Ah boy ah pick up ah reading from the NEWSDAY and discovered mentioned of my late father's cousin. I remember as a youth my dad's cousin 'Cosang's' group coming and playing at our house.
Harmony of parang keeps Moruga parandero going
Saturday, December 27 2008
PARANDERO George Malchan has spent more than three decades serenading friends and family with his cuatro and mandolin, and he is not about to change that anytime soon.
With no signs of slowing down, the 72-year-old parandero was all geared up and ready for Christmas Day.
In an interview at his Tompiere Trace, Basseterre, Moruga, home on Wednesday, the retired Petrotrin security officer was busy fine-tuning the strings of his instruments as he geared up for what was expected to be a hectic Christmas day.
“Family and friends are coming over and from here we leave and go house to house and parang,” the grandfather of 24 told Newsday.
“Paranging is something I just love to do. Every year I say is my last but when this time comes around I just can’t help it. I have to pull out the cuatro, the mandolin and the guitar.”
Malchan has been playing the cuatro and entertaining others since the age of ten, when he would tag along with his siblings as they went from house to house.
This was a mainstay of the Christmas season for the family, who said it “wouldn’t be Christmas without it.”
“When I think of it, playing the cuatro kept me out of trouble and I wish the young people now could learn to play a cuatro as it could do for them what it did for me,” he said. As he delved into his rich history as a parandero, Malchan said it was his late brother, Cosang, who taught him all that he knows now. “He was the best there was in the country and just watching him play you wanted to learn it,” Malchan said, with a glint of admiration for his late brother in his eyes.
And he bemoaned the lack of interest in the art form.
He said it is slowly dying as the young people in the rural village are not showing an interest in keeping the tradition alive.
“I’m trying to teach my own grandchildren who are not really keen on learning,” he said. But, since the fruit does not fall far from the tree, his heart is lifted since his granddaughter Latoya Guerrero, a student of Barrackpore Secondary School, has taken a keen interest in the cuatro.
“I told her how much it could help her development as a person,” he said of the 13-year-old.
His nephew Peter Gonzales is also learning how to play the cuatro.
“It is very important that the art form lives on because there is nothing sweeter than parang music. It is the reason I am still playing today,” he said.
