The Second Coming

In Minshall’s heyday as a bandleader during the 1970s and 80s, Samuel enjoyed an exclusive reign as the masman’s king, dancing costumes such as The Sacred and the Profane, Devil’s Ray and Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright.

On that particular Sunday, though, Samuel did not visit Minshall’s home alone but led an entourage comprising acclaimed jazz musician Etienne Charles and a few of his friends.

Minshall had some inkling as to what the visit was about, s a y i n g “things get drawn to each-other by which way the wind blows.” At the time of the visit, however, Minshall said he was not “too happy” about a number of things taking place around the world but had found comfort in the chicken wire, glue and cloth he had before him.

“I thought, ‘This thing has such character (chicken wire, glue and cloth),’” he told Sunday Newsday during an interview on Wednesday.

The masman said Charles, too, was instantly inspired by the material.

“What happens to chicken wire and a certain glue when you use them with the idea of mas informing you from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, something magical can happen,” Minshall theorised.

Lo and behold, Minshall has joined forces with Charles and others to produce a Carnival band, which will hit the streets tomorrow and Tuesday.

The mas band, two inexorably linked presentations, is a manifestation of Charles’ Carnival - The Sound Of A People, a recent production which drew on his extensive research on musicians and masqueraders of traditional Carnival characters.

Tomorrow, they will portray We the People, a band featuring live musicians and singers.

Minshall said the words, We the People, will be emblazoned in red on T-shirts across the torso of the masqueraders. They also will wear a matching bright red beret to complete the look.

An internet profile of the band’s Monday presentation states: “Altogether, it is a joyful Monday celebration of the very best in us, with Etienne and Friends providing living proof that music is the highest form of human communication. The streets will jump for joy with We The People on Monday.” On Tuesday, Minshall’s talents will again be on display in a small, dystopian sailor mas, Spiritus Mundi (State of the World), accompanied on the road by the Exodus Steel Orchestra. He said the presentation was inspired by the poem, The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats (1865- 1939).

“On Tuesday is The Second Coming, Spiritus Mundi - a post nuclear sailor mas----A classic robber mas and a classic sailor mas morphed as one to make an ominous, empty, vaporised future, appear before us as a passing parade in the present - Carnival 2017. You can’t play mas and ‘fraid powder,” the band’s internet profile said.

Minshall, who won the band of the year title eight times, said the band was essentially about Carnival and the happenings in society, the global challenges, including the fallout from Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States.

“It has also got a rich political vibrancy to it. I would say it is an odd partnership. The world certainly woke up to a different morning after the last US presidential election,” he said.

“On the Monday we will be playing Live and on Tuesday, Dead. Is mas we playing. It has really been brought into being by the times in which we live and mas, as with any other self-respecting artform, is able to comment lucidly on the times in which we live.” That the mas features a retro 1950s theme was “very deliberate,” Minshall said adding that much attention was paid to detail.

“The mas is made with chicken wire, cotton balls and glue by hand, beginning to end. And sewn by hand, beginning to end. I am proud to say that this little group of people, like any good mas coming down from the country, made big Trinidad,” he said.

For Minshall, the band is much more than mas.

“A whisper spoken with earnestness and a sense of truth can be more powerful than a loud explanation that has nothing at its centre nor soul.” He said, though, the time-frame within which he had to work did not allow for a large, elaborate production.

“Given the time that we had and the time required to fashion a single headpiece, I said this band could work with anything from 30 to 100. But you just need to see a small collection of these like strangers from some other time, which, of course, is projected as time in the future, a post nuclear fancy sailor mas.

“That means some 20, 30, 40, 50 years. But, what is wonderful about it is that almost consciously I was combining two of the greatest traditions in the mas - the sailor which was twin-birthed with pan and in the last 40s and early 50s and the robber which has been there since time immemorial.” Minshall said a mas band does not require 3,000 or more masqueraders to be successful.

“Strength is not in size. It is in heart and soul statements.

Strength is in communication,” he .said. “It could be three people. But if it is profound, like last year, two of the most heartfelt experiences I have had in the entirety of my life in the mas, is the one that started it all - From the Land of the Hummingbird and the one that took flight and landed, last year, the Dying Swan.” From the Land of the Hummingbird was Minshall’s breakout costume - one he created for his adopted sister, Sherry-Ann Guy Coelho, in Carnival 1974. It marked a signal moment in the iconic masman’s career.

Coelho also went on to become Queen of Carnival on a few occasions.

Minshall once said in an interview that the costume took “five weeks, 12 people, 104 feathers, each one made of 150 different pieces of fabric.” He said then, it was designed to allow the masquerader “total mobility and was an immediate sensation.” Minshall maintains similar reverence for his controversial 2016 costume The Dying Swan, Ras Nijinsky in Drag as Pavlova, which broke his ten-year hiatus from mas.

The costume had placed third in the King of Carnival competition but was heavily criticised as a “minimalistic design.” Minshall stands fearlessly by his portrayal.

On Wednesday, Minshall likened Spiritus Mundi to From the Land of the Hummingbird and The Dying Swan, largely because of their profoundness.

“From the Hummingbird to the Swan. Those two, when you are nervous about something, when you are scared. When you realise it will run against the grain of everything else that people are putting out there,” he said “When you realise that deep in your heart, that this is what the playing of the mas is about, in the same way, this little group of post-nuclear fancy sailors is quite apart from anything else is going to make a lot of old folk feel very good inside with a sort of satisfying sigh. Ah, yes, well at least I see that again before I dead, including me.” Minshall said the presentation was really about the era of the 1950s and had nothing to do with “mode or fashion and gowns and dresses.” “Whether it is imported with a few feathers added and then we put the label Trinidad on it. No, no, no, no, no.” Asked if the band signalled his official return to mas, Minshall said: “I have never left. I have, perhaps, not participated as much as I used to because I began to feel uncomfortable with a sense of unbelonging.” Minshall regarded the presentation as a breath of fresh air, given what he feels, has been passed for mas within the last two decades.

“Let me say that fashion, as currently happens, is not mas.

What people wore 100 years ago, though, could be brought back today in a spectacular historical pageant.

“But to mix up what people are wearing today with what people are supposed to wear on the street is really to get into rather sweet-smelling dirty water. That is my feeling.” Masqueraders are expected to gather at 2 pm tomorrow outside of the Police Mounted Branch on Long Circular Road, St James.

On Tuesday, the band will assemble from 8 am, outside of the Twin Towers, southern side of the Brian Lara Promenade, Port-of- Spain.