D Midas
Dawad Philip
When an elder dies, a great library is lost, so the African proverb says. So too, when a mas man passes on, a storyteller, raconteur and magician disappears, a piece of the Carnival -- theatre, art and transcendence -- is taken from us: our love affair with beauty, where it resides and from what it is wrought.
Stephen Derek embodied these gifts and emboldened our passion. For him, mas was everything and mas in turn claimed him early as its own. His was a craftsman’s life formed in the long shadows of the Woodbrook greats, the Baileys, George, Albert and Alvin, Terry Evelyn, Errol Payne and other icons from the late 1950s through the 1970s.
Inspired by George Bailey’s flair for color and grand design, young Stevie’s own gifts were quickly evident and indelibly burnished: his unique ability to create the mas from dream and imagination, from a drawing board to wire, cane, fiberglass, glue, a keen eye for color, and build beautiful dancing works of art.
Mas is a ritual, a process of imaginings and heightened instincts laid out in perfect line and color. In its purest form, it is is magic, possessing the kind of magic that children open their eyes and see and are inspired and infused with their own possibilities. It is what young Stephen saw of those icons in Woodbrook, and what helped him to later bloom.
Stephen was the real deal.
His use of color, flexibility, lush plumage and craftsmanship impacted Carnivals far and wide, from the streets of Port of Spain to Brooklyn, Boston, Toronto, Miami, Charlotte Amalie and Kingston, along the way making D Midas one of the first iconic brands for Trinidad-styled Carnivals in North America and the Caribbean.
At his peak in 1980s and 1990s, Derek and D Midas could not be denied. With the likes of Alvin and Albert Bailey, Mervyn ‘MJ’ Johnson, Box Edwards, Big Junior, Panky, Egypt and Miguel Marchan in his corner, Derek was prolific and prodigious, winning multiple Medium Band of the Year awards, Queen of the Band and King of the Band titles, and countless individual prizes worldwide with the likes of his popular queens Anra Bobb and Denise Duncan, alongside Winthrop Holder and Mervyn Johnson, veterans in a cavalcade of D Midas glory.
In recent years, Derek lamenting a lack of corporate involvement, shifted from producing full mas bands and turned to “section” and individual costumes for Carnivals far and wide. And he would often say that after all those years of bringing mas: “These last couple of years were the first years I could actually wake up Ash Wedenesday morning with a dollar in my pocket, and not having to worry about who I owe (as a bandleader),”
Indeed, his breed of mas man is lost in our present Carnival, artisans whose skills set expressed the full package as artist, designer, wirebender and producer, never failing to excite us and help us to cherish the best in our creative selves,
For Carnival 2017 there will be a huge void, with the passage of Stephen Derek, and with the passing too, of another mas veteran, Victor “Scoogie” Haynes. Wherever you are, Comperes, we will give them real fire, next year.
Replies
Brooklyn, Boston, Toronto, Miami, Charlotte Amalie and Kingston ... and I must add San Francisco!!!
Dawad, you sure put it right, Eastern Parkway would never be the same without Stephen Derek .... Bailey