Car­ol Quash

A ca­su­al af­ter­noon lime in a Brook­lyn, New York, apart­ment has re­sult­ed in six so­ca parang re­leas­es on a new rid­dim, bring­ing to­geth­er mu­si­cians and artistes through a shared love of the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas genre.

The Lewah Rid­dim was de­vel­oped by pro­duc­er and play­back en­gi­neer Du­ane Williams and self-taught mu­si­cian Fi­delis Valen­tine. Last week, artistes Leon Coldero, Anslem Dou­glas, Chris Ro­jas, Am­ri­ka Mutroo, Vir­gil “King Re­do” Williams and Jo­ca Lee re­leased songs on the rid­dim, each bring­ing a dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tion to the mu­si­cal arrange­ment.

A chance meet­ing sparks cre­ativ­i­ty

Williams told WE En­ter­tain­ment that the project be­gan dur­ing one of his reg­u­lar vis­its to Valen­tine’s apart­ment.

“I went to check him (Valen­tine), as I nor­mal­ly do, and I walked with my lap­top and my oth­er equip­ment,” Williams said.

“He was just play­ing around with some chords on his cu­a­tro, and right there, I start­ed cre­at­ing the beat to his chords.”

Williams, who is from Gas­par­il­lo, said he has al­ways been mu­si­cal­ly in­clined and hears mu­sic in just about every­thing, in­clud­ing every­day con­ver­sa­tions.

“It’s a kind of flow. Even when peo­ple speak, they have a tune; they have a note; they’re just talk­ing in a tune.”

Af­ter leav­ing Valen­tine’s apart­ment, Williams re­turned to his stu­dio in New Jer­sey, where he con­tin­ued work­ing on the arrange­ment, even­tu­al­ly de­vel­op­ing the rid­dim that would bring six artistes to­geth­er.

For Valen­tine, the col­lab­o­ra­tion al­so rep­re­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fi­nal­ly hear an idea he had car­ried for years trans­formed in­to a record­ed mu­si­cal pro­duc­tion.

An old melody finds new life

Valen­tine said that while the par­tic­u­lar chords were not new to him, this was the first time they had been used in record­ed mu­sic.

“I used to sing ‘Jam that sweet parang on me,’ which was based on a true sto­ry that hap­pened here in New York in 2001. I wrote the song around 2007, and tried those chords.”

He laughed as he re­called how his late wife, Mariel, would of­ten find bits and pieces of pa­per around the house on which he had writ­ten mu­si­cal ideas as they came to him.

“Some­times she would be sort­ing clothes to wash and when she checked my pock­ets she would find ran­dom pieces of pa­per and say, ‘Here! Come and take your big hit.’ I am very hap­py that it came from where it was to this. She would have been very proud.”

Valen­tine said the Lewah Rid­dim is the first of many mu­si­cal projects he hopes to pur­sue, ex­plain­ing that he has no short­age of ideas wait­ing to be de­vel­oped.

“I have plen­ty things in my mind like a mad man. Some­times I’m up all two in the morn­ing think­ing about songs. I’m glad I got the right per­son to pull it out now. I was just play­ing the chords and he (Williams) came up with the beat.”

Car­ry­ing parang across gen­er­a­tions

Valen­tine said he has been play­ing parang since child­hood, grow­ing up in the Heights of Aripo. When he moved to the Unit­ed States decades ago, he took that mu­si­cal tra­di­tion with him.

“I used to play my cu­a­tro in the park, I would play it when I went to play crick­et; all over the place.”

For him, parang has re­mained an im­por­tant con­nec­tion to his up­bring­ing and cul­tur­al roots, even while liv­ing abroad. The new project of­fers an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to share that tra­di­tion with au­di­ences be­yond Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He is now look­ing for­ward to hear­ing how lis­ten­ers re­spond to the rid­dim and its six re­leas­es.

Keep­ing the tra­di­tion­al

parang spir­it alive

Coldero, who is now based in Tam­pa, Flori­da, told WE En­ter­tain­ment that he was im­me­di­ate­ly ex­cit­ed when Williams sent him the rid­dim.

“When I heard it, I said, ‘Bro, you see this rid­dim? This is it!’”

Coldero ini­tial­ly wrote his song us­ing the pop­u­lar “Sereno Sereno” cho­rus. How­ev­er, af­ter hear­ing Dou­glas’ con­tri­bu­tion, he re­alised that both songs fea­tured the same re­frain.

Rather than re­lease a song with a sim­i­lar cho­rus, he re­turned to the stu­dio and re­worked his con­tri­bu­tion, even­tu­al­ly com­ing up with “Lev­an­ta”.

He ex­plained that the word has a par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in tra­di­tion­al parang, re­call­ing the way parang groups would an­nounce their ar­rival at homes dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.

“In parang, when a parang group back then, back in the day, would come to your home to give you a parang, the first song they would sing is Lev­an­ta. Lev­an­ta means to ‘get up. We’re here, open the door.’”

He said this would tra­di­tion­al­ly be fol­lowed by the An­nun­ci­a­tion, cel­e­brat­ing the an­nounce­ment of the birth of Je­sus Christ, be­fore the group moved on to oth­er parang se­lec­tions.

“So when they wake you up first, they start an­nounc­ing the birth of Christ and then they would sing any­thing else af­ter that. That’s the tra­di­tion­al way of parang,” he said, not­ing that the prac­tice has changed over the years.

Coldero said his con­tri­bu­tion is in­tend­ed to re­mind lis­ten­ers of how parang was tra­di­tion­al­ly per­formed and the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing awak­ened by a group of par­ren­deros ar­riv­ing to ser­e­nade a house­hold.

“My song is pret­ty much telling you about a long time ago, how parang used to be, when par­ren­deros would wake you up and give you a house parang.”

Six artistes, one

mu­si­cal arrange­ment

The six re­leas­es show­case dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to the Lewah Rid­dim while re­tain­ing the Christ­mas spir­it at the heart of so­ca parang.

Dou­glas’ con­tri­bu­tion is en­ti­tled “We Want It”, while Mutroo sings “Sam­my”. Ro­jas de­liv­ers “Parang For­ev­er”, Jo­ca Lee of­fers “Noth­ing”, and King Re­do an­nounces “Ah Reach”. Coldero com­pletes the col­lec­tion with “Lev­an­ta”.

The mu­si­cal pro­duc­tion al­so brought to­geth­er sev­er­al mu­si­cians. The songs were mixed and mas­tered by Mar­lon Jack­son, with Valen­tine on cu­a­tro, Shawn “Mas­ter­mind” Noel on bass gui­tar and Ri­co DG on man­dolin.

What be­gan as an in­for­mal af­ter­noon of mu­sic-mak­ing has there­fore grown in­to a six-song project, con­nect­ing mu­si­cians across the di­as­po­ra while draw­ing on the rhythms, in­stru­ments and tra­di­tions that have long de­fined Trinidad and To­ba­go’s parang cul­ture.