Car­ol Quash

They start­ed off with a bap­tism of rain and slush at the Parang on D Hills fes­ti­val in 2009.

Sev­en­teen years lat­er, rain or shine, the mem­bers of Al­ma Caribena (Caribbean Soul) are keep­ing the sweet parang flame burn­ing every chance they get.

“That was a year to re­mem­ber,” one of the band’s found­ing mem­bers, Is­rael Can­ton, vivid­ly re­called how the band’s in­au­gur­al per­for­mance in Paramin helped trans­form the drea­ry evening in­to a full-fledged, al­beit messy, ex­trav­a­gan­za.

“That day it rained heav­i­ly, so the whole place was wet and mud­dy. But that didn’t stop parang lovers from show­ing up and hav­ing a good time. A lot of peo­ple were danc­ing in the rain and the mud. We too, took off the shoes and had a time per­form­ing. Peo­ple came clean and left in a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent state,” he said with a chuck­le.

Can­ton is one of Al­ma’s lead vo­cal­ists and al­so plays the cu­a­tro. He said the band us­es its Christ­mas in Ju­ly gigs as its launch­ing pad for the an­nu­al parang sea­son, which of­fi­cial­ly runs from mid-Oc­to­ber to Jan­u­ary 6. Un­of­fi­cial­ly, for them, though, the sea­son starts once there is a de­mand for their mu­sic.

“We have some things com­ing up this month, so that’s prac­ti­cal­ly the start of the parang sea­son for us.”

Al­ma Caribena, he said, start­ed off with a small group of mu­si­cians who had bro­ken off from oth­er bands and came to­geth­er one night and just start­ed play­ing. The chem­istry was nat­ur­al, the mu­sic was soul­ful, and a band was formed.

“Over the years, some mem­bers have changed, some hav­ing mi­grat­ed or left to per­form on a cruise ship,” and oth­ers have joined to re­place those who left. But the mis­sion of cre­at­ing and per­form­ing great mu­sic has re­mained the same.

The band cur­rent­ly com­pris­es Can­ton; vo­cal­ist Paula Weekes; her daugh­ter Kaya Weekes, vo­cal­ist and mara­cas play­er; bassist Joel Young; con­gas play­er Christo­pher James; Ke­mi Ible on gui­tar; and vo­cal­ist Nao­mi Wong, who joins in when­ev­er she is in T&T.

Ible took the place of long-stand­ing mem­ber Ab­don “Ab­bi” Ram­dass, who died sud­den­ly dur­ing the 2024 parang sea­son. Can­ton fond­ly re­called how Ram­dass’ nat­ur­al and gen­teel com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills al­ways con­tributed to the band’s stage pres­ence, and how he had gra­cious­ly opened up his home as a band room for prac­tice ses­sions.

“It was amaz­ing, watch­ing how he helped us put things to­geth­er,” he rem­i­nisced, de­scrib­ing Ram­dass as a great mu­si­cian and men­tor whom band mem­bers loved dear­ly.

The band per­forms parang mu­sic at both pri­vate and cor­po­rate events, and has, in the past, been con­tract­ed to per­form at Christ­mas events for Courts, Re­pub­lic Bank and Sco­tia Bank, among oth­ers. Al­ma was al­so one of the bands that per­formed at the in­au­gur­al 105 FM’s 12 Bars of Christ­mas in 2015.

“And of course, we’ve done Lewah with oth­er bands.”

Lewah comes from the French pa­tois phrase Les Rois, and it marks the of­fi­cial end of the Christ­mas and parang sea­son, which falls on the Feast of Epiphany.

Each mem­ber of Al­ma, Can­ton said, is trained in their re­spec­tive ar­eas, which makes a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of the choice of songs for per­for­mances and their arrange­ments very easy.

“From vo­cals, right back to the con­gas, every­one knows their stuff.”

And hav­ing a Span­ish teacher and a Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go per­form­ing arts ma­jor as vo­cal­ists cer­tain­ly adds val­ue to what the band has to of­fer.

Paula teach­es Span­ish at Mal­abar Sec­ondary, for­mer­ly Mal­abar Com­pos­ite, a plus for any parang band, as she as­sists mem­bers with prop­er Span­ish pro­nun­ci­a­tion and ex­plains the con­text of the lyrics so the oth­er vo­cal­ists would un­der­stand the sto­ries they are telling in song.

“She was ac­tu­al­ly my Span­ish teacher, and al­though I am not as flu­ent as I would like to be, I am im­prov­ing. It’s a work in progress,” Can­ton said with a wry smile.

Kaya has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Parang Com­pe­ti­tion in the pri­ma­ry schools cat­e­go­ry with Ari­ma Girls’ RC and as the lead singer of Ari­ma North Sec­ondary in the sec­ondary schools cat­e­go­ry in 2012 and 2013. Her per­for­mance arts cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence, he be­lieves, give the band the edge it needs on the stage.

But, Can­ton high­light­ed, the skills and reper­toire of Al­ma Caribena mem­bers ex­tend way be­yond parang mu­sic and the Christ­mas sea­son.

“We do a wide-scale genre of mu­sic, in­clud­ing Latin mu­sic, R&B, so­ca, even a bit of chut­ney and reg­gae.”

He said Al­ma gets booked year-round for gigs such as wed­dings, birth­day par­ties, brunch­es, and var­i­ous oth­er events.

“I will al­ways re­mem­ber a per­for­mance we did at Spots Bar in Ari­ma, at which we show­cased all the gen­res of mu­sic that Al­ma could have pos­si­bly thrown out. It was amaz­ing.”

Just like the time they had gone to To­ba­go for a quick per­for­mance and ex­pe­ri­enced a de­lay at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“So we start­ed a far-out ses­sion in the air­port while wait­ing for our trans­port to get us. There were dif­fer­ent bands there, so every­body came and joined in. That was quite a per­for­mance.”

The band tries to re­hearse at least twice a week – on Mon­days and any oth­er day on which mem­bers are avail­able.

“If we do have gigs com­ing up, we try to put in much more prac­tise in­to it; at least three hours of prac­tise a day. Or some­times we would add on an ex­tra day if we have new songs that we added to the reper­toire,” mak­ing this a busy Christ­mas in Ju­ly for the mem­bers of Al­ma Caribena.