Khara Per­sad

Be­fore Di­ane McIn­tyre could set­tle in­to her seat to chat about the up­com­ing Ju­nior Parang Fes­ti­val start­ing on No­vem­ber 3, she whipped out her cu­a­tro from its case, and sat through the hour-long in­ter­view hold­ing it af­fec­tion­ate­ly in her arms as she ex­plained why the fes­ti­val was nec­es­sary.

McIn­tyre, who was once the mu­sic of­fi­cer of the Di­vi­sion of Cul­ture in what was then called the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Cul­ture, said she found­ed the parang fes­ti­val pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of so­ci­ety's neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of parang and its par­ran­deros.

"What re­al­ly up­set me was once you said the word 'parang,' con­ver­sa­tion would stop...No re­spect for parang. No re­spect. But al­so dis­re­spect­ing you as a per­son who per­forms or likes parang," she said.

She said there was once a mis­con­cep­tion that par­ran­deros were un­cul­tured and un­e­d­u­cat­ed.

Mo­ti­vat­ed by her de­sire to change this, McIn­tyre, while pound­ing her fist on the ta­ble for em­pha­sis with each word, said that her goal was to "make every sin­gle per­son in Trinidad love parang."

"I will make them love it," she said, de­scrib­ing her thought-process back in the 70s.

McIn­tyre found­ed the fes­ti­val in 1978 with its first show­ing at Prov­i­dence Girls' Catholic School in Bel­mont with about 12 schools par­tic­i­pat­ing. It is now a ma­jor event on the cal­en­dars of up to 50 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools across the coun­try.

"When I thought up the fes­ti­val, as much en­thu­si­asm as you can have, you must have a venue. If you have no venue, you don't have a fes­ti­val. Prov­i­dence just said 'You want a venue? Take it.'"

From its hum­ble be­gin­ning in a hall with wood­en floor­boards at Prov­i­dence, Mcin­tyre re­alised she need­ed to ex­pand to ac­com­mo­date more schools, and the fes­ti­val was moved to Wood­ford Square in its sec­ond year.

She cred­it­ed the prin­ci­pal at the time, Sis­ter Regi­na Lei­ba, for the over­all suc­cess of the 35-year-old event, be­cause she of­fered the hall so will­ing­ly.

McIn­tyre said many of the adults in to­day's parang bands got their start be­cause of par­tic­i­pat­ing in her fes­ti­val as chil­dren.

"The cra­dle for the adults was the ju­nior fes­ti­val," she said, re­mem­ber­ing a young Ali­cia Jages­sar, who has be­come a pop­u­lar parang singer with Los Alum­nos de San Juan.

She said peo­ple should not doubt the abil­i­ty of chil­dren to learn Span­ish and play parang in­stru­ments, as their per­for­mances could move any­one to tears.

In 2008, on the 30th an­niver­sary of the fes­ti­val's in­cep­tion, McIn­tyre took her tal­ent and parang band Un Amor to To­ba­go and cre­at­ed the To­ba­go Schools' Parang Fes­ti­val.

She said her band teach­es young stu­dents how to play the cu­a­tro, gui­tar, man­dolin, and vi­o­lin in parang style, or­gan­ised by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

"To­ba­go is ab­solute­ly on­board with the parang. Ab­solute­ly."

McIn­tyre said she has been suc­cess­ful in mak­ing parang so­cial­ly ac­cept­able, ev­i­denced by a high de­mand for parang bands to per­form dur­ing Christ­mas, but there has been a de­vel­op­ment she dis­ap­proves of.

"It has now reached the stage where the first thing that comes to mind is parang, you must have a parang band. But it has come back to haunt me be­cause it is now be­ing bas­tardised."

She said sim­ply there was no such thing as "so­ca-parang." As far as she is con­cerned, true parang should be sung in Span­ish, and the sub­ject of songs should be about the Christ­mas sea­son.

"You want that parang vibe, you know what they do? They pick up a cu­a­tro and sing a pack of non­sense. As long as the words pho­net­i­cal­ly re­mind the lis­ten­er of Span­ish or Spang­lish."

She said such songs, which stray from tra­di­tion­al parang, should be called Christ­mas ca­lyp­so.

"Vul­gar lyrics have no place in Christ­mas parang. I have no prob­lem if you want to sing a Christ­mas ca­lyp­so and you sing it in Eng­lish."

Such songs were "killing out" tra­di­tion­al parang, she said.

This year, the venue for the fes­ti­val will kick-off at St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School on No­vem­ber 3 with pri­ma­ry schools.

She said none of this suc­cess would have been pos­si­ble with­out the full sup­port from school­prin­ci­pals and teach­ers.