We Start The Cheer From Here!

By Kerwin De Matas

We are coming to the part of the year that is for me, apart from telethon, funtastic!! Jingle bells, jingle bells folks, we are coming to Christmas!! I just love this time of year... It just brings to mind, Santa Claus, with Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, only thing is, I don't think that dude would've been to the caribbean with that get up of his in our climate. But the kids love the idea anyway. I remember in Trinidad, when I was a kid ( many years ago! ), we did house to house parang. It's the same like in the U.S. of A, with their house to house caroling, but our style is very caribbean. What is parang? Here's an explaination of this art form described very well by Wikipedia,

Parranderos In Action

" Parang is derived from the Spanish word parranda which means "the action of merry making, group of serenaders." Parang is usually associated with Christmas festivities. Traditionally the parrandero, which refers to the singers and the instrumentalists, travelled from house-to-house in the community and was often joined by friends and neighbors using whatever instruments at hand (usually string instruments), including violin, guitar, claves (locally known as toc-toc), box bass (an indigenous instrument), flute, mandolin, bandolin, caja (a percussive box instrument), and marimbola (an Afro-Venezuelan influence). In exchange for the entertainment, traditional parranderos would be given food and drink rum or ponche de creme (an alcoholic eggnog). It is typically played with cuatro (a four-string small guitar), maracas (locally known as shak-shaks), and is often sung in Spanish ".

Master Of The Box Base

First of all, in Trinidad, our national language is english, but because of the diversity on our island, we have people that speak; Hindi, Arabic, Spanish etc. Now in my family, as with most other families on the island, our decendants migrated from Venuezuela to Trinidad in the 1800's. So with the coming of the Venuezuelan immigrants, the island was introduced to their music, dances, food etc. So parang was/is in my opinion, the best thing that they could have brought with them, because I just love it. Okay, so my father taught me a little on how to play the cuatro, but the rest I learned from school. For me, it was always my dream to strum that cuatro like a real parrandero, and to share this music house to house. With house to house parang meant that, an invitation would be made to the parranderos to enter the house and to partake a little with the goodies. Goodies would be ponche de creme ( like American eggnog, but with rum, yum, yum! ), black fruit cake, pastels, I mean just talking about it makes me hungry, home sweet home... Then apart from that, would be the parang soca blasting from speakers from house parties that might be taking place at the same moment, the air was just festive brother, festive. On Christmas night, it's really nice to see all the kids with their new toys or clothes, running up and down the street dancing and singing to what ever might be playing at the moment, live parang or soca parang from the sterios.

Performing Live!

Even when one has finally gone to bed after calling it a night, the adrenaline would still run like crazy just thinking about the festivities that happened before and after Christmas night. Yes we are in the Caribbean, where the climate during Christmas is hot, we don't have snow and all the American traditions that go with this holiday, but we really have a good time, and wouldn't prefer it any other way...So let's get the preparations going Trinidad, to bring to our island yet another funtastic Navidad, parang, parang!!