THE CARNIVAL STORY
BIRTH OF HIGH MAS
By Terry Joseph
Episode 12
Express
March 3, 2000
Page 35
While
pan and traditional calypso suffered from the post-1970
direction of the Carnival, which demanded more frenzied music and sound
reproduced at deafening levels, mas meanwhile enjoyed an unprecedented boom.
Growth
had been steady since the turn of the 1930s, when historical mas was a regular
feature of the Tuesday parade. Mas had
also diversified. J'Ouvert had defined
among its mas options yard-sweepers, babes-in-arms, ghosts, cow mas and the
dreaded blue devils and jab molassies (a mas that originally required the
entire body to be covered in molasses).
Bats and midnight robbers had also braved the daylight.
For
the Tuesday competition at the savannah in 1932, presentations were judged in
19 categories (including best-decorated bicycle). The first prize overall was $60.
Public participation had taken a leap by 1933, causing the authorities
to schedule special trains to bring spectators and revelers into Port of Spain
for the Carnival day parades. Patrick
Jones put on a fireworks display that Carnival Monday night, which frightened
more than a few people and the first amplified sound was heard at the Queen's
Park Oval.
The
growth pattern continued after the break for World War II. In 1956, more than ten bands crossing the
Savannah stage fielded in excess of 300 players each. Among them was a young bandleader called Edmond Hart.
At
the time he was rubbing shoulders with legends like Harold Saldenah, Irwin
McWilliams, Stephen Lee Heung, Harry Basilon, Horace Lovelace, Bobby Ammon and
Errol Payne. Men, who dominated the
masquerading population, wore breastplates made from real metal (fashioned by
the likes of Ken Morris) and carried regal capes of heavy plush velvet, when
playing historical mas.
By
the early 1960s, steelbands, which had concentrated on military mas up to that
time, began to make their presence felt in the pretty mas league. In 1963 they were matching creativity with
Saldenah's Controversy of Time, Bailey's Bats and Clowns,
Edmond Hart's The Etruscans, Archie Yee Foon's Field of the Cloth
of Gold and Irwin McWilliams' Festival of Moscow. The steelbands had answered the challenge
majestically.
Cito
Velasquez presented Splendour of the East that year and Desperadoes
charmed the audiences both at the Savannah and Downtown with Land of the
Zulus.
But
it was Pat Chu Foon's designs that took the top mas prize. His drawings for Gulliver's Travels
had been converted by the Silver Stars Steel Orchestra into a prize-winning
presentation. It was the only time that
a steelband would win the top prize at the Savannah and this one was
particularly significant as it beat four-time winner George Bailey into second
place.
By
1977, changes to the 1956 picture seemed to represent much more than 21 years
of artistic evolution. Breakaway
factions from the better-known bands were now producing their won full
presentations, competing against their former mentors.
Morris'
band split to also give us the Home Team; Raoul Garib had left Stephen Lee
Heung to bring out his own band; Bernard "Frenchie" Clamens and
Neville Hinds had parted company with McWilliams and Hart's band had spawned
Mavericks.
Consider
now that out of Hart's has since come Young Harts Ltd, Barbarossa, Poison and
Legends, four of the largest bands at last year's Carnival. The 700 players that Edmond Hart fielded in
the 1950s had grown to more than 17,000 over the period, comprising one-third
of last year's Port of Spain parade.
These
were not the only changes. The sheer
weight of numbers, coupled with a number of social factors, had meanwhile
altered the way mas would be played thereafter.