Lessons from the mas

The band then numbered around 275 youngsters which included sponsored sections from The St Mary’s Children’s Home.

So very emotional about this unplanned retirement was Gabriel, that it took nearly six months for her to sit for this interview.

She admits: “Giving up was hard but couldn’t be helped.

Speaking about it was also traumatic.” The often asked question has been why did Gabriel retire? After all, the 2017 presentation was already designed and production had started. “I was feeling unwell after a bout of Zika which affected my knees coming to the end of 2016, and walking was very difficult,” says the tireless producer of children’s mas.

From 2005 to 2009 she was on the board of the National Carnival Bands Association, and for the past two years has been a member of the Junior Committee of the National Carnival Commission (NCC), and also president of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival Bands’ Association.

However, fate intervened and this very placid woman was invited by the Ministry of Culture to be a mentor in its fifth annual three-month Mentoring By The Masters programme on the topic of children’s mas.

“This was heaven-sent,” says Gabriel. Twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5pm – 7.30pm, this very successful mas producer who has won Band of the Year about 17 times, conducts a programme for 15 students at the St James Youth Facility. She tutors on everything that is needed to become a successful bandleader.

One or two of her students already have bands and others are schoolteachers wanting to improve the schools’ programmes.

A pensive Gabriel spoke of some of the pluses the band added to her life. “One of the great things are the people I have met over the years with this band. I might have never met them otherwise and have become very close to a great deal of these people and will remain close to them whether I have another band or not. They have become like family. I have also had to learn to deal with all different personalities walking up your steps, to manage the staff of about ten in the camp and a large network outside of the camp.

“Some other life lessons the band has taught me are organisation skills, which could be one of the best lessons, because you have to produce 12 sections and individuals in a specified period of time, and juggle this with family life which consists of a husband, three children and ten grandchildren (ages 22 to ten). In the early years the band was produced from my home, until my adult children started to court and when the time came for engagements I had to clean up the mas camp so decided sometime in 1994 I was going to give up.” That would have been Gabriel’s first attempt to retire but she explained: “A good friend Pascal Ramkissoon of the Minshall camp found the present location at 26 O’Connor Street in Woodbrook and together with my husband, Norman, of nearly 50 years, they rented it and handed me the key because they both didn’t want to see me give up what they knew I loved so much.

“I didn’t give up willingly this time, it’s just that my knees wouldn’t carry me where I wanted to go. My mind never gave it up because I love it so much.

It was never about fame for me, Rosalind Gabriel, I was doing it for love of the country. Also trying in some small way to keep that title we owned as The Greatest Show on Earth, in the days of the icons, and have tried to keep that costuming trend in my Carnival productions. It was never about business, it was just a passion for junior Carnival, best described as “Like a fire burning in my chest really.” Who knows what the future will bring as the mas camp remains in tact at this moment, nothing has been dismantled or gotten rid of.

“In the beginning every time I went I cried, but it’s a little better now....

While ill this year, I still produced a school band for Tobago as had been done for the two years prior to that and plan to do it again in 2018,” says this very humble woman who is insistent that “there is no way I can claim all the praise which is lavished on me. No one person can produce this band – there are all the artisans, decorators, dressmakers, designers, every single person who helps.

“Then there are people who work in the camp and would cut out hundreds of decorations over and over that adorn the costumes because we try to make as much as we can so instead of going to buy an appliqué, we cut out to keep the craft in Carnival. Everybody who pitches in deserves the praise that is associated with the success of the band over the years.

Another important lesson I learned was never to burn my bridges.

Sometimes you are dissatisfied with what is produced by a supplier, I would pay for the work and remain friends with the people I have worked with for 40 years. So that there is no enemy that I have in Carnival.” Gabriel freely and willingly gives advice and encouragement to younger bandleaders because she says: “Carnival does not belong to any one person and all of us involved love its culture and creativity so we have to invest in it for the good of the country. We have to be the caretakers who will keep the original costuming in Carnival so as to maintain what the icons like George Bailey, Edmund Hart, Peter Minshall and Wayne Berkley created, thereby ensuring that the tradition and spectacle are carried on into the future.” Some years ago, Gabriel added an adult band in an effort to create a family atmosphere by parents and children enjoying quality time together, but rules were introduced which didn’t allow this to materialise.

This pioneering woman took children’s and adult bands up the islands as far as Miami Carnival. “We would box and ship costumes, some requested a theme others would send what they were looking for and we would produce.

This extra work was in an effort to keep the mas camp afloat outside of our Carnival, as I really couldn’t add a rental charge to the children’s costumes, this also gave my staff work throughout the year.” On the subject of beads, bikinis and feathers, with a great deal of objectivity, she says: “I do appreciate that Carnival has evolved into something rather than portrayal mas as we knew it in the early days, but we must still see a need to keep the traditional intermingled with today’s mas for those who want that kind of portrayal.

This is so necessary because if you look in all the stands there are no spectators. Why? People don’t want to come out to see naked bodies all day long. I truly hope for a day in the near future when there will be a mixture of original and modern designs to bring balance back into the two days of Carnival.”