Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The Mar­i­onettes Chorale is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of who we are as a peo­ple–cut from dif­fer­ing so­cial class­es, eth­nic­i­ties and dis­po­si­tions in life; the whole na­tion of us who help to make up this place we call home.

Most im­por­tant­ly, the Chorale plays, sings, and makes mer­ry in the var­ied, mu­si­cal gen­res, those we in­vent­ed, and the oth­ers we in­her­it­ed from the very an­ces­tral cul­tures out of which our peo­ples sprang.

“Speak­ing for the Mar­i­onettes, we get along, we have fun to­geth­er. The in­di­vid­u­als are sen­si­tive to the needs of oth­ers, and ‘they get along’. I love the fam­i­ly vibes that I am get­ting from the mem­bers of the chorale,” is how Mu­si­cal and Artis­tic Di­rec­tor of the Mar­i­onettes Gret­ta Tay­lor, Hum­ming Bird Medal Gold, ex­plains how the mem­bers of the chorale make mu­sic; per­haps not with­out the oc­ca­sion­al dis­cor­dant note, but es­sen­tial­ly a rev­er­en­tial, har­mo­nious and joy­ful sound, my in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

“That mem­bers ‘get along’ al­so helps in the pro­duc­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of the mu­sic, as it pre­vents some­one at­tempt­ing to stick out be­cause you don’t want a Di­va, whom I will have to tell on oc­ca­sion ‘shush’.”

The mu­si­cal and artis­tic di­rec­tor be­lieves that the age-old Tri­ni habit of ‘lim­ing’ con­tributes to the qual­i­ty and blend­ing of the singing and the mu­sic: “All of us–Por­tuguese, In­di­ans, all of we Tri­nis; these are things we take for grant­ed, but they are rep­re­sent­ed in the Mar­i­onettes,” says Tay­lor with a mix­ture of pride and pos­i­tive as­ser­tion, as she gives me the ‘why are you sur­prised look’, per­haps she saw some­thing I was not aware of, maybe it’s akin to the ‘cut eye’ she gives when a singer or two is out of time, and she as con­duc­tor stamps her foot to bring them back in time.

The Mar­i­onettes re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed 60 years of mak­ing mu­sic as a group of ‘cho­ris­ters’. Dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, a Mar­i­onettes con­cert at Queen’s Hall is as ex­pect­ed as sor­rel, gin­ger beer and a spir­it of to­geth­er­ness.

The mu­sic arranged and sung by the Mar­i­onettes over the decades varies through the Eu­ro­pean clas­sics and Amer­i­can Ne­gro Spir­i­tu­als, pop­u­lar mu­sic of the pe­ri­od, a touch of jazz here and there, and it would not be a true Trin­bag­on­ian chorale with­out ca­lyp­so and parang, the arrange­ment of the lat­ter over the last cou­ple of decades, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Desmond Wait­he, Tay­lor said.

“Oh Lord, talk­ing about Desmond bring­ing tears to my eyes,” was Tay­lor’s im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Desmond hav­ing passed away in April 2022. “Do you know Mr John Boulay; that man from Char­lot­teville, he jump on de Jack­ass back …” is syn­ony­mous with Desmond, cu­a­tro in hand with a voice to match the folk of a To­ba­go vil­lage, and with a broad smile on his face. Tay­lor and the chorale re­mem­ber you Desmond.

Mar­i­onettes con­tains all of our ‘won­der­ful­ness’ as a peo­ple, some­thing of the sum of our mu­si­cal tastes. “But you know what holds us to­geth­er? It’s the mu­sic, the lim­ing and ole talk that we are fa­mous for as a peo­ple,” says Tay­lor. She cites her case of leav­ing Queen’s Hall af­ter a show and be­ing pre­sent­ed with a bev­er­age (of guess what?) by a group of Mar­i­onettes limers.

The chorale was start­ed by Jo­ce­lyn Pierre and June Williams-Thorne in 1963 and for a long pe­ri­od was spon­sored by the multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny bpTT.

In prepa­ra­tion for a con­cert, “I go through 20 ver­sions of it be­fore set­tling on the one we do at Queen’s Hall,” says Tay­lor, in­di­cat­ing the months of prac­tice which start in Sep­tem­ber for the Christ­mas per­for­mance.

“To­geth­er for 60 years, we have be­come an en­dur­ing in­sti­tu­tion, chang­ing through more than a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions. We even have a few mem­bers who were there from the start, such as Joanne Mendes.” A sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment in a some­times ‘jumbie um­brel­la’ so­ci­ety.

“I was elect­ed leader of the chorale when I was in Eng­land and re­al­ly had no plans to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty; but hav­ing been elect­ed, I thought I would give it a try, ful­ly ex­pect­ing it would be for a short pe­ri­od. Fifty years lat­er, here I am.

“I don’t get paid, it’s my con­tri­bu­tion; I did not choose it and did not plan to be here, but af­ter the pas­sage of years ‘I said, you know what, maybe this is a mas­ter plan,’” the choir con­duc­tor told me sit­ting at her pi­ano, which she said was the source of her mu­si­cal knowl­edge rather than her singing abil­i­ty, not­ing that over the decades her fel­low pi­anist Su­san Dore was a core mem­ber of the Mar­i­onettes.

Dur­ing her stay as con­duc­tor of the chorale, Gret­ta (I think I can so re­fer to her with­out be­ing giv­en the ‘cut eye’) has gone be­yond the Tri­ni dis­po­si­tion of re­ly­ing on­ly on nat­ur­al tal­ent. She has done for­mal train­ing in or­gan­is­ing and con­duct­ing choirs in sev­er­al cities in the US and Lon­don.

“I learnt that a few of the things I did nat­u­ral­ly were all wrong; the ben­e­fits of those pro­grammes have been tremen­dous,” she says. In her pro­fes­sion­al life, Tay­lor, a uni­ver­si­ty post-grad­u­ate in lan­guages, was a teacher at St Joseph’s Con­vent in Port-of-Spain.

In re­cent times (a cou­ple of decades) I have no­ticed an in­crease in the fu­sion of ca­lyp­so and parang in­to the reper­toire of the chorale. It seems to be com­plete­ly en­joyed by mem­bers on stage and those who be­long to the ‘Ex­ter­nal Mar­i­onettes’–I know of one who is fierce in her loy­al­ty to the choir notwith­stand­ing hav­ing not been on stage for a cou­ple of decades. Yes, there are those who at­tend the con­certs, sing and dance, even ‘ah lil break­away’, demon­stra­tive of their abid­ing loy­al­ty to the 60-year-old mu­sic-so­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

Among the large group of Ex­ter­nal Mar­i­onettes are those who ap­pre­ci­ate the clas­sics and the spir­i­tu­als arranged and per­formed by the choir.

“I would say Mar­i­onettes has wiped away the awk­ward­ness of cel­e­brat­ing as we do in Queen’s Hall. You can­not please every­body, so we seek to blend the mu­sic,” says the chorale’s artis­tic and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, not­ing “that not every­one can take the clas­sics.”

Al­though not be­ing in­clined to­wards com­pe­ti­tion in the per­for­mance of the chorale, un­der 'pop­u­lar de­mand' by choir mem­bers, Tay­lor took the chorale to the 1980 T&T Mu­si­cal Fes­ti­val and won in its cat­e­go­ry. “I don’t like the con­tention which sur­rounds a com­pe­ti­tion, so that was the one and on­ly time un­der my lead­er­ship we en­tered the Fes­ti­val; I hav­ing bowed to the wish­es of many,” says the mu­si­cal di­rec­tor.

Among the tours that the Mar­i­onettes Chorale has made are those to the Llan­gollen In­ter­na­tion­al Mu­si­cal fes­ti­val in Wales, sev­er­al cities in the Unit­ed States and sev­er­al coun­tries in the Caribbean. “Per­form­ing in con­certs among such in­ter­na­tion­al groups gave me the con­fi­dence that we are as good as any,” says Tay­lor.

“Dear Gret­ta,

“What a mar­vel­lous oc­ca­sion it was to have the Mar­i­onettes in York … You left so many hap­py peo­ple be­hind you. I thought you had a ter­rif­ic sense of style in all your cho­sen reper­toire,” a note sent to Tay­lor by An­drew Carter, with an ex­cerpt from a news­pa­per re­view of the Mar­i­onettes show in York, a town in North­ern Eng­land

“It was ca­lyp­so time with fan­tas­tic una­nim­i­ty in its syn­co­pa­tions and lilt­ing rhythms so in­fec­tious that it was im­pos­si­ble to keep still; the Mar­i­onettes brought the Caribbean right in­to the As­sem­bly Rooms,” said re­view­er of the show Mar­tin Drey­er.

Tay­lor counts the chorale’s per­for­mances at in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals among well-es­tab­lished choirs as be­ing in­dica­tive of the qual­i­ty of the group. In T&T, she thinks the most-val­ued and out­stand­ing per­for­mance has been the Mar­i­onettes’ ver­sion of the in­ter­na­tion­al clas­sic, Les Mis­érables

“Three Mar­i­onettes choirs com­bined to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of Trinidad’s old­est [post-in­de­pen­dence] chorale, with what is un­doubt­ed­ly its most am­bi­tious pro­duc­tion. While the Mar­i­onettes’ de­ci­sion to present what has been Lon­don’s longest-run­ning mu­si­cal (first per­formed in 1985) was prob­a­bly based on artis­tic chal­lenge and as a suit­able fol­low-up to the equal­ly am­bi­tious 2011 pro­duc­tion of Bizet’s Car­men, Hugo’s orig­i­nal in­ten­tions for Les Mis­érables and his so­cial con­scious­ness make it even more rel­e­vant to con­tem­po­rary Trinidad.” Si­mon Lee, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian, De­cem­ber 30, 2014.

Tay­lor notes that over the years, the chorale has de­vel­oped a youth choir which num­bered 60 at its peak, and which av­er­ages 30-35 at present. The Youth Chorale is ob­vi­ous­ly di­rect­ed at giv­ing Mar­i­onettes an­oth­er 60 years. “I am al­so grad­u­al­ly hand­ing over,” she says, giv­ing an­oth­er cut-eye to my sug­ges­tion that that will hap­pen in ten years.

Se­ri­ous­ly though, among those in line for mu­si­cal di­rec­tor­ships and oth­er lead­ing roles in­to the fu­ture are Dr Roger Hen­ry (as­sis­tant mu­si­cal di­rec­tor), and Caryll Warn­er and Joshua Joseph, two young con­duc­tors who fea­tured at this year’s Queen’s Hall shows, with Car­o­line Tay­lor now as­sis­tant artis­tic di­rec­tor.

Mu­sic al­so brought Tay­lor and her hus­band, Je­re­my Tay­lor, writer, pub­lish­er and ed­i­tor, to­geth­er and with Car­o­line 'in­side', the Tay­lor name seems linked to the Mar­i­onettes in­to the fu­ture.

At a per­son­al lev­el, Tay­lor is the daugh­ter of the well-known Trinidad physi­cian, Dr A G Fran­cis (Cha­co­nia Medal Gold) and Lor­na Fran­cis, and the fam­i­ly tree is as mixed as the T&T pop­u­la­tion.

Im­plant­i­ng my own bias on Mar­i­onettes' per­for­mance at this year’s Queen’s Hall show, the piece that stuck out and fit­ted all that Tay­lor said of the Chorale was the parang se­lec­tion, An­da Par­ran­dero. Dur­ing the cul­mi­nat­ing notes of the con­cert, I saw a young man with one of those prick­ly hair­styles arise from his seat, danc­ing, ap­plaud­ing as if it were at a so­ca per­for­mance of Voice.

“Mar­i­onettes has crossed the gen­er­a­tions and is leav­ing its mark on an­oth­er group of the na­tion­al au­di­ence,” my thought.