Muhammad Abu Bakr Speaks on Mas'

Children Carnival

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The support is not there

Staff Article
Interview Recorded: April 24, 2005
Posted: April 30, 2005

I want to do some renovations and set up here so that I could do contracts from away for everybody. I want to do everything right here. I would hire people to go away because I might not be able to go personally. But more than building the band, I want to build a cultural base where everybody could come and get Mas'. There are a lot of people outside there waiting for me to do work for them. I like the best and anything I touch must win, that is me. I like if I am doing something, it must win. It must be satisfying. When I did The Spotlight and ran second to Minshall when he played Red, it was nice. With 'Hit Meh With D Music', I ran second to Barbarossa and it was good. They are the bands that are considered as the big boys. I have records with those things. This is what I look forward too. I like to win. I had a program that I was trying to build with Delina Griffith, she does choreography. Right now she is in Tortola. We were trying to get people to form a little group to teach people how to dance Mas' and different things like that. It's things like this I want to do. You can go to the schools and teach the children to dance the Sailor band. I hate to see the children going down the road and wining. I do not like Carnival Saturday anymore. When you see big people watching these little children and the mothers have their children playing in the most ridiculous things. I do not like that. I do not like to see the children in naked costumes.

To me the children Carnival better than the adults' Carnival right now. You get more culture and costume in it. Some do not want their children to look like them. The nine and ten year olds looking like them. I cannot deal with some of them. I am working on my plan and putting things into place for Barbados and while we are doing that, we want to get down to Sanchez and them in St. Croix. Right now I am seeing about something for Hawks International in New York. I have some good contacts. In the last ten years Carnival has grown all over the world. That is why a Mas' man must not suffer. Imagine India has Mas', and that was recorded last year. Then people from Africa came here this year to see the Mas' and they want people to do Mas' for them. But who are they going to send? This is where the Carnival body is important. I always visualize the band leaders should be leaving to go abroad like how the cricket team does it. When I go out there I do not represent me, I represent Trinidad and Tobago. Even when we used to go college, we used to wear a little blazer. Why when we are leaving to go abroad we cannot have a little blazer with Trinidad and Tobago on it, you are going to represent your country. I like to see these things; you are leaving as a team to go out there. People must recognize that you are going out there to do something for the country.

The support is not there, that is why you should have a Carnival body. It is only a set of talk inside of there. We have a committee and we do not meet. Twice a year is not good. I personally find the bandleaders should be meeting monthly to discuss what is going on and what we could do. You might be doing Mas' and you might have a son doing Mas' and he might be an aspiring wire bender. But how will anybody know that. The only way you will know is if we meet regularly. From there we could even get the youths involved. If we have to go somewhere the band members and the people in the culture need to be meeting more regularly. Just now we wouldn't be going anywhere, we would just be individuals running and who ever the survivors are will survive. The love in it is not the money, although we need the finance to do it, but the love that exists in it is important. There is nothing like that love you experience. If paradise is like that I want to go, where else would you get that? You should really get into a Mas' camp and see how it functions. Just to experience it, you could start by cutting a little headpiece, just do something and see that love.

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View Muhammad Abu Bakr photos at:
www.trinisoca.com/gallery/MABakr

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