Car­ol Quash

It has of­ten been said that the fu­ture of vin­tage ca­lyp­so and tra­di­tion­al mas looks grim be­cause the young gen­er­a­tion seems on­ly to be in­ter­est­ed in biki­nis, beads and so­ca.

But if the per­for­mances of the chil­dren at the St Mary's Chil­dren's Home AC school in Tacarigua served as in­di­ca­tors of cul­tur­al preser­va­tion, then both the old and the new are cer­tain­ly in good hands. For amid the "palanc­ing," hunt­ing and chip­ping on the pave­ment, the mu­sic of the late Grand­mas­ter Lord Kitich­en­er and tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters took cen­tre stage dur­ing the school's an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion on Feb­ru­ary 4, where the chil­dren ea­ger­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in lip-sync and old mas com­pe­ti­tions. Lov­ing up the cul­ture. Ac­cord­ing to teacher Nico­la Mc­Ni­colls, the staff dili­gent­ly took the time to en­sure that the stu­dents re­ceived holis­tic Car­ni­val cul­tur­al lessons. "We pre­pared them for to­day's com­pe­ti­tions and es­pe­cial­ly trained them to learn and per­form to vin­tage ca­lyp­so–be­cause while they are quite versed in the mod­ern day mu­sic, they al­so need to know what came be­fore.

This year we chose to pay trib­ute to Lord Kitch­en­er and al­so to Haiti be­cause of that coun­try's re­cent dev­as­tat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence," she said, adding that every year a dif­fer­ent ca­lyp­so stal­wart would be fea­tured. Mc­Ni­colls, who took on the role as Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies, was dressed like a ba­by doll, which she said was al­so part of the his­tor­i­cal cul­tur­al les­son. "We al­so want to teach them about tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters," she ex­plained.

Old meets new

The stu­dents show­cased their en­ter­tain­ment tal­ents by im­per­son­at­ing Lord Kitch­en­er dur­ing the vin­tage ca­lyp­so lip-sync com­pe­ti­tion, and kept the au­di­ence in stitch­es of laugh­ter as they per­formed Cockaroach, Bees Melody, Gimme De Ting and Sug­ar Bum Bum. And when it was time for the so­ca lip-sync com­pe­ti­tion, mem­bers of the au­di­ence could have eas­i­ly mis­tak­en it for Fan­tas­tic Fri­day, as the school yard came alive with par­tic­i­pants danc­ing and wav­ing flags, rags and ban­danas. The stu­dents were al­so treat­ed to a lip-sync com­pe­ti­tion by their teach­ers, as well as live en­ter­tain­ment by Eng­lish so­ca artiste Shyo, and Live of Las Laugh En­ter­tain­ment.