In­nis Fran­cis

You know your worth when oth­ers qui­et­ly present you with flow­ers for your body of work.

When you are recog­nised as one of the greats who have pro­duced abun­dant­ly for the cul­tur­al land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­ing no­ticed speaks vol­umes.

This came in the 2027 band launch pre­sen­ta­tion from Ex­osia Mas, Leg­ends of Mas, at the Li­ons Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly.

Band­leader Col­in Prov­i­dence said the works of the pi­o­neer­ing band lead­ers in­spired them to craft the de­signs that shape mod­ern-day Car­ni­val us­ing feath­ers, rhine­stones and span­dex.

He said that, for young mas­quer­aders, the de­signs by these de­sign­ers have in­spired the look of what mas is to­day, with mod­ern aes­thet­ics.

He said it was in­ter­est­ing to see the looks on the de­sign­ers’ faces when their (old­er de­sign­ers’) names were men­tioned.

“The younger de­sign­ers were sent on a jour­ney to find the old­er de­sign­ers; they were in shock, in awe. Their find­ing would have opened their eyes to what they can cre­ate out­side of their com­fort zone. The past mas would have giv­en them a new ap­proach to what they can do this year, to in­cor­po­rate more craft, cloth ...,” Prov­i­dence said.

Prov­i­dence added that, with a fu­sion of six sec­tions, Bright Africa, Fan­ta­sy Is­land, New Moon, An­chors Aweigh, Pa­pil­lon and Lu­mi­na Sanc­ta, they aim to ho­n­our five lo­cal band lead­ers, George Bai­ley, Pe­ter Min­shall, Wayne Berke­ley, Ja­son Grif­fith and Raoul Garib, through the cre­ative body of work they pro­duced through the years.

He said Leg­ends of Mas was not in­tend­ed to du­pli­cate their work but to use some of their icon­ic de­signs as a muse to tell an Ex­osia Mas sto­ry while ho­n­our­ing their lega­cy.

Some of the ideas were born from cre­ations that in­clude vin­tage por­tray­als turned in­to con­tem­po­rary ones. Prov­i­dence said they stay true to tra­di­tion­al val­ues through cos­tume build­ing and do not re­sort to mass pro­duc­tion com­ing from Chi­na. He said it is a way of cre­at­ing jobs lo­cal­ly for pro­fes­sion­als in the art form.

Ex­osia Mas is a medi­um-sized band es­tab­lished in 2018 and pre­sent­ed its first pre­sen­ta­tion, Do­min­ion, in 2019.

Prov­i­dence said, “We fo­cus on cus­tomer care and qual­i­ty, as all our pro­duc­tion is done lo­cal­ly. Last Car­ni­val, we had a vi­su­al­ly im­paired young la­dy who pa­rad­ed with us from be­gin­ning to end. So, we are all about in­clu­sion; we cater for all per­sons; we do not dis­crim­i­nate.”

In 2026, they placed sec­ond at the Up­town Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion.