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Jason Griffith: Voyage of the Sailor Mas'
King Sailor in Mr. Griffith's headpiece
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How the King Sailor mas came into being
Staff Article
Interview Recorded: April 10, 2005
Posted: April 15, 2005
Fortunately for me, things that I never thought that I would achieve in carnival, I achieved it. The highest award ever, was the National Award in 1990 after the coup, and strange enough, I was in New York buying material. We had four sections that came from New York and I would carry their pictures every year. They called me from the President House to tell me about that National Award and I came back in time to receive it, before my time was up.
I got awards already before, from N.C.C., Down Town Carnival Committee and others, but this was something special to me. Although, I had a strange feeling... but not a National Award, because they keep calling me here before the Coup and asking me about how long I was involved in carnival, and I told them, "you have my records since in 1969." They called me the following day, and said they don't want that piece of information but wanted to know when I started. Well I started in 1946 and I wasn't thinking about receiving a National Award. So sometimes you don't really set out to do things and things happen that you didn't expect at all, and this is one thing I could say I never really expected. I have a cabinet there with all types of awards; awards sometimes that I forget. So this was my contribution really for carnival, and still I am still contributing.
In my time, the amount of people who came from the universities and all the schools for interviews just like you all came here, I say if I was writing down these things they might fill a book. You see, the sailor mas' was a thing that was invented by a particular person and the height that it reached, the people stated that they wanted to know all about old time carnival and if they want to know about the sailor mas' they would always call my name. I enjoyed it for the time I did it, I have no regrets.
The King Sailor mas' came into being, via Jim Harding. When King George V died, that was somewhere around 1935-6, he played a black and white mas' in those colonial days. He also played a black and white mas' and the following year for the coronation. Then he played a red, white and blue mas' and he made a crown, and there the King Sailor was born, because there was a crown on the mas'. Some years ago either the N.C.B.A. or the N.C.C., or whoever was in charge of Carnival at the time, changed the name to Fancy Sailor. It was really fancy. It went from the white suits, then we had coloured suits; we had all kinds of decorations; so it really changed the aspect of the whole thing. So fancy sailor wasn't a bad name really, but I knew it as the 'King Sailor Mas'. Anything that we used on the top of the mas', that was like the crown. We always try to use something on the top of the mas'. All those bands in Port of Spain and St. James, they had different headpieces. Like Fascinators and Desperadoes, they made different things to get something to look like the clock; Syncopaters did the cash register a year.
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