Pe­ter Ray Blood

For­mer po­lice of­fi­cer Ky­ron Arthur was re­mem­bered in a spe­cial way last Fri­day night when the Po­lice Re­tirees As­so­ci­a­tion staged their Po­lice Retro Kaiso Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion at SWW­TU Hall in Port-of-Spain.

The founder of the po­lice ca­lyp­so monarch com­pe­ti­tion, Arthur is now un­der the weath­er and was un­able to at­tend. How­ev­er this con­test has spawned a cadre of ex­cel­lent ca­lyp­so­ni­ans and per­form­ers through the years, in­clud­ing Watch­man, Ken­ny J, John­ny King, Bun­ny B, Wiz­ard of I.D., The Me­chan­ic and D'Mas­so.

The new com­pe­ti­tion can be called a suc­cess de­spite fac­ing some chal­lenges on Fri­day night, in­clu­sive of a late start, the late ar­rival of a bar, too many items be­ing per­formed by guest artistes, and too much ban­ter be­tween its 22 con­tes­tants, all con­tribut­ing to the pro­gramme go­ing way be­yond mid­night. The em­cees were Tu­co East Zone's Kaiso Kar­a­van's God­frey Pierre and Limp­ing Lenny.

At­tend­ed by act­ing com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Stephen Williams, past com­mis­sion­ers Ever­ald Snag­gs and Trevor Paul and sev­er­al re­tired and serv­ing of­fi­cers, the pro­gramme of­fered a wide and en­ter­tain­ing ar­ray of past ca­lyp­so gems with some ex­cel­lent per­for­mances. Vet­er­an so­ca artiste Can­di Hoyte opened pro­ceed­ings with a strong pre­sen­ta­tion, per­form­ing Singing Francine's Run Away. Oth­er women in the con­test were Natasha Ed­mund, La­dy Tall­ish (Fran­cil­la Jack­son), Shiv­aughn Skeete and Make­da Dar­ius (La­dy Dar­ius) who placed sec­ond over­all singing Mighty Spar­row's Slave.

The strength of most of the per­for­mances should en­cour­age or­gan­is­ers to make this com­pe­ti­tion an an­nu­al event. Con­tes­tants seemed to have re­searched their songs thor­ough­ly, most of them per­form­ing in char­ac­ter. For in­stance, singing Black Stal­in's Black Man Feel­ing to Par­ty, Pe­ter Cipri­ani not on­ly donned dread­locks but used cos­met­ics to dark­en his com­plex­ion con­sid­er­ably. To re­live Growl­ing Tiger's 1930s hit Take Me Take Me, Wiz­ard of ID (Cuth­bert George) was a pic­ture of sar­to­r­i­al el­e­gance in full for­mal evening wear, his en­sem­ble com­plet­ed with a cane and a wiz­ard's hat.

For his in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Mer­chant's Pan in Dan­ger, Kei­th Lu­cas was ac­com­pa­nied by none oth­er than pan ge­nius Len "Boogsie" Sharpe. And, to im­per­son­ate Gab­by do­ing Gov­ern­ment Boots, Bun­ny B (Neville Brown) wore to­tal army cam­ou­flage kit, em­pha­sis­ing the mil­i­tary boots he wore. Of course, he tried his best to al­so sing with a Bar­ba­di­an ac­cent.

At the end of it all, the judges were most im­pressed by the per­for­mance of Ger­ard Snag­gs who in­ter­pret­ed Preach­er's Jump and Wave. His was the most en­er­getic per­for­mance on the night and he won thun­der­ous ap­plause at its end.

Run­ners-up, and their songs, were La­dy Dar­ius (Slave); Rance John­son (Pos­er's Par­ty Tonight); George Olivierie (David Rud­der's Mad­ness); and Sh­eye (Spar­row's Bad­john), re­spec­tive­ly. Mak­ing guest ap­pear­ances were past na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch Du­ane O'Con­nor, Bri­an Lon­don, Saint Nick and Abebele.

Pan in D Coun­try­side

Af­ter tak­ing a hia­tus in the wake of its In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence & Panora­ma, Pan Trin­ba­go Inc is re­sum­ing its Pan in D Coun­try­side se­ries of open air con­certs on Sat­ur­day, No­vem­ber 7 to Rio Claro, at Rio Claro Koskeros pa­n­yard. To be staged in con­junc­tion with the South/Cen­tral Re­gion, pro­ceeds from the event will be used to off­set med­ical ex­pens­es for three pan pi­o­neers–Ken­ny Pas­call (Rio Claro Koskeros); Lennox "Sam" For­tune (Hat­ters/San City); and Glen­ford Sobers (New Age Trend­set­ters).

The fun be­gins at 2 pm and the bands list­ed to per­form are Des­per­a­does, Su­per­novas, San City, Petrotrin Hat­ters, Fu­sion Steel, New Age Trend­set­ters and Rio Claro Koskeros. Al­so in at­ten­dance is DJ Klass is Class. Ad­mis­sion is free, and food and drinks will be on sale.

Pan Trin­ba­go re­gards the con­tri­bu­tions made by these three pan stal­warts to­wards the steel­band move­ment to be in­valu­able and hopes that the pub­lic will sup­port the ven­ture.

Mas in Mi­amithis week­end

Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val reach­es its high point this week­end when 15,000 mas­quer­aders are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a burst of colour and pageantry on Sun­day. Straight Out of Comp­ton star Mar­cc Rose will serve as a this year's celebri­ty Grand Mar­shall and so­ca di­va De­stra will head­line the main per­form­ing stage.

One of the an­tic­i­pat­ed cul­tur­al Caribbean tra­di­tions, Sun­day's Mi­a­mi Broward Car­ni­val pa­rade will be held at the Mi­a­mi Dade Coun­ty Fair and Ex­po­si­tion on SW 24th Street from 11 am.

Host­ed and pro­duced by the Mi­a­mi Broward Car­ni­val One Car­ni­val Host Com­mit­tee, this feast of cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tion show­cas­es the vast di­ver­si­ty that is the Caribbean cul­ture of car­ni­val with culi­nary de­lights in­dige­nous to the Caribbean, melo­di­ous sounds of steel­bands, and colour­ful and elab­o­rate cos­tumes.

This year's pa­rade of mas­quer­aders in­cludes 19 cos­tumed bands that have been work­ing all year on their por­tray­als and cos­tume de­signs. Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val was vot­ed as one of the Top 100 events in South Flori­da by Bizbash.

The city's warm weath­er, palm trees and melt­ing pot of cul­tures tru­ly makes Mi­a­mi the ide­al des­ti­na­tion to host the an­nu­al Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion. This year, Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val cel­e­brates 31 years of car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tion and An­tigua's 60 years of car­ni­val. Mi­a­mi Broward Car­ni­val is the last ma­jor North Amer­i­can event on the car­ni­val cir­cuit lead­ing up to T&T Car­ni­val in 2016.

"The Mi­a­mi Broward Car­ni­val is among Mi­a­mi's most pop­u­lar and ex­cit­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al event fea­tur­ing the rich Caribbean cul­ture of our com­mu­ni­ty," says Greater Mi­a­mi Con­ven­tion & Vis­i­tor Bu­reau pres­i­dent and CEO Williams D Tal­bert III, CDME.

"We are de­light­ed to wel­come once again the many vis­i­tors who trav­el to Greater Mi­a­mi to en­joy this spec­tac­u­lar event along with the ex­tra­or­di­nary of­fer­ings of our des­ti­na­tion."

Aside from De­stra, the Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val mu­sic stage will in­clude en­er­gis­ing per­for­mances by some of to­day's top heavy­weight so­ca artistes in­clud­ing Dil-e-Nadan, Ri­car­do Drue, Snakey, Fad­da Fox, Xplo­sion Band and Lyrikal.

Said Roy Cape All Star vo­cal­ist Drue: "I am def­i­nite­ly no stranger to the stage at Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, orig­nal­ly per­form­ing some years ago with my group Crosso­vah. When­ev­er I touch the stage for Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, it feels com­fort­able, feels like home.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly this time it's a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, be­ing a so­lo act and com­ing off such a suc­cess­ful year. When it comes to my per­for­mance, the peo­ple can ex­pect a lot of fun and en­er­gy. I want the pub­lic to feel a part of the per­for­mance like we are on stage to­geth­er to give me the same en­er­gy I'm giv­ing to them."

Ac­tor Rose said: "It is an ho­n­our to serve as Grand Mar­shall for Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val rep­re­sent­ing T&T. Cul­ture is every­thing to me. It's who I am, so I feel blessed to be able to rep­re­sent and cel­e­brate my Caribbean her­itage."

Fa­ti­ma Food Fest to­mor­row

As a leader, Fa­ti­ma Old Boys As­so­ci­a­tion (FO­BA) is in a con­tin­u­ous state of evo­lu­tion and in­no­va­tion. For over a decade, its Salt & Pep­per Cook­out has set the bar to which oth­ers as­pire and the FO­BA is now about to shake up this event cat­e­go­ry by in­tro­duc­ing Fa­ti­maFood­Fest to­mor­row, at 7 pm at the court­yard of the Mu­cu­rapo Road col­lege in St James.

This scrump­tious new food fes­ti­val will main­tain every­thing pa­trons loved about Salt & Pep­per, which has been host­ed for the past 14 years, while in­tro­duc­ing com­pet­i­tive culi­nary en­ter­tain­ment wor­thy of the Food Net­work, such as:

�2 In­ter­ac­tiv­i­ty–Pa­trons will now judge the cooks to de­ter­mine Best Fa­ti­ma Alum­ni Cook and Best In­vi­ta­tion­al School Team. Guest cooks in­clude past stu­dents of St Mary's Col­l­lege, QRC, Bel­mont Ex-Pupils As­so­ci­a­tion, (BELEX), Holy Name Con­vent, and St Fran­cois Girls Col­lege.

�2 Flair Bar­tend­ing–pa­trons can en­joy their favourite cock­tail made with ex­cit­ing show­man­ship.

�2 Celebri­ty Chef Chal­lenge–pa­trons will get up close and per­son­al as two lo­cal celebri­ty chefs bat­tle on stage as they pre­pare a gourmet de­light live for your sen­so­ry plea­sures. Again, pa­trons will be the judges.

FO­BA has been on the look­out for cooks who can con­tribute new, ex­cit­ing, tasty dish­es to the cause to help make the event an even greater suc­cess. So if you have a re­al sweet hand and know how to bub­ble a pot, come show off your skills at Fa­ti­maFood­Fest 2015. FO­BA is hop­ing to at­tract over 100 cooks, as was done last year.

�2 Tick­ets for to­mor­row are priced at $350 and drinks are free. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, con­tact the FO­BA Of­fice (628-4735) or fo­ba2012@live.com