Twenty minutes past the scheduled 8 a.m. start, DJ Pedro D hit the controls on his music truck igniting the air with the first stanzas of an uptempo version of Sister Marshall’s popular song Walk Holy to signal the beginning of the 2010 Grand Kadooment parade from Warrens.Traditionally the first band to hit the road, the Walk Holy band, numbering just about 25 at the start and led by Kathy Weekes, began the trek to Spring Garden with the theme God’s Creation – The Adam And Eve Design.“We have our purpose in mind to deliver the message that God created the family . . . two men cannot increase and multiply; neither can two women,” Weekes remarked as gospel calypsonian Apache launched into a rapping session on the same theme.Coming next, in stark contrast, the fired-up 800-strong Blue Box Cart band, led by Raymond Hill, took to the streets with Showtime. With drinks flowing and pulsating rhythms from DJs Willow, Chilly and Ises, these revellers who have never missed a Kadooment parade, in swelling numbers this year were set to “party hardy” as Brian Gill put it. This band does not compete, but enters for the partying and fun on the road.
Pan ’pon the road
The busy St Lawrence Gap entertainment strip was represented in Spirit Of The Gap, the Jump Promotions band designed by Renee Ratcliffe. Third on the road, this was the only band to be accompanied by a steelband, the 40-member Mosaic Steel Orchestra which brought up the rear, complementing the other large music truck leading the band.A lull in the parade after the fourth band Revurtz had made its way halfway down Spooners Hill was broken with the sounds from the Lime Contact band, followed by Anthony Layne’s 750-strong Firestones band.Doug Hoyte put out a small Renegades band for Almond Resorts under the banner Tings Brown, while a disorganised Baje International went down the road under light drizzles from heavily overcast skies.Immediately behind them, spectators saw the kind of ordered parading which they expect, in bandleader/designer Trevor Chase’s 275-member Ooutrage band, portraying the Landship this year.Pausing briefly to speak to the DAILY NATION, Chase simply dismissed the new route as “foolishness”. “I was opposed to it in the first place,” he remarked.Similar sentiments were expressed by Mackie Holder, a bandleader of Wednesday 2000 which featured 400 revellers. But Power X Four’s leader Chetwyn Stewart welcomed the changes. Leading 1 600 revellers in Bajan Reef Part One, a hoarse Stewart told the DAILY NATION: “Our revellers want a lot more time on the road. . . . obviously we also prefer going through the Stadium but we will wait and see how that turns out.”Veteran bandleader Gwyneth Squires also liked the new route.The skies opened up as the Radikal band started down Spooners Hill, but the passing sharp shower failed to dampen the spirits of revellers and the enthusiasm of the hundreds of spectators.By noon Madda Than Dat, a small T-shirt community band from St George was the last of 22 bands beginning the long trek from Warrens to Spring Garden, as the sound system from the Revellers truck that accompanies the band each year began to strike up in the distance. (GC)
