Am-Bushing Kadooment day

The banner for Am-Bush, creation of Variations Theater (Varia), conceptualised late one sleepless night. The band started three strong but ended up with a grand total of 21. The idea was to protest variously against the ills of society, the environment, the bikini & beads cropover mentality. Kadooment Day is the 1st Monday in August, the Barbados equivalent of carnival Tuesday (pretty mas), and is the culmination of the Cropover festival.

The costumes were to be natural, bush was encouraged. The band was formally registered and we crossed the stage third and went on the road with a rythym section from the Israel Lovell Foundation.

The band crosses the stage, we're early so the stands are pretty empty. Lots of cameras around though, so the band gets plenty of attention from the media, certainly more than any of the mainstream bands.

A short clip of the rythm section as we head down the road....

Every time we passed a sound system, we would stop and get them to play "Hot Sun & Riddim" by TC, winner of the Party Monarch and the Sweet Soca Competition, and the Official Band song...this invariably took some persuading by Varia, as DJs naturally frown on being told what to play, so we'd have to wait for them to get round to it - all in the spirit of the mas....

Varia gets a cool shower from a roadside mister, never mind the day was still overcast and cloudy...

My costume consisted of vines around my lower half, coconut straw on my top and a headpiece of african snails topped by elephant grass. It was supposed to portray the snails eating their way across Barbados leaving a land of wild vine and dry bush behind, on their way to destroying the last vestige of green (on my head). All conceptualised on sunday afternoon and constructed mostly on Monday morning, just before the 8am start of the Kadooment...

This is what we mean, pretty, but still bikini & beads (mexican beads, apparently).