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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Armonias Divinas... following a parang dream

by

20101213

At a time when the na­tion's youth con­tin­ue to be heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by North Amer­i­can mu­sic gen­res like hip-hop and R&B, teenagers Jea­nine Ruiz, 18, and 17-year-old twin broth­ers Keon and Khai Jef­frey, are work­ing fever­ish­ly to help pre­serve what many con­sid­er a dy­ing art-form–parang mu­sic.

In 2008, the trio took mat­ters in­to their own hands when they found­ed the Ar­mo­nias Div­inas Parang Group, which has been parang­ing around the coun­try through­out the year.

And while they ac­knowl­edge those who paved the way for them, like parang pi­o­neer Daisy Voisin, this group–com­prised of 16 mem­bers–has no qualms about putting their own spin on the tra­di­tion­al mu­sic. "In or­der for us to keep parang alive, we have to make it more mod­ern. It needs to grow to ap­peal to the younger gen­er­a­tion. We can­not sim­ply re­gur­gi­tate what was there be­fore," as­serts Khai, the more out­spo­ken of the Jef­frey boys.

Khai was quick to point out though, that mak­ing it more mod­ern does not mean tak­ing away from its au­then­tic­i­ty. "I hate the stereo­type of parang," con­curs Ruiz, "It is not on­ly about ham and rum. There are oth­er things to sing about."

La An­nun­ci­a­tion

The teenagers, whose par­ents are al­so in­volved in the mu­sic group, be­gan singing parang at the Bish­op Anstey High and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East–where the Jef­frey broth­ers still at­tend. The three, who are al­so pur­su­ing a Bach­e­lor of Arts De­gree in Mu­sic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, make it clear from the get-go that they mean busi­ness.

With one com­po­si­tion, ti­tled La An­nun­ci­a­tion, al­ready in the bag and an­oth­er in the mak­ing, they're hop­ing to of­fer parang lovers new mu­sic and etch a place for them­selves in the lo­cal parang in­dus­try.

"What many peo­ple do not re­alise is that parang is not sea­son­al. It's just more pop­u­lar dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son but you can sing it all year through," says Jea­nine.

Though few and far be­tween, Keon states that there were oth­er en­ti­ties which has been work­ing to keep parang mu­sic alive. One such en­ti­ty, he says, is the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (NPATT), which hosts an­nu­al con­tests such as the Na­tion­al Parang Com­pe­ti­tion. This year's win­ner walked away with $100, 000 in cash.

Ar­mo­nias Div­inas, which trans­lates in­to 'di­vine har­monies' in Eng­lish, hopes to reg­is­ter with NPATT soon to take part in the 2011 leg of the com­pe­ti­tion. And con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, Khai notes that more young peo­ple are get­ting in­volved in parang mu­sic. The prob­lem is, they are not be­ing high­light­ed.

"Every year there's a step for­ward. At first our friends were sur­prised that we're in­to parang. But we start­ed invit­ing them to events we per­formed at and now a lot of them ac­tu­al­ly en­joy it! Even in the schools, more peo­ple are join­ing the parang band...But we need sup­port if we are to make a dif­fer­ence."

The parang en­thu­si­asts, who are al­so on a mis­sion to "el­e­vate the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and mu­si­cian­ship" with­in the lo­cal in­dus­try, are keep­ing their fin­gers crossed that one day, very soon, parang mu­sic will at­tain its full po­ten­tial in T&T and be­yond.

"It's a genre of mu­sic and like all oth­er mu­sic, we want parang to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. We want to make a dif­fer­ence. We want to build this cul­ture and we hope that it will be ac­cept­ed in a pro­fes­sion­al way," says Jea­nine.


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