Ver­non Khelawan

The lilt­ing sounds of au­then­tic parang mu­sic are now fill­ing the air­waves re­mind­ing peo­ple, and Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar, it is time to be­gin prepar­ing to cel­e­brate the birth of Our Lord Je­sus Christ.

This year, as Ro­man Catholics pay at­ten­tion to the Sec­ond Pas­toral Pri­or­i­ty, as man­dat­ed by Syn­od 2009-Re­vi­tal­is­ing Catholic Cul­ture and Iden­ti­ty-au­then­tic parang mu­sic and songs should have a spe­cial mean­ing, if for noth­ing else than its re­la­tion with evan­ge­li­sa­tion.

Parang in its orig­i­nal form, or at least as we in Trinidad and To­ba­go know it, was re­gard­ed as per­son­al mo­bile con­certs, when very small groups of peo­ple moved from vil­lage to vil­lage on foot, an­nounc­ing the com­ing of the Sav­iour, through the medi­um of mu­sic and song.

The his­to­ry, as told to me by my par­ents and oth­er el­ders, records that at the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber, vil­lagers of the var­i­ous en­claves in­hab­it­ed by the Span­ish de­scen­dants, main­ly from Venezuela, would put down their agri­cul­tur­al tools, pick up their mu­si­cal in­stru­ments-cu­a­tros, man­dolins and maracs (chac chac)-and be­gin a jour­ney to bring the good news of Je­sus' birth to their rel­a­tives and not so near neigh­bours.

Such for­ays took al­most the en­tire month. So while wives and daugh­ters were left at home to clean and pre­pare the var­i­ous foods spe­cial to the sea­son, the men, usu­al­ly in groups of four or five, in­stru­ments in hand, would be­gin the an­nu­al rit­u­al.

It is said that as they made their way from vil­lage to vil­lage, they would sleep wher­ev­er night caught them, they would be fed and of­fered drink at every home they vis­it­ed, while singing the parang songs. But they were well-dis­ci­plined in that in each home they en­joyed a min­i­mum of al­co­hol drinks and lit­tle vict­uals (vit­tles) for sus­te­nance.

Since many of the house vis­its were noc­tur­nal, the par­ran­deros, as they are still called, would ar­rive at a door and sing a "wake up" song (lev­an­ta), ask­ing the fam­i­ly to get up, al­low us in­to your home and hear the good news of Christ­mas in song. Once in­side, they would then sing about the birth of Christ, drink, eat and leave singing a de­par­ture song (de­s­pedir) and be off to the next house. This con­tin­ued for weeks in many ar­eas all over the coun­try.

Parang, there­fore, was au­then­tic evan­ge­li­sa­tion in those days. There are a lot of parang songs, which might even be dubbed Christ­mas hymns since the genre was di­vid­ed in­to groups with spe­cial mean­ings. For in­stance, there are songs herald­ing the An­nun­ci­a­tion (anun­cia­cion); there are those which re­late to the birth of Je­sus (nascimien­to); those which ask for peace and seren­i­ty for the home that is host­ing the group (ser­e­nale) and then the ex­it songs (de­s­pedir).

The mu­sic had be­come al­most ex­tinct, when in the 1970s a few groups made great ef­fort to put the genre where it be­longed, at the top of our mu­si­cal her­itage. So far it has sur­vived, giv­en all the un­bri­dled egos.

To­day, most of the true mean­ing of parang is grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing, save for the ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPATT) and a few oth­er groups and in­di­vid­u­als.

Our so­ci­ety be­ing what it is, has put its own sig­na­ture to the genre, in­tro­duc­ing the ca­lyp­so el­e­ment in­to parang, call­ing it so­ca parang. In ef­fect those songs are re­al­ly Christ­mas ca­lyp­soes, which re­tain the au­then­tic parang beat in keep­ing with the sea­son. It has worked suc­cess­ful­ly for the writ­ers and singers for the past four or five decades.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in our Arch­dio­cese, the Christ­mas sea­son has be­come very ma­te­ri­al­is­tic, with great em­pha­sis be­ing placed on food and drink, gifts, of­fice par­ties, dec­o­ra­tions, fetes ga­lore, spe­cial din­ners et al.

But for us Ro­man Catholics, parang mu­sic must take its place in his­to­ry as a gen­uine el­e­ment of our Catholic cul­ture and iden­ti­ty and a great evan­ge­li­sa­tion tool.

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