‘Calabash’ on TV

A repeat will also be aired on Christmas Day from 9.30 pm.to 11.30 pm.

This year’s Lydians Christmas concert featured selections celebrating love, family and community, centred on the theme of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ. The calabash was a symbol running throughout the production – representing love at Christmas time.

As the story unfolds, viewers are invited to gather together in music as The Lydians sing joyfully of the birth of the Christ child.

The concert will follow a creolised re-imagining of the journey of The Virgin Mary from the holy cradle to the river side, where a community will gather together in celebration to laugh, sing and have a ball in celebration of the saviour’s arrival.

In the first half of the concert, Mary is portrayed as the Holy Queen, Ave Maria, bearer of the “golden calabash” – that eagerly awaited pretty, little baby in a manger who will be rocked tenderly on that holy night In the Caribbean, we celebrate in our traditional ways. “With we calabash” we gather at the river as a community, wading in that life-giving water, dancing, laughing, singing calypsos and parang and rejoicing at His birth.

But who is this Midnight Robber, this cold, frosty mocking pretender? This King Herod/ Scrooge type figure would like to steal our joy. But he too drinks from the golden calabash. His heart is thawed. He is transformed and he becomes a symbol of love, happy and filled with the joy of the season because the golden calabash contains the spirit of Christmas. Mankind is now warm, generous and loving as we affirm that a red and green Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year because love came down to earth to save mankind.

In the second half, The Lydians ring the bells and shout Hallelujah! – steel, tassa, African drums, percussion, musicians and voices raised; all with a riot of colour and movement as banners and standards wave about; the largest one of all flown in above the choir; text proclaiming one word – “Hallelujah”.

Lydians expressed thanks to Wendell Constantine of CNMG/ CTV for his support and partnership with the group and the musical arts of TT.

For more info: email thelydiansingers@ yahoo.com or visit www.TheLydiansTT.com.