Charles Kong Soo

Parang lovers can look for­ward to a big­ger and bet­ter Parang Fes­ti­val for this year. The Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go's (NPATT) pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Michael Leza­ma says with a new­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent Dar­celle Charles at the helm of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion is head­ing in a new di­rec­tion. "NPATT has de­cid­ed to recon­cep­tu­alise the whole parang fes­ti­val," Leza­ma said. "What we plan to do is to go back to the roots, back to ba­sics of the parang art form. "We're try­ing to get away from the old blas&ea­cute; Parang Fes­ti­val Night for­mat that peo­ple have grown ac­cus­tomed to and change up the whole sce­nario with re­spect to the sig­nif­i­cance that is at­tached to the new di­rec­tion that this new ex­ec­u­tive is tak­ing."

He says mu­si­cal treats such as Vin­tage Parang Night, high­light­ing parang clas­sics from yes­ter­year, Di­vas Night, show­cas­ing fe­male parang singers, Champs In Con­cert fea­tur­ing the best of the best in parang bands and the North/South parang clash, are among the shows the as­so­ci­a­tion is plan­ning. Vin­tage Parang Night is card­ed to be host­ed at UWI, St Au­gus­tine and will be ded­i­cat­ed to the orig­i­nal parang songs that were start­ed by parang pi­o­neers.

Di­vas in Con­cert will fea­ture fe­male singers from the var­i­ous parang groups fea­tured in the as­so­ci­a­tion. Parang Icons will pay trib­ute to both past and present pro­po­nents of the art form who have made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to parang. To high­light their songs, each group will adopt a par­tic­u­lar icon for that night and sing their trade­mark songs. Champs in Con­cert will show­case all the win­ning groups in the 40-year his­to­ry of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, de­liv­er­ing scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mances at NA­PA. An­oth­er event is the North/ South clash among sev­er­al pop­u­lar parang bands en­gaged in mu­si­cal bat­tle. There will al­so be an In­stru­men­tal Com­pe­ti­tion in the Parang Fes­ti­val pro­gramme. "We hope with this new po­si­tion that we are tak­ing, we would en­cour­age par­ran­deros to at­tend var­i­ous shows be­cause each night would be some­thing dif­fer­ent that pa­trons could look for­ward to," Leza­ma said.

The dates for the events are still ten­ta­tive. The 2012 parang sea­son is sched­uled to be opened at the Ari­ma Ten­nis Court on Sep­tem­ber 22 and the parang fi­nals for De­cem­ber 8. Leza­ma said many mem­bers of his as­so­ci­a­tion yearn for parang's gold­en age or hey­day when parang mu­sic could be heard year-round. One of the parang tra­di­tions that has been re­vived is Cruz de Mayo (May Cross) at Lopinot. Leza­ma said that the cer­e­mo­ny came from Span­ish set­tlers or old par­ran­deros from Venezuela in the ear­ly 1940s. In or­der to en­sure a boun­ti­ful har­vest, the His­pan­ic peo­ple would per­form the Cruz de Mayo where they of­fered up fruits, said spe­cial prayers and play spe­cial mu­sic at the event in May. Many ob­servers be­lieve that the Cruz de Mayo strong­ly mir­rors the con­tem­po­rary San­ta Rosa Fes­ti­val and was like­ly the source of its pat­tern­ing and cel­e­brates the month of Mary.

He said since the project was start­ed five years ago, it has been gain­ing mo­men­tum par­tic­u­lar­ly among farm­ers and their fam­i­lies. This year's event will take place at the Lopinot Com­plex on Sat­ur­day. Leza­ma said the as­so­ci­a­tion was now in dis­cus­sion with UWI of­fi­cials to pre­serve and archive price­less, his­toric parang ma­te­r­i­al and at­tempt to re­sus­ci­tate parang songs that were lost or dis­ap­peared through­out the years. He said an­oth­er ini­tia­tive was to gath­er all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion, put in book­let form and pass it on to the younger gen­er­a­tion of the coun­try be­cause there was a Ju­nior Parang Fes­ti­val al­so. "We al­so want to ap­proach the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to have parang his­to­ry and mu­sic taught in our schools just like pan in the class­room," Leza­ma said. "At least some as­pect of the parang artf orm should be taught in schools be­cause if we don't teach the young peo­ple and pass on the knowl­edge, it will be lost."