RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

South mas­quer­aders ar­rived late as usu­al in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, but the wait was worth it as they daz­zled in all their splen­dour, show­cas­ing not on­ly cre­ativ­i­ty but ex­cep­tion­al use of re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als in their de­signs.

Un­like the 2024 Car­ni­val route along La­dy Hailes Av­enue and to King’s Wharf, the mas­quer­aders were judged in front of the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) af­ter go­ing down from Cipero Street.

Jages­sar Cos­tumes’ por­tray­al of Red Clouds Over the South was the first band to cross the stage, and while their tra­di­tion­al Fan­cy In­di­an cos­tumes were well re­ceived, the band ap­peared to be small­er in size. South­ern Mas As­so­ciates’ Fan­cy In­di­ans fol­lowed next at 1.35 pm, while Ky­rool Mo­hammed’s Fan­cy In­di­an por­tray­al of Apache New Gen­er­a­tion was the third band to cross.

A proud San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris not­ed the grow­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in South mas, call­ing this year’s cel­e­bra­tion one of the best yet.

“We want to im­prove and have bleach­ers as well next year but re­mem­ber every­thing comes at a cost. Cor­po­rate cit­i­zens sup­port­ed San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val. Keep in mind we’ve been plan­ning for the last three months. The suc­cess of J’Ou­vert, Pan and Pow­der was ev­i­dent. Every­one has done their part,” he said.

He not­ed the grow­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in Mid­night Mas.

“Last night we had the biggest mid­night mas in the his­to­ry of San Fer­nan­do, which fin­ished at 2 am. I’m cer­tain that af­fect­ed the start of mas to­day as well,” he added, not­ing that de­spite the chal­lenges he was sat­is­fied.

He said the death of mas­quer­ad­er Sel­wyn Lit­tle on Car­ni­val Mon­day was trag­ic.

“The in­ci­dent with Mr Sel­wyn Lit­tle put a damper on Car­ni­val. It was sad that he lost his life, and I’m send­ing con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly,” he said.

Mean­while, San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion Arts and Cul­ture chair­man, coun­cil­lor Ryaad Ho­sein, said he was im­pressed with the qual­i­ty of bands.

“We had 16 bands, and they are beau­ti­ful, well-man­u­fac­tured. They may be small, but they are ef­fec­tive,” he said.

He added: “There’s been a re­ju­ve­na­tion of peo­ple us­ing re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als. The Mid­night Mas was a hit—every­thing is re­ju­ve­nat­ing in San Fer­nan­do.”

He al­so not­ed that band lead­ers worked with cor­po­rate spon­sors and sug­gest­ed that next year, the cri­te­ria for judg­ing could be changed to en­cour­age re­cy­cling.

Ho­sein praised the qual­i­ty of ole mas and men­tioned ef­forts to in­volve pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al mas.

Mean­while, as Alvin May­nard and Friends crossed the stage, a spe­cial trib­ute was paid to Lit­tle. May­nard de­scribed him as a true sailor stal­wart.

“He rep­re­sent­ed his band, and mas was his thing. When he put on his sailor uni­form, he was a re­al gen­er­al. What hap­pened was so sad,” May­nard said.

Chief judge An­cil Rooplal al­so com­mend­ed the qual­i­ty of mas but not­ed that the num­ber of feath­er mas seemed to be get­ting small­er.

“I think we need to pass this on to stu­dents in schools be­cause we do not want to lose the tra­di­tion of feath­er mas and plac­ard mas,” he said.

Mean­while, ACP Wayne Mys­tar al­so laud­ed South Car­ni­val, not­ing it was in­ci­dent-free ex­cept for the tragedy in­volv­ing Lit­tle. He not­ed that in Ce­dros there were over 5,000 peo­ple for J’Ou­vert and in Bar­rack­pore and Cou­va, J’Ou­vert saw over 10,000 par­tic­i­pants. Mys­tar point­ed out that spec­ta­tors did not have seat­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions but not­ed that new strate­gies would be tried to im­prove next year’s car­ni­val.

He added, “Apart from the raids on J’Ou­vert, no weapons were seized. As we go in­to the last lap, we are ask­ing peo­ple to de­sist from car­ry­ing weapons to Car­ni­val.”

Saman­tha Richards, one of the TU­CO judges, said while San Fer­nan­do mas was late, the qual­i­ty was good. She al­so said that Machel Mon­tano seemed to be in the lead for Road March, fol­lowed by Bun­ji Gar­lin.

“Peo­ple seem to love D Pardy, and I think the words res­onate with peo­ple who’ve been work­ing the whole week,” she said.

Pamela Far­rell Reyes, an­oth­er Road March judge, was tak­en aback by the late ar­rival of bands, say­ing San Fer­nan­do could in­crease the num­ber of mas­quer­aders in the bands.

A to­tal of 16 bands were ex­pect­ed to cross the stage by night­fall.