopinot, were of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by their singing.

"There was no tele­vi­sion and no elec­tric­i­ty. So moon­lit nights were con­cert nights," Mar­got said. The fam­i­ly's mu­si­cal ca­reer saw them per­form for the coun­try's first prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent, Dr Er­ic Williams and Sir El­lis Clarke re­spec­tive­ly, as well as for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.The group al­so has un­der their belt a mu­sic fes­ti­val win (1984–fam­i­ly class) in which they won the Cyn­thia Al­fred Cup. They've per­formed on Aun­ty Kay (Twelve and Un­der show) and at some "10,000 wed­dings."

"We went on Aun­ty Kay, and I was pos­si­bly four years old," Bian­ca said, "and we sang San­ta's rein­deer and we came first...When we went, it was on a truck in the Sa­van­nah," she added, with the oth­ers laugh­ing at the mem­o­ry.The fam­i­ly wants the "au­then­tic" parang to be main­tained.Asked if the art of "au­then­tic" parang has been lost in T&T, the group said, "We are hop­ing that it is not quite lost. We see what is hap­pen­ing with the school chil­dren, how the teach­ers are teach­ing them the au­then­tic parang."

Bian­ca said as a judge at one of the school com­pe­ti­tions, the pas­sion she saw in the chil­dren gave hope. She said she want­ed to see more au­then­tic parang be­ing com­posed. Parang, the group said, was about the birth of Christ. There are al­so the East­ern and Lenten parang forms.

"Parang is a rev­er­ent sort of thing. When you sing about coro, coro, you are singing about the ce­les­tial choirs. It has to have some kind of mean­ing. When mak­ing songs, do some re­search and de­ter­mine if it is ap­pro­pri­ate to con­tin­ue on that line. For (some peo­ple) it is just a song..." Bian­ca said, speak­ing of peo­ple who of­ten cre­ate songs with lit­tle re­gard for the mean­ing.

The group would like to see greater re­spect shown to paran­deros as mu­si­cians. The group said they of­ten sang for free at most events and that lit­tle has changed from the 80s to now. Paran­deros, they said, still per­formed free at many events. The group stopped singing at many events be­cause of the "dis­dain" of­ten shown to paran­deros. "We stopped singing parang for years be­cause of that. Be­cause they think of you as rum drinkers...tooth­less rum drinkers, and I did not want to be as­so­ci­at­ed with that," Mar­cia said.

The group plans to cre­ate a CD with their grand­fa­ther's com­po­si­tions, as a trib­ute to him, en­ti­tled Vi­va Cipri­an, Vi­va Parang. There will be ten tracks on the CD which will be avail­able in Au­gust 2014.