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Jason Griffith: Voyage of the Sailor Mas'
Jason Griffith
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Old Fashioned Sailors presents...
Staff Article
Interview Recorded: April 10, 2005
Posted: April 15, 2005
With the competitions, you had your own category. Our category was Fancy Sailor, so I started in old time carnival. I still have a prize that I got in 1969 in old time carnival and that I got because of one of my friends. My intention wasn't to go into competition, I only wanted to amuse myself, and he was saying 'if you register the right way you could get a prize'. I was not concentrating on the competition. Eventually, he and another friend of mine went down to the C.D.C. office; at the time that was on Queen Street. They met a friend there that had grown up here with us. She told them, "well look here nah man, the registration close, but ah going to try and help you out." "Well this band is what", they asked and nobody could call a name because they did not go to register the band. They only went to get some information. So between the three of them, they came up with Old Fashioned Sailors. So it was always "Old Fashioned Sailors presents...", but they really 'christened' the band and called it Old Fashioned Sailors, and to my surprise, I got a prize that year. All the bands were registered after that. In 1982 we played Old Fashioned Sailors "Gone Fancy", and then we started to decorate now.
For carnival competitions, we missed winning band of the year in the savannah twice, and on both occasions a lot of people thought we should have won. We missed it when we played the Japanese mas', and Mystical and Legendary Voyages. We ran third both years and one band of the year down town. We won band of the year in the other small competition but not in the savannah. The reason for that was we were told the band was too small; it was a large band, but still too small. We might have a little over a thousand or maybe nine hundred or something and these people like Edmond Hart and Peter Minshall, had three and four thousand in those days.
The year Minshall played 'Carnival is Mas' and they made their band in two or three weeks. That is a year that we felt we could have won band of the year with Mystical and Legendary Voyages. Now, in the large band category, you could have fifteen, twenty bands in large band category but it only had ten prizes. We placed fourth with that band. That was a little warning of things to come and nobody did not take us on. We went in the 'Savannah' very late because we ran second down town. I remember this clearly, Raoul Garib won that year, both places with 'Market Place' and he and all had a scare, because when we met them in the road and they saw so many people, they wanted to know how these people reached there. I never thought that the band would have reached so far. I really have to thank the people who were involved.
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