With a registered 46 bands, revellers came out to play mas’ in this morning’s Roberts Manufacturing Foreday Morning Jam.
It was really a case of Next To De Rope as more people played mas on the outskirts of the bands than inside.
Covered in paint, mud, chocolate syrup and powder, thousands of revellers made their way from the two starting points – the DaCosta Mannings and Carlisle Bay Car Park (helipad) and the BIDC parking area, Princess Alice Highway – and filled the streets for seven hours in what might be one of the biggest jams in recent years.
To the sweetest soca tunes for 2014, Foreday Morning patrons headed to Spring Garden. The bands, though, took their time as Spectrum, which passed the BIDC complex at 3:45 a.m., was only by the Port entrance an hour later.
The first band to leave the BIDC complex was 1 Trini and A?Bajan, which moved off with about 200 revellers at 11:51 p.m. With a rhythm section, the band has been doing Foreday for the past 17 years, says bandleader Fran Wickham. Like the majority of the bands following, they had mud and paint buckets on carts.
Next was Harbour Lights Blue Box Cart which pushed off at 11:56 p.m.
Blue Devils Unplugged costume was completed with horns and their rhythm section was a genuine Tuk Band.
Some bands were so small, four could have combined to make one.
True to the vibe of Foreday Morning, all sizes came out to party in costumes ranging from T-shirts and shorts, to stripped vests and thongs. The men made it simpler by painting their bodies in silver or white paint and a group of four dipped their entire bodies in molasses and walked with the buckets, just in case they needed to put on more.
By 5 a.m., as they moved along the Harbour Road behind the NATION building, light blue skies appeared. The first signs of daybreak meant the bands started to move much faster as they were warned that at 6 a.m. the music would be turned off, regardless of where they were.
At approximately 6 a.m., the last band was Roberts which didn’t make it down to Spring Garden as the Barbados Defence Force and the Royal Barbados Police Force shut off the music. The thousands of stragglers walked to Spring Garden in silence.
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