TOP 10
SINGLES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
TOP 10
ALBUMS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The Middle
Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey
Psycho
Post Malone Feat. Ty Dolla $ign
Nice For What
Drake
Never Be The Same
Camila Cabello
Delicate
Taylor Swift
No Tears Left To Cry
Ariana Grande
In My Blood
Shawn Mendes
Meant To Be
Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line
God’s Plan
Drake
Mine
Bazzi
EVERYTHING IS LOVE
The Carters
Nasir
Nas
Youngblood
5 Seconds Of Summer
Liberation
Christina Aguilera
Post Traumatic
Mike Shinoda
The Greatest Showman
Soundtrack
SQUARE UP (EP)
BLACKPINK
Redemption
Jay Rock
?
XXXTENTACION
KIDS SEE GHOSTS
KIDS SEE GHOSTS
Presented by
wireless
Finale Parang at Christmas
pan music, stilts, dancing, costumery,
Caribbean L 34 ife, Jan. 4–10, 2019
a live band, artists,
a mini exhibition, a fashion
show, awards and good food,”
Aimable told Caribbean Life
over the weekend.
He said artist and educator
Tanisha Burke served as mistress
of ceremonies.
With Mesha Steele, of Genna
Roots Band, opening the show,
Aimable said a Madam Loraine
carnival character and a traditional
carnival costume, with
feathers, produced by Tropicalfete
Mas, “came dancing on
stage during the band’s soca
set.”
“Tropicalfete is committed to
showcasing a different live band
at its annual event,” he said.
“Having a live band show is rare
today, but Tropicalfete’s committed
to giving bands a stage to
showcase their craft.”
Aimable said local artists Ziah
and Langi captivated the audience,
with Ziah honoring recently
prison-released, Jamaican reggae
star, Buju Banton, with a
stellar rendition.
Zeo Farrel played Beenthoven’s
“Ode to Joy” on violin; Tropicalfete
Voices, under Steele’s leadership,
performed Trinidadian
band Tes’ “Hello”, “with a touch
of Haitian” creole; and Tropicalfete’s
stilt dancing unit, under
the leadership of Caitlyn Pierre
and Roshamba Marcelle, performed
a “hip hop dance battle,
flowed by a Latin number and
a high energy soca set,” Aimable
said.
He also said Talia Fortune
“blew the audience away with
her vocals,” receiving a standing
ovation by rendering “Clay” by
Grace Vanderwaal.
Aimable said a major part of
Tropicalfete’s “Finale” was “having
the audience be part of the
show,” adding that “this year was
no expectation.”
am impressed with the dedication
and efforts you put into
your events,” said Arden Tannis,
COSAGO’s vice president.
Earlier, he left patrons aghast
by declaring, in the preface to
his remarks, that, “for years, I
hated nurses, and I ask for your
forgiveness.”
But, after explaining — while
holding aloft a large, unused
syringe that would be used to
inject Tetanus shots for bruises
he’d sustained as a kid in St.
Vincent and the Grenadines —
the audience seemed to sympathize
with him.
“I have no fear now,” assured
Tannis in trying to mollify
patrons. “My wife is a nurse.”
The event, which also served
as a fund-raiser and awards ceremony,
featured, among others,
musical selections by Vincentians
Abena Amory-Powell and
Oscar James; musical renditions
by Vincentian-American Gordon
Gatherer; steel pan presentation
by Vincentian Trevor Hepburn;
and dance by Grenadian Jadawna
Dufont, a member of the
Dance Theater of Harlem.
Hepburn — who started playing
pan at 8 years old and has
been playing for “50-something
years” — panned out “To God be
the Glory”, and “Green, Green
Grass of Home.”
Amory-Powell sang “Winter
Wonderland” and Etta James’s
“At last;” and Gatherer wrote and
sang “Moment to Moment” as “a
great Christmas gift to me,” and
Louis Armstrong’s “A Wonderful
World” to high acclaim.
James — who sings calypso,
soca, reggae and R&B, among
other genres of music —
brought the house down with
Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun
Go Down on Me” and his selfauthored
“Jah, Jah” and “Hurricane,”
a tribute to victims of the
2017 hurricanes that devastated
some Caribbean islands.
“It was a scintillating event,”
James, co-founder of the defunct
Vincentian band, Affetuousos,
in the 1970s, told Caribbean Life
afterwards. “Everybody was in
a convivial mode. The function
was well attended.”
With her mother Jackie
DuFont in the audience, Jadawna,
a member of Vanderveer
Park United Methodist Church
in Brooklyn, danced to The
Piano Guy’s “How Great Thou
Art.”
SVGNANY provided a
$1,500.00 scholarship to Vincentian
native Merlene Williams,
a licensed practical nurse
Abena Amory-Powell sings ‘At Last.’ Photo by Nelson A. King
(LPN), currently enrolled in the
Registered Nurse (RN) program
at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College.
She plans to graduate this
summer.
“It’s one of best career choices
I’ve ever made,” said Williams
after receiving the check
from RN Judith Lewis, a Vincentian
born nursing instructor
at Medgar Evers College. “I’m
honored for the award and ready
to give back.”
Crichton-Bailey said some
of the proceeds for this year’s
scholarship were donated by
a founding member and past
president, RN Clari Gilbert, who
has retired and currently resides
in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Crichton-Bailey said that
proceeds from the event are also
used to assist in providing medical
supplies and equipment to
the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital
in the Vincentian capital,
Kingstown, and district clinics
in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Continued from Page 33
Tropicalfete Stiting Unit stiltwalkers
display their skills on
stage. Tropicalfete
Continued from Page 33
Christmas, NPR said parang
can be heard “just about everywhere”
in Trinidad and
Tobago.
It said while most of the
songs are about the birth of
Christ, not everyone understands
the lyrics.
NPR said parang was
brought to Trinidad and Tobago
by migrant farm workers
from nearby Venezuela.
“The songs are sung in
Spanish, even though the
mother tongue on the island
is English,” it said, adding
that some parang groups, like
Los Alumnos de San Juan,
“pantomime to help audiences
grasp the Spanish lyrics to
songs.”
“Parang music is our
way at Christmastime to tell
the story but in a different
language and in a different
musical style,” Alicia Jaggasar,
leader of Los Alumnos
de San Juan and head of the
National Parang Association,
told NPR.
“So, you wouldn’t hear it
as the normal ‘Hark the herald
angels sing, glory to the
newborn king,’” she added.
“You will hear: ‘Cantando gloria,
gloria, gloria en el cielo.
En un establo nació el Dios
verdadero,’ which translates
to ‘Singing glory, glory, glory
in heaven. The true God was
born in a stable.’”
Jaggasar said her group was
booked until Christmas Eve.
On that night, NPR said
parang bands go house-tohouse
until the wee hours “in
an exuberant form of Christmas
caroling.”
But they must adhere to
some elaborate musical etiquette
to gain entry, NPR
warned.
“You have to do a
‘serenado’(serenade) from
outside,” Jaggasar said. “And,
in that song, you have to actually
say who you are, and what
you’ve come to do.
“And it’s only when the
host hears who you are, then
the door is open,” she added.
“They don’t just open it just
like that.”
But, once inside, the party
revs up, NPR said.
Continued from Page 33
WONDERLAND