Ver­non Khelawan

Hailed out by a friend I had not seen for quite some time, I stopped to ex­change pleas­antries and catch up. "You play­ing mas?" he ques­tioned. My re­ply was al­most in­stan­ta­neous, "Yes man. I am play­ing with Leviti­cus."

He queried, "But isn't that a book or some­thing in the Bible?""Yes," I replied, "but that's the band this year. Is re­al mas, with re­al cos­tumes like how George Bai­ley and Harold Salde­nah used to bring mas bands in times past."

He shot back: "But that is long time thing. Band­lead­ers don't de­sign and sell cos­tumes any longer. What they sell nowa­days are beads and biki­nis with a few feath­ers thrown in."

Cu­rios­i­ty, get­ting the bet­ter of him, he blurt­ed out, "Who bring­ing out that band?"

De­cid­ing to tease, I said, "The Catholic church!""What!" he ex­claimed. "Since when the church in­volved in Car­ni­val."I then ex­plained that three years ago a group from a parish in Diego Mar­tin came up with the idea of bring­ing out a mas band and when it was made pub­lic, in typ­i­cal Trinidad style, it was dubbed "The Catholic Band" and has re­mained so ever since.

Ac­tu­al­ly the group, now known as Word As­so­ciates, is re­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for the band. Time con­straints be­cause of a late start, the 2011 pre­sen­ta­tion–Gen­e­sis–fell short in sev­er­al ways, but what struck home was the re­turn of the cos­tume. And al­though the band was small, it at­tract­ed a lot of at­ten­tion and even won prizes.

Its por­tray­al of Ex­o­dus in 2012 saw the band grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty by at­tract­ing a larg­er body of mas­quer­aders de­sirous of en­joy­ing Car­ni­val in re­al cos­tumes. Once more the band gar­nered a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back and won even more prizes, in­clud­ing the Medi­um Band of the Year ti­tle, as well as fans and sup­port­ers.

Whether the im­pact of more cloth­ing for mas­quer­aders as por­trayed by the Catholic band has as yet cre­at­ed a greater de­sire by rev­ellers for bet­ter cos­tum­ing for the road, re­mains to be seen.

Leviti­cus, this year's por­tray­al, is ex­pect­ed to be even big­ger and bet­ter. This third book of the Bible tells of the dif­fer­ent ways the tribe of Levi should make of­fer­ings and sac­ri­fices to Yah­weh. It gives rules and reg­u­la­tions for liv­ing an obe­di­ent and holy life for hap­pi­ness.

I told him the church has al­ways been in­volved in Car­ni­val, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the way Car­ni­val is por­trayed to­day. Many Catholic schools par­tic­i­pate in all the pre-Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties: steel­band, ca­lyp­so, the Ju­nior Car­ni­val Pa­rade, and with as­tound­ing suc­cess.

Cel­e­bra­tion and frol­ic have al­ways been high on the church's agen­da and fol­low­ing the 2009 Syn­od man­date of the Sec­ond Pas­toral Pri­or­i­ty–Re­vi­tal­is­ing Catholic Cul­ture and Iden­ti­ty–great mo­men­tum has been de­rived from the ac­tiv­i­ties in var­i­ous parish­es, Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty not be­ing the least of them.

That Car­ni­val morphs im­me­di­ate­ly in­to the pen­i­ten­tial Lenten Sea­son is a man­i­fes­ta­tion that the church recog­nis­es the need for a change in at­ti­tude from the wan­ton­ness and de­bauch­ery of Car­ni­val, to a time of deep re­flec­tion, in­tro­spec­tion and penance.

So while the church does not en­dorse every as­pect of what the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val has be­come, and while it does not have a prob­lem with its mem­bers be­ing part of the cel­e­bra­tions, it cer­tain­ly ab­hors when things are tak­en to the ex­treme and ad­vise against such ac­tions, since Catholic cul­ture does not en­gage in ex­tremes as a means to re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion.

Ver­non Khelawan is the me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer for Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. Its of­fices are at 31 In­de­pen­dence Square. Tele­phone: 623-7620.