Many in the neighborhood may not fully understand the effort and lifestyle that goes into running a masquerade band, known as the ‘Mas Band’, for the Boston Carnival, but one lifelong Dorchester resident has lived it before he was born. It continued that tradition last weekend, when the 49th Boston Carnival Parade returned after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus.
Errin (Mayhew) Douglas, 26, has spent the better part of her life — including while in her mother’s womb while marching in the Boston Carnival — immersed in Trinidadian-style carnival culture.
Her grandmother, Jean ‘Mam’ Mayhew, started one of the first ‘Mas Bands’ in Boston on Mt. Ida in the Bowdoin/Geneva neighborhood under the name ‘Social Organization for Caribbean Americans (SOCA) & Associates’.
That ‘Mas Band’, now under the leadership of Oswald and Margaret Black, has been one of the oldest and strongest throughout the years – planning their costumes, bending all the strings for the feather plumes and designing the dances their masquerade on the mountain. Ida Street for decades.
“That house became the home not only of my mother and her six older brothers, but also played host to uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, nieces, great-nephews, cousins, friends and strangers, sought shelter and help from the struggles they faced when they arrived in America and growing up and raising families here,” Douglas said.
“My grandmother’s house was filled with notes of Trinidad that could make you feel like you were still on the island, when in reality you were right on Columbia Street.”
For many of those years, Douglas said, she was close to her family as a child, and then at the center of everything as an adult. Although she spends her days as a partner at The Davis System, a strategic communications firm that coordinates affairs for their high-profile political and business clients, her free time is still spent at ‘Mas Camp’ in Mount Ida Road.
“I have the honor of being a Trinidadian-American born in Boston and a masquerader for Boston Carnival since utero,” she said last Friday during the American Caribbean Carnival Association of Boston (CACAB) breakfast.
“Most of the kids in Boston spent their summer at Camp Harbor View, I spent my summer at Up on De Hill at SOCA Mas Camp and that gave me a window into how carnival has developed over the years.”
SOCA & Associates has won several first place trophies and has been Band of the Year in the past at the Boston Carnival as well as the Cambridge and Worcester Carnivals. They were known in the early days for their ‘Pirates in the City’ masquerade performance.
They have also had many kings and queens of the Boston Carnival (Douglas was once a little queen).
While she was growing up at Bowdoin/Geneva and attending St. Peter’s School, the Carnival lifestyle and experiences, she said, shaped her as much as her education. She called on all groups to come together and put aside their differences to bring Carnival to a new generation.
“As we must honor the past, where we started and where we have been able to go, it is also critical that we look to the future and bring new perspectives and ideas to what Boston Carnival can be for more generations to come. “, she said, adding:
“It is our duty to work together to prepare the next generation and honorably pass the torch to those who will champion our causes.”
She noted the work of past leaders, from CACAB president Shirley Shillingford to steel pan icon Carl Smith, to costume specialist Ansyl Niles to founder Ken Bonaparte Mitchell – among many others. Those leaders, she said, helped push Carnival to the forefront in Boston and prevented it from closing or shortening the Parade route.
Douglas said that the Boston Carnival will improve and continue with the new generations only with a new unity – which has been a challenge among Carnival crews in recent years.
To illustrate this, Douglas said, the mottos of countries such as Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada and Haiti are all based around the concept of unity. She called on all Mas Bands, CACAB and everyone else associated with the Boston Carnival to join.
“Even though we represent different countries, generations and perspectives, Carnival is what unites us all,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you are a CACAB board member, a band leader, a promoter, a DJ, a photographer, a moko jumbie, a blue devil, an old ‘masser’, a ‘beautiful mas player’ or just a spectator – Carnival belongs to us all. It’s our only time to be free and we can’t let it slip away because we as a people cannot come to terms.”
