Art visual np2

Cobo Town on Carnival Tuesday around the Savannah. Photos courtesy Georgia Popplewell. In between the bikini and beads of this week's Carnival, a band of cobos slinked, darkly. On Carnival Monday, band members held standards bearing individual slogans which band members had painted themselves in red paint. On Tuesday, standards were ditched, with band-members wearing beaked headpieces and large flowing capes, all black.  There was no music truck, only a small music cart. The designs were straightforward and efficient. But in the sea of everything else that passed for mas this Carnival, they stood out. Curious onlookers were struck by what they called "real mas".  The artist Ashraph's band 'Cobo Town'--which this week placed fourth in the small band of the year competition--was not a re-invention of the wheel. But because mas has now degenerated into a mercenary "all-inclusive" experience with little or no edge or individuality, it simply stood out. A...

My standard for use in the Carnival band Cobo Town, brought out by the artists Ashraph and Shalini. I played with them last year as well, in a band of cows. Read an older post about the band which PLEASURE published in January here .

One of the baffling notes at Ashraph's studio in Woodbrook, Port of Spain. The studio on Roberts Street, Woodbrook, is filled with picture frames. A group of people, fresh from a red wine-infused literary event at the nearby Alice Yard that evening, are looking around, playing with things.  But on a table at the far end of the room, laying like the abandoned robe of the bad witch in The Wizard of Oz , is a costume of some sort. What strange things this man, framemaker and artist Ashraph, has in his studio! The robe is like a graduation gown, meets vampire cape, meets barrister's court costume. But there are disturbing little clues about this mystery, too, all over the studio. What is going on here? On the wall at another end of the room are cryptic drawings, small frantic notes, with diagrams and slogans. Has Ashraph lost it? No, he has not. It appears as though he--and a band of mysterious confederates--are bringing out a Carnival band for 2010. Last year, he ...