Dark clouds looming overhead failed to dampen the mood of thousands of charged-up Kadooment revellers gyrating and Jonesing behind music trucks, as they awaited their turn to hit the road in yesterday’s Grand Kadooment.
Twenty-three costumed bands assembled at Warrens, St Michael, to begin the scheduled 8 a.m. trek to the National Stadium amidst a heavy presence of security forces and emergency personnel. In keeping with tradition,?the religious band Walk Holy was first on the road, their music truck striking up with an uptempo gospel number and 20 conservatively dressed band members jigging down to the National Stadium.
Close to 850 members of the Blue Box Cart band were raring to go next, and Sheena Gill said it was the largest group playing mas in that band to date, under the banner Blue Rocks, with colourful costumes in the first line section designed by Naomi Springer.
It rained heavily on the revellers’ parade, a cooling feature welcomed by revellers, who upped the tempo while the hundreds of onlookers in the area stood their ground, taking shelter under the sea of umbrellas that suddenly appeared.
Many visitors from different parts of the world were at Warrens, evidence of the growing international appeal of the Barbadian festival.
One exuberant group of 60 from Wales followed the bands all the way from Warrens, while a French couple looking on said they had come to Barbados from Martinique after learning about Crop Over while on holiday there. The two said they had witnessed the Martinique equivalent of Kadooment but had never seen such a spectacle as yesterday morning.
There was a noticeable presence of Trinidadians playing mas in the big bands. One of them, Vernon Mohammed, playing mas in a section of Roseanne Lewis’ Bush Hall Masqueraders told the DAILY NATION: “This Barbados mas is making a great improvement. The designers are doing a fantastic job. The Trinis have to watch themselves.”
Chetwyn Stewart, bandleader of Power by Four, the largest band on the road, said while the response did not generally indicate a negative impact from the current recession, it “took a longer time to sell costumes”. However, he said he had managed to maintain his numbers at 1500-strong. There was also a small T-shirt section in this band.
Minister of Health Donville Inniss, a member of the Ministry of Health and the National HIV/AIDS?Commission Band, believed their participation in the parade was “very important” and added they were leading by example, while Chief Medical Officer Dr Joy St John, in costume and clearly having a whale of a time in the same band, said it was great to be there considering it was the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Winston Scott Polyclinic, a pioneer HIV/AIDS treatment centre.
