It was Machel Montano against himself yesterday at the Queen's Park Savannah, Downtown Port of Spain, Adam Smith Square and Victoria Square as his Road March contender, the melodious "Band of the Year" featuring Patrice Roberts, edged ahead of his dizzying "Scandalous".
By Roxanne StapletonShurwayne Winchester's "Ah Cyar Wait" was a distant third.
At the Savannah, revellers jumped, pranced and shook their waistlines as they proclaimed after the song's composer Kernell Roberts that their respective band was going to take the coveted "Band of the Year" title.
And in sharp contrast to years gone by, there was a steady and swift flow of bands across the Savannah stage as leaders took seriously the new regulation that they would have points deducted from their overall total if they dawdled on stage and, generally, seemed to collaborate with the National Carnival Commission's new rules which, indeed, they had a hand in making.
First to cross the Savannah at 8:05 a.m. was Trini Revellers' Rome the Empire, a splendidly colourful carnivalesque depiction of a Rome that never really was. Nevertheless, it is one of the front-runners in the Band of the Year competition.
By 9:30 a.m. the third band, Legacy and its presentation Kingdom graced the stage, keeping its tradition of opening choreography alive. This was followed by a burst of masqueraders in gay abandon as they played their mas for the last time across the Savannah's stage.
With the tail end of Kingdom on stage at 10:20 a.m., the rains came for all of five minutes, but did not dampen the spirits of those on parade. If anything, it only spurred them to jump more.
The day's first resounding applause came at the end of Mac Farlane's stand-out presentation,Threads of Joy.
Reminiscent of the intricately ornate mas of yesteryear, Mac Farlane simply outdid himself as each section of his band garnered both crowd appeal and approval.
Threads of Joy opened with a theatrical display which had actors dressed in white rolling onstage a globe and carrying large white circles.
The circles were dyed in the hues of the various sections, as the actors took turns bathing each other, sharing their various colours, symbolic of the global mix-those threads of joy.
Mac Farlane entered with splendid earthy tones, plunging into mild pastels and then delving into rich flashes of colour, capturing the imagination of all present with his varied forms and shapes.
Tribe summoned all that lay beneath to rise to the surface, as its revellers took to the stage and Island People's The Enchanted Forest, Skandal Us' Havana, Harts' Voyage BC, Two Peas and D Pod's Colourseum, Rampage's The King and I and Stampede's Wings of Spring delivered the ever popular "bikini and beads" mas on what was to be the last romp across this particular Savannah stage.
As our press-time deadline approached both Minshall's Sacred Heart and Poison's Dreams: Beyond Your Wildest were yet to cross the stage but both inside and outside the Savannah Trinbagonians were letting go in the las' lap for the Savannah.
