It’s a rainy afternoon when I arrive at Blues Carnival Fusion’s studio in Scarborough, but inside it’s a different scene entirely. In the front room mannequins wear concoctions of feathers, sequins, and bikinis. Their colourful exuberance and otherworldliness made Scarborough seems very far away. Some of the mannequins have signs that read, “Sold out”. Purchasing a costume is your ticket to performing with the Mas band on carnival day. The simplest ones start at $175.
You know you’re entering an unfamiliar world when you have to learn a new parlance just to talk about it. The outfits worn by Caribana revelers are not costumes, but ‘Mas,’ shortened from ‘masquerade.’ The teams that perform together, competing with other groups to see who has the largest, most outlandish Mas, are called Mas bands. And the studio where wheeled platforms, aluminum rods, and miles of wire transform into 40-foot long moving sculptures of sparkly insects, flowers, and monsters is called the Mas camp. (In addition, Caribana is no longer Caribana but the ‘Scotia Bank Toronto Caribbean Carnival,’ but that’s a whole other story.)
Narissa Ali, the head of Blues Carnival Fusion, greets me. The diminutive Trinidadian-Canadian wears a white jacket and jewelry, but her constant accessory is the BlackBerry that never leaves her hand. She grew up within the Caribana tradition and can’t remember a time it wasn’t part of her life. She founded the Mas band in 2011 and now takes a break from her job as a digital marketer to work on Caribana full time.
In the main studio her team build the gigantic Mas that are basically one-person parade floats. With contraptions at different stages of completion you can see how the simple metal frames are gradually built up with fiberglass and wire into the creations you see at the parade. After the team builds them and gives them a test run, they have to be disassembled and transported down to the Lakeshore.
“We usually rent a 52-foot trailer,” Ali says.
Mark, one of her chief “wire benders,” recently joined the group.
“I’m new to the band,” he says. “I designed years back at home, which is Guyana. I designed for a couple years in our type Caribana which is called Mashramani. I would say that I am in my baby stage in the Canadian Caribana culture. In every country they call it differently. In Canada, we call it Caribana. In the end it’s the same festival…”
“Designing here is more fun because you have more materials to work with. It’s more sophisticated. Back home it’s challenging because you have to use whatever materials you have. Now you come here, and there’s nothing you want you can’t get. If you get an idea, you can find the materials to support your idea. Back home, I can remember designing with newspaper as my body because you can’t afford to use all the nice glittery stuff. So you design with newspaper and then you put your glittery stuff on top of newspaper. And then you bring it to life. Of course it looks good, but here, whatever your thoughts are, you can put them in place.”
The sky’s the limit when it comes to shapes and designs, but the challenge is keeping them light. Mark explains it all comes down to the casters. “Once you have really good casters, anything becomes like a car. The wheels are important.”
Every year Blues Carnival Fusion has a theme. Last year’s was Apocalypse, because it was 2012. (Ali told me that the team initially thought she was crazy for the suggestion.) This year is dedicated to Lost Civilizations. The Mas are divided into different historical groups–the Mayans, the Phoenicians, Atlantis (the submerged city that may or may not have existed), and the Clovis Indians, one of the very earliest North American peoples archeologists know anything about. While there’s many questions still unanswered about the Clovis (were they responsible for the extinction of the elephant-sized mammals that once roamed this continent?) I highly doubt they wore anything like the long feathered headdresses of Plains Indians from several millennia later.
Generally, Ali gets an inspiration, draws the sketches, and asks her band to figure out how to build it, not unlike a couturier’s relationship to his ateliers. Sometimes her ideas come too far from left field (this year she initially wanted the theme to be Jurassic Park), but her guys usually back her up.
“You’ve worn the Mas too, right?” I ask.
Mark laughs bashfully. “Me? The costumes? Oh no. I know what it feels like because I put it on in here. At the end of designing you’re too tired. We’re all there in support. And if anything happened to them on the way you’re there to fix it. Some of the guys do, but I’m not the upfront guy.”
Unlike Mark, Ali used to perform in carnival, both in Toronto and Trinidad. “I used to wear costumes here, but since I’m now the band leader, wearing a costume is not very practical. But I want to try it this year!”
“How are the festivities in Trinidad?”
“It’s a whole different ballgame. It’s two days of partying, basically.”
Ali is the only female leader of the major Mas bands, which has its pluses and minuses.
“I think it gives me a slight advantage in the sense that when girls come in to purchase costumes [they] feel more comfortable speaking to females. It is tough being a woman in this business. It’s very demanding. As you can see, I’m two feet tall. I’m not the strongest person in the whole world. I would say the toughest part is the actual physical labour. But the guys are actually able to do it. I’m like, That’s not working for me. I’m not lifting that!”
“There have been female band leaders in the past, but generally it’s an old school boy’s club. It’s a fraternity. But I get along with people, and I’ve been kind of accepted into the fraternity.”
Ali sees the festival diversifying and she hopes it will continue to become mainstream.
“In this band, we have people from all different walks of life. I have a girl who comes from Australia every year and buys a costume. I have a couple girls from England who come just to do this. I think it’s becoming more than being just a Caribbean thing. It’d be nice if it became more multicultural. I think everyone has some sort of carnival, in one form or another.”
Caribana isn’t cheap. The cost of the costumes can run up to thousands of dollars. “That’s just the materials,” Ali says. “Not even the labour.” A trademark dispute in 2011 led to the abandonment of the name ‘Caribana’, although everyone uses that term unofficially. Corporate sponsorships are needed to keep it going so it doesn’t end up extinct like one of Ali’s lost civilizations.
Ali appears content with her role as the mother hen of the Mas band. “I know more about everyone’s lives than I ever wanted,” she confesses. After months of preparation and practically living at the Mas camp, the group feels like a family. It’s a collaborative effort, but even a visitor can see how much rests on Ali’s shoulders. Our interview is interrupted by a young man in a tank top–“What do I do next?”
He’s working on a giant Mas inspired by a lotus flower.
“Oh, you just attach the leaves like this,” Ali says. Demonstrating how the fabric slips on, she gets down on her hands and knees to do it herself.
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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_.
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