IN­NIS FRAN­CIS

A new mas band is prepar­ing to en­ter the streets of Port-of-Spain for Car­ni­val 2027, promis­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion that blends tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters and aes­thet­ics with con­tem­po­rary fash­ion and de­sign.

Xzotik Mas is the new band, with its in­au­gur­al pre­sen­ta­tion, Re­ju­ve­nate, de­scribed as the “ori­gins of ole time new”.

The pre­sen­ta­tion was re­cent­ly launched at Hen­ry’s, Sweet Bri­ar Road, St Clair, Port-of-Spain.

Re­ju­ve­nate fea­tures ten sec­tions: Twin­kle, The Grass­roots, Gold­en Stroll, Tur­bu­lence, The Waste­land, Soli­tude, The Spark Of, Ju­bilee, En­sconce and Suc­cess of It All.

To­geth­er, the sec­tions rep­re­sent a cy­cle of trans­for­ma­tion, re­silience and re­new­al, cul­mi­nat­ing in an ex­pres­sion of re­birth.

For band leader Rod­ney Snell, how­ev­er, the pre­sen­ta­tion car­ries a per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance be­yond its cre­ative con­cept.

At its heart is a trib­ute to his fa­ther, Rod­er­ick Snell, a revered King Mas play­er whose dom­i­nance on the Car­ni­val stage spanned the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.

Snell said Re­ju­ve­nate is in­tend­ed to cel­e­brate not on­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry, but al­so the gen­er­a­tional ex­cel­lence and artis­tic in­flu­ence that have helped shape the Car­ni­val land­scape.

Snell Jr said, “This am­bi­tious struc­ture re­flects both the band’s cre­ative depth and its com­mit­ment to im­mer­sive sto­ry­telling through Mas. Re­ju­ve­nate cap­tures the spir­it of re­vival—breath­ing new life in­to tra­di­tions that have shaped Trinidad & To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val his­to­ry. The pre­sen­ta­tion will pay homage to the Ole Time Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, draw­ing in­spi­ra­tion from folk­lore, au­then­tic­i­ty, and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, while seam­less­ly tran­si­tion­ing in­to the vi­bran­cy and in­no­va­tion of mod­ern-day Mas.”

The band’s con­cept is built around a fu­sion of in­tri­cate bead­work, fash­ion and con­tem­po­rary de­sign, with the in­ten­tion of cre­at­ing what or­gan­is­ers de­scribe as a meta­mor­pho­sis of mas that con­nects the past with the present.

The pre­sen­ta­tion will seek to re­vis­it el­e­ments of “Ole Time” Car­ni­val while plac­ing them with­in a mod­ern frame­work.

As prepa­ra­tions con­tin­ue to­wards Car­ni­val 2027, Xzotik Mas is al­so plan­ning a se­ries of give­aways and ac­tiv­i­ties for prospec­tive mas­quer­aders.

Pa­trons will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­view the band’s of­fer­ings at its mas camp on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain, in the lead-up to Car­ni­val.

For the new band, Re­ju­ve­nate is ul­ti­mate­ly an at­tempt to look back­wards and for­wards at the same time—ho­n­our­ing the char­ac­ters, tra­di­tions and artistry that helped de­fine Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val while in­tro­duc­ing a new gen­er­a­tion to them through a con­tem­po­rary mas ex­pe­ri­ence.