Roger Taylor Montano's career as a mas designer didn't get off to a very promising start, he recalls.
He began designing in Montreal in 1991, creating his first serious costume for Hawks International. It was a king costume portrayed by his brother Randy.
"I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but still dived into it," he admits."Unfortunately, the costume broke on the night of the final. I had a rude baptism of fire, as everyone was down on me for ruining the band's chances in the competition."
Now Taylor Montano is making his local debut in 2015 as the designer for an adult band, and hopes to revive modern mas by bringing back some old-time traditions, including quality design.
Born in Belle Eau Road, Belmont, he went to Canada at five when his parents migrated, and graduated from Shadd Academy in Montreal, majoring in the arts.
The disappointment of his first efforts at mas-making for adults didn't discourage him.
"I won the king title in 1992 for an African costume for T&T Organisation of Montreal. I thought that was not my best work–and it was the smallest costume I'd ever created. My winning came as a surprise, especially as it beat out all of the much larger costumes, worn by popular masqueraders in Montreal.
"After a few years I decided to produce my own band. At that time I was more engrossed in fashion designing and this helped me a lot with designing mas costumes.
"I was also the youngest bandleader at that time in Montreal. My first band was a combined kiddies and adult band titled The Beast Within. It spoke to all the negative emotions humans have within them. The evils were portrayed as imps and devils etc."
Taylor Montano did a number of successful bands in Canada, including Mutants of NH2O, from which every costume he designed placed first in all individual competitions. Then he formed ROMA (Roger Outstanding Masquerade Art) 2K towards the close of the '90s.
"I am passionate about mas and while growing up in Canada during the '70s to '90s I felt that I had missed out on my Trinidad culture. Although I was all involved in Caribbean associations and doing voluntary work, and being the youngest bandleader in Montreal carnival, it was not enough for me. I was getting bored with the people involved in Montreal carnival. People often confronted me, saying that I was not a 'real' mas designer, having grown up in Canada and not in Trinidad.
"But my designs were different to the norm as I was trying to produce bands and costumes inspired by theatre and the arts, and not the bikinis and beads that were becoming trendy in mas.
"People used to call me 'the black Minshall,' as they saw his trend in designing in the work I was doing.
Yet, amazingly, he had never heard of Peter Minshall or what he was doing in Trinidad.
"I only eventually heard of Minshall from the older heads who lived in Trinidad and had migrated to Canada. As a matter of fact, the first time I actually saw Peter Minshall was this year, 2014, when I attended a NCC seminar on copyright that he spoke at."
Taylor Montano came back to Trinidad in 2000 to fulfil even loftier goals as a masman.
"I returned to Trinidad at the start of the new millenium to try to regain some of my roots, and learn more of the traditions and development of mas. I formed Taymo in 2000 and did a lot of pageant work, and doing a section for Big Mike's Legacy.
"That wasn't financially viable for me personally and I realised how demanding it was to produce a section in a mas band. I continued with Legacy for a couple years before moving on.
"I then decided to concentrate on the kiddies bands, as children are the easiest and happiest bunch of masqueraders to please. Kids are happy with whatever you design for them–it could be a parrot on a stick and they are happy."
Taymo, derived from his double surname Taylor Montano, is the name of his designing outfit.
Taylor Montano also joined Richard Young and Mannequins Management Image Productions as a hairstylist.
"As a 'feature' hairstylist, I worked alongside Richard Young on many prominent national expositions, including Fashion Week TT, Ms City of Port-of-Spain Pageant, Caribbean Next Top Model, and this year's Tobago Fashion Weekend."
Returning to Canada, Taylor Montano became the creative director for Toronto Revellers in 2010 for five months, continuing his winning ways with junior mas, but was ousted in 2012 as the band's creative director by none other than Brian Mac Farlane.
"The band assumed that with a designer of Mac Farlane's reputation and talent it would go even higher; but, its results with him were similar to when I was the designer.
"This is when I realsed that, although I enjoy looking at pretty mas, with bikini, beads and feathers, that was not my passion. A designer has to merge all the elements of the mas to create a mas band."
Within recent years, Taylor Montano has portrayed the king for Godfrey Enile's Showtime Trinidad, doing so last year as The Blazing Bush.
"I learned a lesson from that experience, in that if one is a bandleader you have to make your own costume and not outsource the task of making the king and queen costume. A bandleader must try to keep everything in house."
"It has been very challenging and difficult getting a grasp on the best way to produce a mas band in Trinidad, especially when one is coming from a North American perspective and background. This is why I participated, and graduated, in the first ever mas development programme produced by the NCBA."
Now he's enrolled at UWI, St Augustine, doing Carnival studies and has designed Yoruba Dance Deity Dance as Taymo Creation's 2015 Carnival presentation.
The band will be launched on Old Year's night, December 31, at Belmont Community Centre on Jerningham Avenue, at 6.30 pm.
"This mas is a trilogy in one, beginning with J'Ouvert, which will be the Eyo Secret Societies, an expose of the secret societies of the Yoruba people. The second segment will be presented on Carnival Monday afternoon and is The Call, with the third hitting the stage on Carnival Tuesday in the full splendour of Dance Deity Dance."
He added: "I am not competing with the big bands, and I want people to participate. For a mas connoisseur in search of a memorable mas experience this is the band to be in as you will be playing mas from J'Ouvert to Las Lap. It is why I have kept the costume packages reasonable, starting from $1,600.
"I am also trying to get the people of Belmont back involved in community mas, like how it was back in the day, in the days of Burrokeets. The whole Carnival vibe in Belmont is now stagnated, dead even, as all the mas and pan is now concentrated in the west, in Woodbrook. It's sorta surreal, that, with the Savannah being the epicentre of mas, right on the fringe of Belmont; in Belmont, it's as quiet a morgue on Canival day."
So Taylor Montano intends to take his band through Belmont before hitting the streets of the capital on Carnival day.
"I also intend having processions through the streets of Belmont during January to generate interest and entertain the community."
Having chipped and wined and jumped and waved through the streets of Port-of-Spain, from J'Ouvert to Las Lap, Taylor Montano is eminently experienced and qualified in the highs and lows of being a masquerader.
"Drawing from these experiences, good and bad, gave me the motivation to form Taymo Creations, putting the needs and desires of today's masqueraders as a priority. Through my experience and art form, I hope to keep them involved in the creativity of our Carnival and not just the bra-and-panty mentality in mas."