Rising Star

Voces De Promesa tied with Chaguanas-based band La Familia de Carmona y Amigos for second place in the competition which was held at the Arima Velodrome on December 10.

Cassell George, manager and musical director of the band, and Rayan Kissoon, one of the lead singers, told Sunday Newsday that at eight years old, the band itself was the youngest to enter the competition and that all of its members were under age 30.

They also explained that although they had entered NPATT’s last senior competition in 2010, the band entered this year without a full understanding of writing within the Aguinaldo structure, which is a key component of the competition.

The songs with which they entered, “La Epifan?a” by a first-time songwriter Sach? Alexander, and “Noticias del Ni?o” by the band’s former manager Danielle Charles, earned the band fifth place in the semi-final round. They said when the band received the judges’ comments approximately two weeks before the finals, they realised they had to make major adjustments to their songs as they had received high marks in the music and presentation categories, but very low for lyrics.

“It was coming out of the semi-finals that we realised we had several issues with the lyrics and the song structure. At that point we were going on information we had been using since junior parang and we weren’t properly informed about the correct structure,” Kissoon explained.

“It’s not like you can go and Google, ‘How to write a parang song?’ The information is not there and it’s not known to persons who have not been in the industry for a while,” she said.

The band members realised they needed assistance so they enlisted the help of parang queen Alicia Jaggasar. She gave the band the information they needed in terms of writing a parang song, what keys the songs should be in, rhyming scheme, lyrics, advice for the competition, as well as guided them throughout the writing process.

With this new knowledge, “Noticias del Ni?o” was axed and Kissoon had to write a new song, her first, called “La Verdad y Nadamas”, while “La Epifan?a” had to be revised. Both songs were completed in the week of the finals. In fact, “La Epifan?a” was completed just two days before.

George explained just how difficult and stressful it was to learn new lyrics, new music, new choreography, rehearsing late into the night, and even a few hours before the competition, and that was in addition to other scheduled performances.

Despite the challenges, the band prevailed, tying for second place, for which they were ecstatic.

“This was a huge accomplishment for us in the midst of adversity. Knowing where we came from in the last two weeks, finishing a song two days before the actual competition, the general mood in the band is that we placed first nonetheless,” said George. George claims that Voces De Promesa is the first band spawned from NPATT’s National Junior Parang Competition to migrate to the senior level. And, unlike many bands, because they came out of the junior parang system, its members do not originate from one area but from all over the island including Sangre Grande, Carenage, Cunupia, and Barataria.

It began with George who used to play parang with his family in Cunupia.

They would also travel to other parts of the country to listen to the sweet sounds of parang. “I fell in love with parang from a young age. When I was around 11-years-old my mom bought me a cuatro. I took a pigtail bucket, attached a string with a broomstick and gave that to my brother and told him it was his box bass,” he said.

After that, his passion for the artform grew each year until he eventually he wanted more. By that time he was attending Fatima College and so he shared his love of parang with his schoolmates.

He brought his cuatro to school and another classmate knew how to play the marac, and so they played for the boys.

And so George formed the band, Five Strings, with his brother Cory George on the box bass, Nkosi Myers on the marac, Andrew Poon King on the guitar, Gregory Joseph on the mandolin, and, of course, George on the cuatro.

The band accompanied parang choirs from girls secondary schools in numerous competitions and in 2005, Five Strings, representing Fatima, collaborated with the St Augustine Girl’s High School (SAGHS) in the National Parang Association’s Junior Parang Competition in 2005 until they won in 2008.

After winning the competition, some of the girls from SAGHS and some of the boys from Five Strings decided to form Voces De Promesa.