MARLEY BROTHERS LIVE @ THE O2 LONDON

It’s not everyday you get to go to a top class concert for free.

So when you do get the chance you might as well do it! That’s what I did last night, looking at the metro I saw that O2 was hosting a free concert with the MARLEY BROTHERS, sons of the legendary superstar and some say Prophet BOB MARLEY.

Its funny these guys not only sound like him but perform at times almost just like hi too, they sang some of their father’s classics and some of their new stuff too.
The three, Julian, Damian, and Stephen put on a show anybody would have paid for, in 1 hour 45 minutes they never stopped mashing up the audience with that inherited mystic style they all seem to have.
Got some pictures and video clips for ya check it out!

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1891678002964244588

For more pics check out the massassination album.

N.H.C's LEGEND IN THE MAKING ?

Notting Hill Carnival is not just another Trinidad type Carnival like others around the world.
Even though it may be in a form of reconstruction at present, in its past the NHC was the platform where Carnival Legends such as Peter Minshall and Wayne Berkley started or established their reputations as the best of their generation, and later on Masters of the art form.

At present the NHC is no longer the hatching ground of legend, it has been years since the streets of London have produced a name that can be recognised as the leader of Generation Next. Instead like other Trini type Carnivals around the world NHC is transforming into the stomping ground of the repeat i.e. if you missed it in Trinidad you can see it here from this band or that.

However in recent time’s one name has been showing up on my radar with reasonable consistency, not because of his big mouth and self promotional campaign to elevate his status as like some pretenders, but because of hard work, and a gradual but consistent improvement in style and reputation, that is beginning to raise eyebrows in London, and overseas.

Shaun Carrington cut his teeth in NHC, form his childhood masquerading with Genesis, from there he designed for RUFF DIAMOND at present, this designer is a bandleader of his own small band B DARK Inspirations in my opinion he is a fine candidate as the true leader of ‘Generation Next’ in Notting Hill and a possible Legend in the making for Carnival world wide.

This year the young designer has designed for 2 other bands besides his own, as far as I know so while he has not won any titles yet his reputation and demand for his work is on the rise.

For South Connections he has designed the sections for DE JOURNEY NOW START. I went to the launch and was impressed by what I saw; next to every design was an image board that contained pictures of the images and themes that influenced the designs. (Now this is a designer) A most impressive presentation, that made no excuses for slavery, and gave an almost accurate yet creative depiction of the period, fashion, and elements that slavery and the slave trade existed in.

An excellent piece of work, this London based Designer is one to watch. With his talent and ability to creatively and originally depict his topics in true mas man fashion, the limit can only be the sky.

I did not attend his own band (B DARK) launch but was informed that he has most creatively used the metamorphosis of butterflies as a metaphor for slavery the cocoon being slavery and the butterfly symbolising freedom as part of a longer story line.
An original concept, from an original designer

Carrington has also designed for the DJ Soca Massive’ band FREEDOM.
There is not much to say these simple slave costumes, fit the theme; the band is more of a casual band so the designs fit the job.

IDENTITY CRISIS. or the problem with Poison UK.

Is a dread thing when culture and commercialism collide you know.
Somebody has to loose, something.

From its conception, Poison UK had an identity problem.

Associating themselves with the biggest, most popular mas band in T&T might seem to be a great idea on paper, but did they ever stop to consider the nature and life span of mas bands?

Especially fun bands.

When Poison swelled to the point of bursting, tribe was about to be born, and when a band gets so big that it has sections the size of small large bands, (1000) the haemorrhaging begins, and the life span of that mother band is about to end.

The big sections form their own bands, and forge their own identities, smaller sections find new homes or combine to do their own thing.

In the UK however the overambitious folks at PUK are left with a name but no identity, they try to capture masqueraders, by selling a life style and an image with a SMORGAHSBOARD of sections that screamed SOS.

Blindly they hack together sections from various bands; PUK is a theme-less masquerading Frankenstein, pretty girls pointlessly prancing about Notting Hill, more beauty show than Mas band, more Las Vegas imitation, than Trinidad replication. a lost tribe if you ever saw one.

The hype for poison UK this year was supposed to be the next level.
What they failed to tell everyone is that it is the next level down.

Have you ever seen the sprite commercial that states image is nothing, thirst is everything?
The people at PUK should drink Sprite
All this selling of an image that lacks any kind of substance must amount to zero.

My question is…
WHAT ALLYUH REALY FOR?
SPREADING THE CULTURE OF T&T OR SPREADING AN IMAGE OF T&T CULTURE?

There is a difference.

Culture has Originality, depth, history, longevity, meaning, a distinctive style, that can be identified anytime.
Image…….like a mirror only reflects this, but without dimension without life.

Image is nothing, culture is everything.

So we in the present now, after the split, next level thing, higher than high.
This eh no wahjang thing, this is high society launch, get your shoes on get your shirt on and yuh pants,…..Welcome to the next level. This is not mas, this is class.

what de ass........

Poison UK, is like you want your pepper buss too?

They never tell allyuh Mas comes from below?
They never tell yuh, Culture comes from below?

What is it David Rudder said, “out of a muddy pond 10 thousand flowers bloom”?

IS WHAT SCENE YUH ON ATALL?

Now the fun band using Peter Minshall’s name, as part of this, “ rezzarection” project.
Like pulse 8 can’t bring enough life to the dead.

What are the minds at PUK thinking?
Minshall mas is part of Machel show, so we will put that concept of the jumbie together with the cocktails of pulse 8, and come up with some kind of cocktail jumbie looking for a rezzarection.


Desperation is a hell of a thing.
Desperate marketing is worse.

These mocking pretenders have no shame?

Irvin McWilliams’ takes his place in the passing parade.

Mas Legend Irvin McWillams has died at the age of 87.
He was a legend in mas who's presentations were often based on themes of Trinidad and Tobago, its history and its culture.



Irvin McWilliams, 1920-2007

"Irvin “Mac” McWilliams entered the Carnival scene in 1957 with the band Cleopatra and the Kings of Europe. He continued in this vein until 1961 when he presented the band Hail La Trinity, the first Carnival band with an entirely local theme. McWilliams returned to historical and fantasy themes and for the next nine years the band of the year title eluded him. Finally, in 1971 he won with his groundbreaking Wonders of Buccoo Reef. He repeated the feat the following year with Anancy Story and again in 1978 with Know Your Country. At last, local themes were being highlighted and appreciated in the carnival arena. His presentations taught people about their culture and he was loved by masqueraders and spectators for creating mas that reflected Caribbean life.
Band of the Year Titles

1971 Wonders of Buccoo Reef

1972 Anancy Story

1978 Know Your Country"



IVAN MC WILLAMS 1920-2007
Thank you for Mas.

learn more


Guardian


Newsday

Damien Hirst: Beyond Belief

For the Love of God2007Platinum, diamonds and human teeth6 3/4 x 5 x 7 1/2 in. (17.1 x 12.7 x 19.1 cm)Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates

This Damian Hurst guy is the bomb i feel this is one is a 'must do' on my list of things to see with my own eyes .

While it has nothing to do with mas directly, there is a theme in the work, that designers of mas should take note of, when they say their theme is 'such and such', but you can't see not only how the mas came about but a connection can be made between the mas and the theme.

http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/beyond_belief/

1 Jun—7 Jul 2007Hoxton Square and Mason's YardViewing 'For the Love of God', the artist's diamond skull, at White Cube Mason's Yard is restricted to ticket entry only. Tickets are available from White Cube Mason's Yard on the day or to book in advance please click HERE.

White Cube is pleased to announce a major solo exhibition of new work by Damien Hirst. Taking place at both White Cube Hoxton Square and White Cube Mason’s Yard, Beyond Belief is the most significant and ambitious exhibition of new work by the artist to date.

In this exhibition, Hirst continues to explore the fundamental themes of human existence – life, death, truth, love, immortality and art itself. In two new series of paintings – the Birth Paintings and the Biopsy Paintings – Hirst confronts, as he puts it, ‘the intense joy and deep-set anxiety we can all feel in hospitals, where we are surrounded by both creation and decay’. The Birth Paintings, which depict the birth of the artist’s youngest son Cyrus by Caesarean section in August 2005, are brutal, yet tender, images of the horror and beauty of childbirth.

The Biopsy Paintings, on the other hand, are based on biopsy images of thirty different forms of cancer and other terminal illnesses that the artist sourced from the Science Photo Library. In this series Hirst uses broken glass, scalpel blades and blood-like pools of paint in sumptuous, abstract swathes that repel and attract in equal measure. ‘I’ve always thought that art is a map of a person’s life, so it naturally changes as you change and get older’, Hirst said recently. ‘I suppose since I’ve become a father, I think even more about the end.’

There are twelve new sculptures, including seven major formaldehyde works from the ongoing Natural History series. Death Explained, originally conceived as a drawing in 1991, presents a tiger shark divided longitudinally with each half of its body suspended in a separate tank of formaldehyde. The shark, which Hirst once summed up as ‘a thing to describe a feeling’, has been dissected, allowing the viewer to walk through the interior of the animal and perhaps to understand it more fully. But in the end, as Hirst has observed of death, ‘you are left with no answers, only questions’.

Several works address the complex relations between art, science and religion. Arguably more than any artist of his generation, Hirst is preoccupied by the Western tradition of Christian iconography. Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain savagely decants the Saint’s martyrdom into a single tank containing a black calf, its body pierced by dozens of arrows and cable-tied to a steel post. In God Alone Knows, a triptych featuring three flayed and crucified sheep in three tanks, Hirst re-presents the visceral brutality of Christ’s death, and yet there is an unexpectedly quiet beauty in the way the forlorn and tragic figures appear to float against their mirrored grounds, as if resurrected. Hirst reconstructs the final phase of the Nativity in The Adoration. A steel and glass vitrine is divided, one half of which is then sub-divided into three equal spaces that each contain a sheep, kneeling in supplication to a cast sterling-silver skeleton of an infant, housed in an incubation unit. Here, Hirst throws into sharp focus conflicting notions of belief, devotion and conformity.

The exhibition’s dramatic culmination, For the Love of God, is a life-size cast of a human skull in platinum, covered entirely by 8,601 VVS to flawless pavé-set diamonds, weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. It is without precedent in the history of art. On one level, the work is a traditional ‘Memento Mori’, an object that addresses the transience of human existence. ‘The skull is out of this world, celestial almost’ writes the distinguished art historian Rudi Fuchs. ‘It proclaims victory over decay. At the same time’, Fuchs continues, ‘it represents death as something infinitely more relentless. Compared to the tearful sadness of a vanitas scene, the diamond skull is glory itself’. Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, UK. He lives and works in London and Devon. For the past two decades he has been widely acknowledged as the most important and influential artist of his generation.A fully illustrated catalogue, with texts by Will Self and Hans Ulrich Obrist, will accompany the exhibition. In addition, a book entitled For the Love of God: the Making of the Diamond Skull with an essay by Rudi Fuchs will be published.