Cherisse Moe

Spice mas­quer­aders are seem­ing­ly pay­ing no mind to the Mayan apoc­a­lypse prophe­cy, which pre­dicts that the world as we know it will end in 2012.In fact, many are al­ready gear­ing up for Car­ni­val and are de­cid­ing which cos­tumes they will pa­rade the streets of the cap­i­tal city with, come Feb­ru­ary 20 and 21.

With just about sev­en months to go be­fore the fes­ti­val ex­plodes un­to the scene, the four-year-old large mas band of­fi­cial­ly launched its C2K12 pre­sen­ta­tion, The New World, at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas, on Sat­ur­day night. Hun­dreds of pa­trons, with cool­ers in hand, made their way to the west­ern penin­su­la to wit­ness first hand Spice's three main sec­tions-Ul­ti­mo, Ac­tu­al and Fu­turo, as well as its sub-sec­tions, Sarcee, Olmec, Mo­he­gan, Ti­wanaku, Ay­mara, Yahi, Jarawa, Yanomani, Arua, Mash­co-Piro, Siri­ono and Trique.

The event com­menced at 9 pm, how­ev­er, it was not un­til 1.30 am that the pre­sen­ta­tion lit­er­al­ly took cen­tre stage, with mod­els strut­ting their stuff, show­cas­ing the var­i­ous cos­tumes, which em­pha­sised the evo­lu­tion of civil­i­sa­tions and cul­tures. Con­fet­ti and py­rotech­nics added a touch of ex­cite­ment to the 35-minute long pre­sen­ta­tion, and the large crowd seemed to be im­pressed with the cos­tumes, and for the males in at­ten­dance, the fe­male mod­els. Al­though so­ca tunes were played dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, Pop, R&B and Tech­no were the pre­ferred gen­res of the DJ. This de­ci­sion, how­ev­er, didn't seem to go down too well with some pa­trons, who told the T&T Guardian that Car­ni­val was all about so­ca.

"I can­not un­der­stand why they are play­ing so much dance mu­sic at a Car­ni­val launch. That to me is a turn off," lament­ed one fe­male pa­tron. An­oth­er echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, stat­ing, "Why so much pop mu­sic? Isn't this a Car­ni­val band launch?" But, there were those who wel­comed the di­verse se­lec­tions, say­ing that the event catered to every­one. "Car­ni­val is syn­ony­mous with so­ca but all around the world, dance mu­sic is tak­ing prece­dence. "I have no prob­lem with it. It shows that the or­gan­is­ers did their home­work and are us giv­ing a taste of all kinds of mu­sic." And while a few pa­trons were seen fil­ing out of the venue soon af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion, the ma­jor­i­ty were clear­ly not in the mood to go home as they stayed to take in the sounds of so­ca band, Im­ij and Com­pa­ny, as well as so­ca artiste and Spice ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Rocky. The event even­tu­al­ly end­ed at about 4 am on Sun­day morn­ing.

• For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion vis­it www.spice­car­ni­val­band.com.