By Sandra Chouthi

Express

Section 2

December 5, 1997

Page 1

Christmas in Trinidad and Tobago without parang is like black cake without fruits. Parang, the music of the season, is nothing without a cuatro, a small wooden four-string instrument that paranderos hold securely under their arm like a baby and play all night long. But who makes these fine-sounding cuatros and how?

Meet Raymond "Cuzin" Rivers, 61, better known as the cuatro man, of Greenidge Trace, Palo Seco. He makes cuatros, guitars, mandolins, box basses and maracas (chac chacs).

An orange pencil protrudes from under his straw hat and sawdust covers the grey hairs on his forearm. He holds four neatly shaved pan-like sticks, a wood shaver and a scrap of sandpaper on a wooden step. He rests them on a wooden step, picks up an old cuatro a friend brings by to repair and begins to play with his thick, stubby fingers. Immediately he knows what's wrong.

The friend is John prince, also of Palo Seco, who brings with him two cuatros and two guitars for Rivers to clean and repair.

"For the year I could make about 100 cuatros," Rivers says. "People from Venezuela, the US and Canada order from me when they come to Trinidad."

He regularly supplies Gopaul Electronics Ltd. in San Fernando with his instruments, but he's late with his Christmas order and three other big ones. A big order is usually about 15 cuatros. Virginia, his second wife of 23 years, helps him to untie the strings on old instruments, attach them onto new ones and clean them.

Rivers sits on a make-shift bench in his small toolshed at the back of his home, now under construction, dips a slim brush into watercolour paints and decorates the chac chac handles.

"Some like it coloured, some like it plain," Rivers comments, applying a bit of red on top the green. "Parang people, Spanish, like plain cedar that well cure. They not into this setta beauty. Good cedar has a better sound."

Rivers uses a crocus bag and a sheet of galvanize to prevent the rain from dashing into the shed. Thin strips of assorted woods, cedar, white pine and lepinet, are tucked between pieces of wood in the roof, on shelves, in corners. His tools - wood file, carving knife, fret saw - lie on a table near a window. He uses a knife to rip out parts of wood from an old cuatro.

"Good cedar has a better sound," Rivers says, while parang comes across a radio in the nearby kitchen. "I used to play parang for days around Christmas time when I was in my 20's until I was in my 40's. For me there ain't nothing sweeter than parang."

Incidentally, this cuatro maker's two sons, Joey, 26, and Vincent, 30, are the lead guitarist and bass guitarist, respectively, in Machel Montano's band, Xtatik.

Rivers' father, Estavar, was a carpenter from Venezuela who also made musical instruments. His godfather, Casimi, was also good with his hands. His Trinidadian mother, Lena, died when he was nine. Rivers grew up with his father's relatives in Siparia. He was 12 when he first tried making an instrument on his own. Rivers was ten when he first made a cuatro with bois cannot.

"It wasn't of the best but each one I made after that was better and better until this day," he says.

Rivers dips the cedar in boiling water for as long as an hour to soften it before bending it into shape. Having acquired years of experience means that Rivers doesn't use that method as much as heating a piece of pipe to bend the wood, which he soaks in cold water, into shape.

"When you know the work, you don't need to use the boiling water so much," he says.

The broken frame of a picture of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, hangs from a nail in his workstation. A large poster of Jesus, protected with plastic, is on an opposite shelf. He also keeps a yellowing newspaper front page with a photo of the Pope on it. Three mirrors, chipped here, cracked there, are positioned in different spots.

It's God that he praises for giving him the talent to make cuatros.

Rivers confesses to returning to the Catholic Church after many years of drinking plenty rum and playing parang and singing "doo doo darling" type of songs he used to make up in clubs in Siparia, Penal and San Fernando.

Those were the days when he limed with "jammettes".

"Sometimes when I want to have fun, when I'm relaxing in my toolshed or I'm in the middle of a correct sleep, the spirit of God does touch me and guide me to work. All feeling of having fun vanish … cut. I'm no kind of saint, but I don't drink no more."

Rivers, whose nickname "Cuzin" came about because he couldn't properly say the word "cousin" as a youth, says he gets ideas for cuatro designs in his sleep and knows exactly what to make for someone by their complexion. A fair-skinned person, as he describes this writer, will want white pine mixed with light brown boards and purple heart. "From the time I see the person, it does come to me the type of cuatro to make," Rivers says.

The one he takes a liking to is made with mahogany for the sides, cedar for the face and "stomach" and white pine for the board onto which the strings are attached.

Rivers picks it up to demonstrate what he calls " a short business". Parang, he says, is even sweeter when the people at whose house parang is played understand that paranderos are wishing them good health and fortune.

Aiee! Aiee!

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