Geraldo Vieira. (1938 - 2012) : The Lord of Time.

Geraldo Vieira Sr : Carnival Monday 2012 with K2K.

In the pantheon of Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival, there are hundreds of heroes whose names are emblazed under the disciplines of Mas, Calypso, Pan and Soca. This post is dedicated to the memory of one hero of mas, and his contributions to the greatest show on earth that span a phenomenal six decades.

His name is Geraldo Andrew Vieira.

I refer to Geraldo Vieira as the 'Lord of Time' not only because of the length of his career but because he managed to remain relevant  and contemporary  throughout the decades while other talents of his generation faded with that period called the golden age of carnival.

1959: 'The Flowers; designed by Geraldo Vieira .

His name may not be widely known among the younger generations of masqueraders or the ‘newbie’s ‘who through an introduction by friend or family found themselves partaking in the Trinidad and Tobago carnival.

To those actively involved in Carnival or are fans of the King and Queen of the Bands Competition, the name Geraldo Vieira Senior  can conjure images of golden age presentations of the 50’s and 60’s  where the name Vieira, was called in the same breath as Saldenha, Braithwaite, and Bailey.

With a career that spanned just over six decades (1959-2012) Geraldo Vera Sr. was more than a veteran of Trinidad carnival he was an institution. During his career he has designed 10 Kings of Carnival and was involved in the design and or construction of countless other award winning costumes.

In 1996 his son Geraldo Vieira jnr  became the youngest king of carnival in history in a costume called “ rain fest” ten years later in 2006 the King maker himself became a King of Carnival (the oldest ever) 

Born in Barataria Trinidad in 1938, by the age of 14 Vieira was already “in love” with the creativity of mas but it was not until 1959  that the then 21 year old Geraldo Andrew Vieira started  wire bending work with the legendary Cito Valesquez,

'The Flowers';1959 was one of the last costumes to be designed as a float and won Best float that year.
(Making mas Milla C Riggio)

“...I started bending wire in the yard of Cito Valesquez one of the great wire benders ten years my senior. We brought fruits and Flowers, Cito was in charge of the fruit section and I did the flower section.”  (Making mas Milla C Riggio)

As a master technician and structural engineer Vieira worked with the likes of not only Cito Valesquez, but also Harold Saldenah, Stephen Lee Heung, Wayne Berkley, Peter Minshall and Hilton Cox.  As an engineer he pioneered many developments in the construction of large costumes and how they were carried by the masqueraders.  He developed both the shoulder harness and the body harness, an improvement he first made for Sherry Ann Guy in the Peter Minshall designed costume ‘Splash’ in 1979 that made her a queen of carnival in that year.

Vieira’s background and speciality in industrial plastics and moulding played an important part in his career in mas and the increasing role plastics had in 20^th century carnival.

What separates Geraldo Veiria Sr. from his contemporaries is the longevity of his career and his technological advancements and introductions to mas that always made him a significant factor as the decades went by. This may be because he did not see himself as an artist with a particular style, but as an engineer and an artisan, “...I’m not moody or temperamental enough to be an artist...I am an engineer, an artisan ...I think of the geometrics and the logistics of the idea" (Geraldo Veiria Sr.: Mask Makers and their craft. D Bell)

Being a craftsman, scientist and mas man Vieira applied his powers of observation, his technical skills, and his knowledge of local mythology and humour to produce memorable costumes such as Albert Moore’s ‘Bro Nancy’ in 1971 and” Bachac Pushing Ganja” for Hilton Cox ,his work clearly reflected his  philosophy and approach towards his craft .

“I like being able to fantasize things and  then bring them to life,...To study a crayfish or an ant or an insect  and then give it life and movement in three dimensions, that is what I love. Using a creature as a model, I recreate its life in wire. I try to conquer its movement in the three dimensional form.”  (Making Mas. Milla C Riggio).

The 1980’s into the mid 1990’s saw names such as Berkley, Minshall, Eustace, Derek, and Correira dominating the King and Queen finals at the Queens Park Savannah. The generation that dominated the headlines of the 60’s and 70’s were by the 90’s either retired to the annals of carnival history, or playing diminishing roles in a cultural festival that saw their techniques and style as out dated and traditional. 

The Crystal Crayfish :1980; designed by, Geraldo Vieira.
 Photo (Making Mas; Milla  C  Riggio)

After failing to make the finals of the king competition in 1992 for the first time in his career, Vieira took note and made changes to his style, so in1993 he produced a winner.

“...we started to build. We were going for a new creation which had a conical shape. Barry came up with the name ‘Splendora, Glory of the Sun’.... the front section being a sunburst, on one side the sun rising and on the reverse the sun setting, Splendora won: the semi final; King of Carnival; Individual of the year; Best Designed costume. It won almost every category....That was when I began to change. We had gotten stuck on insects, animals, birds. I realized it was time to go ten steps farther...”.

(Making Mas. Milla C Riggio)

It is at this juncture that we see Geraldo Vieira’s genius foresight and love for technological advancements update his approach to contemporary mas. By 1996 he produced another King of carnival, this time for his son Geraldo Vieira Jr. portraying “Rain Fest” for their band ‘Hunli, The Wedding’, at 16 he was the youngest King of Carnival in the History of the competition.

The costume itself was reported to be 22 feet tall and 300 pounds and comprised of many bulbs and switches, it even had its own power supply and pyrotechnics that went off on stage, it was the first fully self illuminated costume to win the competition.

King of Carnival 1996: Geraldo Vieira Jr, Portraing 'Rain Fest'. Designed
by Geraldo Vieira Sr.

“I also incorporated special explosive effects which I procured from the Grucci company in New York, whose fireworks I had seen on the Discovery Channel.” (Making Mas. Milla C Riggio).

This technological advance in mas did cause some controversy as some of the other designers and kings voiced the opinion that this costume broke the rules of the competition. The revised and updated formula to the mas of Vieira made his name and mas once again a consistent contender for, and winner off the title King of carnival.

 The Vieira style of ‘big mas’ now transformed on stage through the use of  electronics and pneumatics, disks turned into giant frilled necked  lizards like’ a Childs dream abracadabra’ in 97 massive snakes seemed to move on their own ‘ in the Balisier’ in 98.

Left: 1997: A childs dream Abracadabra: Right: "In the Balisier" 1998. Back; 2003 "Trouble in the Bamboo"

 In 1999 his son won yet again with’ let there be light’, and ‘Winds an element of change’in 2001. His presence in  the 21^st century was just as powerful and relevant as it was in the  late 50’s early 1960’s  long after his contemporaries of the of that period, became conscious  memories of carnivals past. (see more Geraldo Vieira King costumes here.)

1999, King of Carnival; Geraldo Vieira Jr.
portraying "Let there be Light"

A prediction he made in an interview with Debora Bell he declared “Next year I will be the oldest masquerader in the history of carnival to win the King costume. I’m sure of this” Vieira did indeed win the King Costume in2006”.

In 2006, 35 years after Albert Moore won the title in a Geraldo Vieira design in 1971 and ten years after producing Rain fest for Geraldo Jr. to become King of carnival in 1996, Geraldo Vieira Sr. himself became the King of Carnival in the epic tribute to the military machine of the old Roman Empire called “The Might of Rome”, in the process he became the oldest winner of the King of Carnival title.

2006: Geraldo Vieira Sr, wins the King of Carnival title portraying, "The Might of Rome"
Photo Source: Mark Lyndersay.

Geraldo Vieira Sr. The mas man that started his career in the middle of 
the 20^th Century was successfully leading the technological

2007: Geraldo Vieira Sr; "Vision of the snow warriors; Photo,Trinidad Express

advancements in mas in the first decade of the twenty first Century.

After 2006 he did not win another official crown, (in my opinion he should have in 2007) but his mas continued to place in the top 3 or finals, and even if they did not place, his legacy of amalgamating the art of mas with modern technology and engineering, expanding the boundaries of what mas can be, will still be seen in King and Queen finals in years to come with flashing lights pyrotechnics, plastic forms, and costumes that transform before our eyes. 

On the 22^nd of September 2012, it was announced that Geraldo Vieira, Sr. had passed away.  A chapter in Trinidad and Tobago carnival of almost limitless ingenious contributions of creativity, engineering, and technological expansion, and awesome memories, has come to an end, leaving a legacy of longevity and creativity than can only inspire new minds and expand young imaginations for generations to come.

Thank you for the Mas Geraldo Vieira Sr.  

A Job very well done.

Rest in Peace.

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO FILM FESTIVAL

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NO SOCA NO LIFE: Starring Terri Lyons @ Movie Towne . Take a look at the time table below to see what else is on across T&T today!

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Ronnie and Caro mas In the big league

By:Sean Nero

Bandleader Ronnie Mc Intosh and the design team at Ronnie and Caro The Band are ready to take on Brian Mac Farlane and Associates for the George Bailey Band of The Year title in Carnival 2013. Mystery of the Cascadura is the theme of the portrayal. It’s the band’s sixth consecutive offering to the national festival. New rules laid down by the National Carnival Bands Association (NCBA) for the staging of the Parade of The Bands Competition in the run-up to Carnival 2012 bumped Ronnie and Caro from its prescribed and much enjoyed medium category, consequently placing the outfit in the big league. That meant the band with its portrayal The Mask Of…could not defend its title.

The costume Teal Bird ,
mirrors the beauty of the model that adorned it.
PHOTO: SEAN NERO

The team, however, remains unfazed.  

 

In just five years, the band won three Harold Saldenah Band of the Year (medium) titles; a proud feat. “We were basically forced into large category, but we would keep the number close to where they usually are. We would go further than 1,200-1,400. Even though we are large, we still would take it beyond that. “This is to ensure that service remains high. We want to keep it in a way that we know almost every masquerader.” Ronnie and Caro is a small unit, Mc Intosh said. “We are fully aware that we can’t manage 4,000 people. It makes no sense trying to do that because the level of service would drop. Masqueraders stay with us and new one join us because of the level of service that we offer.”

 

Consumer satisfaction is not the only aim of the bandleader. He is on a mission to revive lost traditions associated with T&T Carnival, even though it could limit his efforts at wealth creation. Proof of that is the band’s decision to move away from premiering its costumes in a party setting. For the past two years the band has opted to unveil its works of mas free to the public in an enlivening parade through Port-of-Spain, as witnessed back in August for the launch of with the launch of Mystery of the Cascadura. Asked why the band chose this option to premier its works of mas, Mc Intosh said it was a deliberate attempt to preserve a tradition of Carnival from the bygone era. Back then, Mc Intosh recalled, Raoul Garib, Stephen Lee Heung, Glenn Carvalho, costumes, as part of their contributions to T&T Carnival, would unveil their works of mas along Ariapita Avenue in Woodbrook and scores of culture enthusiasts would come out to witness these attractions. These launches were always free to the public.

 

Career Highlights

 

 

 

Accomplishments

Medium Band of the Year (Downtown) – 2012

4th Place Large Band of the Year (NCC) – 2012

Medium Band of the Year (NCC) – 2011

Medium Band of the Year (Downtown) – 2011

Medium Band of the Year (NCC) – 2010

Medium Band of the Year (Downtown) – 2010

Medium Band of the Year (NCC) – 2009

Best Designer (medium band) – 2009

2nd Place Band of the Day Medium – 2009

2nd Place Amoco Renegades – Medium 2009

Medium Band of the Year (NCC) – 2008

Medium Band of the Year (Piccadilly) – 2008

Most Colourful Band (Downtown) – 2008

2nd Place Band of the Day—Medium – 2008

2nd Place Amoco Renegades—Medium–2008

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Making Mas Man— End of a surreal journey

Peter Minshall works on the headpieces for his 1993 band Donkey Derby.
 PHOTO: MARK LYNDERSAY

DALTON NARINE

It happened on Ash Thursday the year he gave us his last mas. The 2006 Carnival was as good a hurrah as befits anyone like him. As cultivated and bombastic, strong-willed and emotive, combative and refreshing as perhaps any artist who shapes art only to distort it to make you realise you’re gaping at yourself in a mirror of horror. Even at your ownpristine, naked beauty. The Eden of self. For, you, too, are God.  And across time, we never got to figure out who HE was, whom he had become, though Peter Minshall himself says it all. “On Carnival Tuesday night, Tribe is coming up, and this is where I observe a fact of modern Carnival life that I had not even known to exist. It was like a juggernaut, a cavalcade of 40-foot trailer trucks, about 20 of them, huge, towering above me, and ten of them were bars for the all-inclusive consumption of alcohol; and ten more were the shower sprinklers to keep the delicate folk cool on a hot tropical day; and ten more were food, and if there were any more left over they were in between those for music. “And they were going by like if it was the desert war again and they had an enemy to conquer. These huge trucks, and in between these chasms created by the trucks were these little sprinklings of people with a few little beads and a few little feathers. “I thought, my God, I had no idea that this was where de ting reach. Where the form had so taken over that it has absolutely eradicated the substance.”

He relaxes a little and eases back onto the stool, for he’s in a crouch, his eyes penetrating mine and waiting for them to breathe again. The pause lingers, it seems, for as long as the annual Memorial Park, Anthony-Quinn-in-The-long-Wait period before your band is waved onto the Drag. “It was biblical, this march of thundering trucks, the technology and the mechanism. Huge. It was quite spectacular in its own way. I felt like a little fella in a pirogue, you know, and the waves and the wake ...” He cups his chin in the palm of his hand, eyes straying on an old costume leaning against a wall across by so. And then it came, the wave blowing us both back in the day.  Oui foute! “I didn’t know it was so.” That scene in the Callaloo mas camp is a telling dialogue of an old actor like Brando, who had come back from irrelevance to write his own epitaph at the end of Apocalypse Now even as he was spitting robber talk flecked with mimicry from the Bookman from Hell. No one will ever dismiss Brando’s brief role in a long, harrowing tale. And I will forever recall that epic summation and distillation of where Minshall had been and where the mas was heading. He didn’t know it was so.

Director of 'Mas Man' Dalton Narine

I didn’t know either that the cogs in the mas that turned the wheels had long been worn smooth when I arrived at offices, public and private, cap in hand, a vagrant filmmaker on the prowl for change. “A documentary about Minshall?” she said. “What if he doesn’t bring another band?” Well, he designed 26, and, no, it’s a film about Minshall. I’d learned that from  Pennelope Beckles. “They’ll take you seriously if you call it a film.” The minister made a phone call and redirected the team to T&T Film Company, the only foundation for moral support, as it turned out. It wasn’t a grand largesse, per se, but it spirited us out of a pinch. I’m reminded of the line by sculptor Anna Serrao, who made mas with galvanise, our own metal, as Minshall termed it. “Not so much for how it looks but how it sounds in the rainy season. The dropping of the rain on it is not so far from the din and the melody of a pan. Such sweet shelter.” Minshall could talk, yes. But Serrao didn’t see it like that. “This is hard mas. Hard. It’s like we have to find a rationale for our craziness.” Those were hard, hard days, too, for the team—Benedict Joseph behind the camera and Danielle Dieffenthaller hosting meetings at her home to pitch for interviewees and strategise. We never did meet the ordinary woman who walked around with a fount of knowledge about the mas. Nor did we locate the John John villager who had planted in her front yard a standard from her Calabash character to ward off evil forces. What a story, she! And the times were especially not galvanising for me, because I’d always been the point man, going brave into the jungle —wary of the enemy, the rest of the troops at safe distance to the back. Every office settled in the bush. As example, an officer chose my pitching opportunity to talk randomly about things in general. Money may have been my objective, but for sure not his object or thing that he could hand out without stretching the ole talk, ad infinitum. After four trips to the “bank”, I eventually caught on to the ritual. 

The spirit broken, you become a sycophant because you must make nice, in letters, in person, on the phone. In the bush, where you’re held captive. Unless you realise it and end up receding back to reality. So, it wasn’t difficult making mas man. But it was excruciatingly painful doing so with the bank’s money. And myriad other forms of financing so that you’re able to skip from an interview session on the east coast of America to the west, where Hollywood treated you like a man. A filmmaker. Don Mischer, an exceedingly gracious and famous producer who ran the Atlanta and Salt Lake City Olympic Games, excused himself from a meeting in the midst of planning an entertainment show for the Super Bowl, American football’s World Cup, to chat for an hour about Minshall and how Minsh virtually ran meetings about the opening ceremonies. “All Peter had to say was, ‘Imagine, if you will,’ and he held us in the palm of his hands.”

Then you look around when he takes a call and count off 14 Emmys decorating the office. The guy I hired as camera operator, himself a filmmaker, looked at it as another ornate set, but with the Hollywood sign gracing the hill, yet bleeding through a window as backdrop. 

I had come from a good vibe in Greenwich Village, New York, where we had coupled two major interviews in a restaurant setting. The scenario unspooled radically well between the theatre director and the university professor, the only odd take on that cold morning  arriving unscripted from a cop who was about to ticket the rental car. And it’s all on video, the mad scramble to unhinge the mike on the lapel of the winter coat so I could  remonstrate in vain with New York’s Finest, and Joseph actually recording the predicament—force-feeding an outtake, though there was no technical error involved. Never trust your senses about an interview, for it will go to any lengths to get its way. And it’ll cost you. Indeed, filmmaking is a pricey endeavour. Like waking up to find that someone had keyed your car in the dead of night, bleeding off the paint as if it were coursing your vital vein. Instead, it was your own soul that had been scarred in broad daylight. If it wasn’t the shoe leather sponsorship trip wearing you down and out, it was the pick-up line Minsh gave when I initially called about the film that kept you going. He’d shunted the conversation that Sunday morning by assigning the moment to the cosmos. He must have known I’d been a pannist for years.

“The universe patient, eh?” he said, alluding to pan’s labyrinthian evolution over 62 years up till that day. How it start off fighting for its wee life and fending off know-it-all authority and its family who tried so hard to care for it, changing its face and voice and garb—even its reason for being—each member claiming her or a little piece of her; all such upbringing leading to a social network of friends and other countrymen, this new world at long last embracing her chromed and steely tone as a credible instrument for social change; all of that history bollixed up in the hills and the yards, and just now shrinking inside an outer universe that so patient, so patient eh boy? Well, that’s how Mas Man was born. Time knocking on the door for story to tell. I mean to say, look how the fella come from so far and get so big...big, big, big in the pantheon of the arts, pan and Minshall both. The one he calls the concert music of the Caribbean  and the other he reverently refers to as Mas Man. One and the same, if you ask me.

 After all it was a steel band derivative in mas, fancy sailor, which took a decade to mature from suck-meh-nose, that he carried in his head long before England called him to study this other world of upper-crust art. The rock of his belief in the mas, he would remind the old world of his epiphany of the streets dancing around him in his youth; crab, camera, cash register, clock, elephant, Donald Duck, cobra, fruits, flowers—anything a Trini sailor man could conceive to tote atop his head that would eventually turn new mas. New mas, indeed. That’s what he returned home from his studies to make. From the Land of the Hummingbird. Paradise Lost, where we bounce up in 1976 in Stephen and Elsie Lee Heung’s mas camp in Woodbrook. 

How you believe you could transport Milton’s epic poem into breadfruit art? Eh? Into we ting. Well, by God, he did it. Maybe the best mas ever, transforming even itself. And so I was hooked as I watched stanza after stanza unfurl before the camera... Minshall was the man then—and now. His name will live for a hundred years a bandleader said in the film, which The Callaloo Company sanctioned after, let’s put it this way, just one interview question. Minshall: “How are you planning to do this film?” Me: No narration. 
The stew required nothing else. I had the ingredient. I would have walked out of his home if my modus operandi wasn’t taken seriously. Minshall has voice, panache, cojones and erudition. Yet, there’s a missing link. He still can’t fathom the truth that the best footage is recorded on 11,000 tapes that dwell in 500 boxes in an old rum bond in Laventille. They remained untouchable for five years during the making of Mas Man. But in the bush you learn to make do with what you have, and editor Eduardo Siu and I are proud to roll out a three-DVD home video of a film that has won nine awards on six continents. More than five hours of Minshall’s Carnival art and Olympic artistry as a result of our take-no-prisoners attitude toward independent filmmaking.

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ALL BLACK MODELS FOR PHILIP TREACY 2013 FASHION SHOW.

Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

On the 16:09:12, arguably the most famous milliner in the World, Philip Treacy made his first appearance in 12 years in The Royal Court of Justice at London Fashion week 2012.

 For his spring summer collection for 2013, he paid tribute to the late King of pop Michael Jackson, and the style and power of African women.

Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

 According to the 'Evening Standard' Treacy is quoted as saying “The show was homage to the Africanwoman and their sensibility to dress up.”

On show were 37 outfits owned by the late ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson. These were worn with Jackson inspired, Treacy designed hats,by cast of 25 models all of various Black/Afro backgrounds. 

The move has also restarted the question of why “minorities” are hardly represented in the fashion industry.

Nice move Philip Treacy!

 

BRAHVO!  BRAHVO! BRAHVO!

                                                               

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