Heavy winds at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah did not prove to be a prob­lem for mas­quer­aders tak­ing part in the Car­ni­val Kings and Queens pre­lim­i­nar­ies on Thurs­day night.

Be­fore the first mas­quer­ad­er crossed the stage in front of the Grand Stand, there were con­cerns about how strong winds would af­fect the com­pe­ti­tion in the ab­sence of the North Stand, which usu­al­ly acts like make-shift wind-break.

The con­cerns did not mat­ter af­ter all as the weath­er on Thurs­day night was most­ly calm un­til late in the com­pe­ti­tion when the last two mas­quer­aders had to en­dure a light driz­zle dur­ing their per­for­mances.

While there were no cos­tume mal­func­tions due to the forces of moth­er na­ture, as has oc­curred in the past years, tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties from or­gan­is­ers al­most over­shad­owed the show.

The is­sues be­gan as the show com­menced al­most one hour af­ter its sched­uled start time of 7 pm. The light­ing en­gi­neers were still test­ing their equip­ment as pa­trons were still fil­ing in.

When the show did start, sev­er­al mas­quer­aders had to deal with the nu­mer­ous mix-ups with their back­up mu­sic, which per­sist­ed for most of the night.

Cou­pled to­geth­er, the is­sues led to the show fin­ish­ing at al­most 2 am, well af­ter most of the au­di­ence had de­part­ed.

De­spite the peren­ni­al is­sues, for most of the night mas en­thu­si­asts were still treat­ed to a mas­ter-class of Car­ni­val de­sign and the­atri­cal per­for­mance.

The most pop­u­lar song se­lect­ed by mas­quer­aders was clear­ly Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller’s Road March con­tender Sa­van­nah Grass.

Machel Mon­tano’s 2019 al­bum Great­est of All Time (G.O.A.T.) al­so proved to be a pop­u­lar choice with mas­quer­aders se­lect­ing a num­ber of com­po­si­tions, the most pop­u­lar of which was Re­lease, his col­lab­o­ra­tion with US R&B singer Ashan­ti.

The show be­gan with a trib­ute to a vet­er­an com­peti­tor and band­leader Roland St George, who passed away last year.

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) board mem­ber Ros­alind Gabriel in her trib­ute de­scribed him as a true friend and mas icon.

“He de­fined the term mas­man, with a pas­sion for mas mak­ing which saw him pro­duce and com­pete in the King of Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tion for a record-set­ting 41 con­sec­u­tive years,” she said.