Bo­bie-lee Dixon

As a child I en­joyed the sweet sounds of parang very much. Even though I could not un­der­stand a sin­gle word, as it was usu­al­ly sung in Span­ish, I still couldn't help but nod my head, tap my feet, or even mum­ble the words as I tried to sing along. For me, when­ev­er I heard parang it clear­ly sig­ni­fied that the Yule­tide sea­son was up­on us. Parang mu­sic was what you danced to, and what kept you mer­ry dur­ing those long hours of var­nish­ing your grand­moth­er's fur­ni­ture, pol­ish­ing the floors, or even dust­ing those hard to reach "ven­ti­la­tion holes" that just didn't seem to make any sense. It was the mu­sic you heard when the grown folks or­gan­ised a lit­tle Christ­mas "lime," and you "vex too bad"?that you were just a child and you couldn't get in on the ac­tion. Oh yes, au­then­tic parang has al­ways cre­at­ed that jol­ly, mer­ry and Christ­massy at­mos­phere you looked for­ward to each year.

Like every­thing else, how­ev­er, parang has evolved. Over the years the in­clu­sion of the up­tem­po beat of so­ca with parang, cre­at­ed the fu­sion–so­ca parang as we know it to­day. Though this fu­sion has been loved and ap­pre­ci­at­ed by many since its birth, it has some­how, al­beit un­in­ten­tion­al­ly, seem­ing­ly over­shad­owed au­then­tic parang. That, cou­pled with the lack of fi­nan­cial sup­port, has to some ex­tent, cre­at­ed the no­tion that au­then­tic parang is quick­ly dy­ing. So ex­act­ly what is the cur­rent sta­tus of au­then­tic parang? Is it re­al­ly dy­ing? The T&T Guardian spoke with the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (NPATT), Richard Mendez.

Parang re­vi­talised and shin­ing again

Mendez said over the years parang did not re­ceive the fi­nan­cial and cul­tur­al sup­port it need­ed. He said with the as­so­ci­a­tion's new man­age­ment com­mit­tee, things have be­gun to look up this year. "We have been eat­ing lit­tle and liv­ing long for a long time now, and re­al­ly it is be­cause par­ran­deros love what they do. The fi­nan­cial sup­port is al­ways need­ed but we have kept parang alive over the years with the best means we had, be­cause of our love and ded­i­ca­tion to it," ex­plained Mendez. "Thank­ful­ly this year we got a $1,000,000 sub­ven­tion from the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. This has as­sist­ed in more ad­ver­tis­ing, and we have seen a 50 per cent in­crease in at­ten­dance at all venues. "Our prize mon­ey has al­so in­creased by $50,000 (pre­vi­ous­ly $50,000). This is good but we know bet­ter can be done, be­cause oth­er cul­tur­al forms get prize mon­ey in the mil­lions....hope­ful­ly this is a start," Mendez added.

New de­vel­op­ments in pre­serv­ing parang

He al­so stressed that the as­so­ci­a­tion was very strict on the preser­va­tion of au­then­tic parang, and saw the in­clu­sion of youths as a ma­jor part of art form's up­keep. "De­spite our strug­gles, when we look at the num­ber of groups that reg­is­tered over the years, we see that the age group is get­ting younger and we have moved from 32 to 45 groups in the past four years, with six groups made up of on­ly young peo­ple. "We are now look­ing at a new face of de­vel­op­ment to pre­serve parang and that's the young peo­ple," said Mendez.

He praised bpTT for its con­tin­ued fi­nan­cial sup­port of NPATT's an­nu­al Ju­nior Parang Com­pe­ti­tion, which he be­lieved en­cour­aged young peo­ple to ap­pre­ci­ate au­then­tic parang. NPATT has now em­barked on its first web site af­ter 39 years, and can al­so be found on the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work–Face­book. The as­so­ci­a­tion has al­so been giv­en its own of­fice space, and for the first time NPATT has an of­fi­cial head­quar­ters.

NPATT go­ing places

With the as­so­ci­a­tion's sud­den stroke of "luck," it is mov­ing to achieve all that was once placed on its wish list. Ac­cord­ing to Mendez, the as­so­ci­a­tion is in the process of set­ting up group in­sur­ance for par­ran­deros. "We have al­so start­ed a mem­bers lan­guage de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to as­sist par­ran­deros in writ­ing com­po­si­tions. Oth­er ar­eas we would be look­ing at are con­tract law and copy­right is­sues as it re­lates to the preser­va­tion of au­then­tic parang," re­vealed Mendez. He al­so said the as­so­ci­a­tion would be re­vi­tal­is­ing the East­er Parang Fes­ti­val which had been non-ex­is­tent for years.

"We are tak­ing parang back to its tra­di­tion­al way, which is in keep­ing with the birth, death and res­ur­rec­tion of Christ," Mendez quipped. He said the parang in­stru­men­tal com­pe­ti­tion, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the Christ­mas sea­son, would now be held dur­ing the East­er Parang Fes­ti­val.

Don't wa­ter-down parang

Asked what he thought about the newest wave of parang, Mendez said, "I have no prob­lem with the evo­lu­tion of parang. I en­joy so­ca parang. But what we are hear­ing to­day from some of those who con­tribute to so­ca parang is some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent with re­gards to the lyri­cal con­tent–that I have a huge prob­lem with. "If peo­ple un­der­stood the im­por­tance of parang and its ori­gin, then they would not turn it in­to some­thing that is wa­tered-down and dis­taste­ful."