Shak Shaks Ring in a Tropical Wonderland

The Christmas season came and went in a festive blur.  Although the new soca releases for 2012 dominate the airwaves, the unique sounds of Christmas in Trinidad were everywhere for the past month in outdoor spaces, concert and church halls, and office Christmas parties.

One of my favorite recent traditions, the Lydian Singers Christmas concert, did not disappoint this year.  Their presentation, Christmas in the Cocoa, opened with Lydians streaming through the aisles of Queens Hall in their red robes accompanied by tassa drummers to take their place on a stage setting under the stars on a cocoa plantation.  This year was nostalgic because their director, local arts icon Pat Bishop, passed away a few months ago, but only after she had already put her stamp on this year’s show.

The first half included Christmas classics like “O Holy Night” and “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”  The second half opened with a lively parang band and a festive atmosphere as the choir swayed in flowing white outfits, reminiscent of Peter Minshall costumes.  Now, this is how you imagine paranderos who migrated from Venezuela to work on cocoa plantations must have celebrated Christmas.  The second half also featured the story of the Nativity through several carols by Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez.  The finale, an amazing rendition of “Hallellujah Chorus,” accompanied by both steel pan and tassa drums had the audience on its feet.  Talk about local interpretation in overdrive.

Amazingly, the Lydian concert was to be my only taste of live parang for the season.  I was so looking forward to singing along to traditional parang, even though I probably butcher the lyrics to classics like “sereno sereno.”  The paranderos in their  traditional costumes with their cuatros, shak shaks, toc-toc, box bass and other instruments perform everywhere throughout the season, but somehow none of my planned parang events worked out.  My office and french school Christmas parties both included parang bands, but I missed both.  And I didn’t make the trek up the steep hills to Paramin, an area known for parang that hosts a large outdoor concert each year.  I had to satisfy myself with parang on the radio.

Scrunter at Woodford Cafe

I did manage to take in some live soca parang, the wotless Trini child of parang made popular by calypsonians like Baron and Scrunter.  Unlike traditional parang’s tributes to the birth of Christ sung in  Spanish, soca parang mixes parang and soca, and its English lyrics’ most popular themes seem to be about food (“I want a piece of pork for my Christmas”, “I give him bread and ham, together with a pastel”) or women (“Anita”, “Gloria” and this year’s ever popular “I want a Spanish woman to marry me”).

Scrunter performed at the intimate Woodford cafe (along with Bunji Garlin; no, Bunji does not have a new parang out, he sang all of his soca hits).  The crowd did a latin two step while singing along to Scrunter’s large repetoire of parang hits, including Gloria, Homemade Wine, Leroy, De Parang Now Start and Eat Something Before You Go.  One very excited male patron even got on stage and sang all of the words to “That eh working here tonight,” pointing to audience members as he sang “that is your family,” the funny hook in which Scrunter’s uncle warns him against trying to talk to any women at the family gathering.  It was an entertaining evening, and partially satisfied my craving for parang.

As the sounds of the season fade, I hope you and your family had a joyful Christmas.

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