by Curlan Campbell, NOW Grenada
- AJ and Associates mas band A Beautiful World
- Adult and kiddies sections mostly sold out
- Focus is to provide a once in lifetime carnival experience
AJ and Associates said they have re-imagined A Beautiful World with this year’s costume designs. The band first burst on the scene in 2015 out of a need to offer carnival lovers more option of fancy mas bands, but the lack of sponsorship is still a major challenge affecting relatively new bands.
Operating of out their Golf Course premises, the small team of young individuals works tirelessly to ensure that they meet the demands for costumes for adult and kiddies sections, most of which have already sold out.
“The idea to start a carnival band came about when we noticed that over the past few years carnival was dying. I remember one year when you only had Andre Garvey and Helen Marie as competing bands and then you had, of course, the party bands. Therefore, a group of young individuals sat and thought why don’t we start a mas band,” said mas band leader Calvin Charles.
AJ and Associates Mas Band is self-funded since it remains difficult to get corporate sponsorship. Charles says despite the challenge, the band’s focus is not on competition, but to provide a once in lifetime carnival experience.
“At AJ and Associates we make everything by hand so we do enter into the competition, but it is not our main focus. By entering into the competition, we also give the public a view of what young people at AJ and Associates have to offer. The only challenge we face is sponsorship, we have had one sponsor for the past 2 years – the Grenada Breweries Limited – so we are forced to use our own monies to come up with our designs, and as people register, we use the money to get our materials for costumes.”
The theme chosen this year is A Beautiful World with the 4 colours costumes each representing various aspects of nature.
The 4 colours chosen this year are
- Yellow – which represents the blazing sun
- Green – which represents the vegetation of the Amazonian Forest
- White – which showcases the colour of the waves as it washes ashore on the tropical beach, and
- Black and Purple – which represents the colours created from a supernova.