Top things to know
- Nicole Moses-Beckles won the Tobago Carnival Monarchs of Mas competition at Market Square, Scarborough, with “Looking for Mr John Boulay.”
- She received a TT$30,000 cash prize.
- The competition featured ten contestants, all female.
- Moses-Beckles said her burrokeet portrayal was inspired by Mr Jesse Taylor and developed with mas makers Patrick Mills and Susan Harriet in Trinidad.
- Other presentations included Janelle Eastman’s “Queen Moola,” Leslie-Ann Benjamin’s “Dance of the Fire Coral” and Marisa Ward-Robley’s “Bound in the Past.”
- Tobago Carnival events continue with RoxGlo in Roxborough on Friday night, with mud mas expected to be a main feature.
Nicole Moses-Beckles won the Tobago Carnival Monarchs of Mas competition at Market Square, Scarborough, with her portrayal “Looking for Mr John Boulay,” a well-dressed lady riding a donkey in search of a certain man from Charlotteville, and took home the TT$30,000 cash prize.
Official events on the Tobago Carnival agenda began on Thursday night with the competition, where the grandeur of traditional mas met the creativity of Tobagonians to produce colourful works of art on stage. The competition featured ten contestants, all female, who portrayed their creations with flair and energy.
Moses-Beckles said the inspiration behind her costume came from Mr Jesse Taylor, and that she and mas makers Patrick Mills and Susan Harriet in Trinidad came together and came up with the burrokeet because the October Carnival Monarch of Mas is about traditional mas rather than national carnival.
While there was only one winner, the dedication and commitment to the mas were hard to miss among the other competitors. For veteran masquerader Janelle Eastman, her presentation of “Queen Moola” was about reviving forms of traditional mas that are slipping away, such as the cow mas.
“I researched to figure out which one is the best costume to bring. I have to bring something rare that they really don’t have or something that is dying that they don’t use in Tobago, so then I started to Google traditional characters and I end up picking this cow,” Eastman said.
Leslie-Ann Benjamin combined the popular sailor mas with features of Tobago’s natural underwater beauty to produce the “Dance of the Fire Coral,” which was entirely handmade by her.
“This year we were like, ‘Hey, this is the first time we want to do Monarch of Mas,’ and I just had an inspiration about a fire coral, and I knew that I wanted to keep it in the traditional mas as well,” Benjamin said.
Others combined Tobago heritage with their portrayals, such as Marisa Ward-Robley in her depiction of “Bound in the Past.”
“I am portraying the past of the 1950s, 1960s. The way our women used to dress back then, you know, dainty, of course. I have been seeing mas, but I haven’t been seeing anyone doing anything to carry us back to our history. No one has been coming forward to portray our past, the past the way we used to dress,” Ward-Robley said.
Audience members praised what they saw on stage. One said it was very great to be back in time from long ago when they had the La Diablesse and all the other mas they had and the donkey and all that stuff, describing it as wonderful and part of the heritage. Another said the mas was beautiful and that the contestants did a good job designing their costumes. A third said they enjoyed it a lot, that everyone was gorgeous, the costumes were amazing and it was a very good experience.
Tobago Carnival events continue with RoxGlo in Roxborough on Friday night, where mud mas is expected to be a main feature.