CARIBANA King & Queen Competition: Photos from July 31 2008

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The bands are the most important part of the main Carnival parade. The bands are actually in competition with one another during the parade. They must pass a judging spot which will rate each band section for its costume design, energy of masqueraders, creativity of presentation and so on. Work on the costumes begin soon after the previous year's celebration and usually takes one full year to complete all of the costumes. Each section of the band will tend to have a series of regular costumes that are purchased by people that want to participate in the parade. The amount of costumes usually depends on the size that the band-leader had in mind, the band leader may make anywhere from between a dozen to several dozen costumes made in the same design. Some of them will follow a theme like a Soca song released, a current event, or something to connect with the parade's spectators.

For each section you also tend to have two really large costumes which is known as the King of the band and a slightly smaller piece known as the Queen of the band. These will incorporate part of the design of the many masqueraders costumes which parade just before or just after them. The tradition of King or Queen of the band comes from Trinidad and Tobago where the person willing to spend the most on the costume would wear the king or queen of the band costume to showing off their wealth. The King and Queen's costume takes in a lot of skill in wire-bending and weight distribution so as to not crush the person pulling the full weight. In many cases small circular holes will be carefully punched through the King and Queen's costumes so as to cut down on wind-load while the person wearing the costume parades down the street.

A band leader may make several different sections each with a different costume in order to show off their talent and increase their odds of having at least one of their sections win a prize by the judges.

Some of the bands participating in Caribana are: A Fantasy Garden, A Taste of The Caribbean, Afropan (a Toronto based mixed race steel-pan band), Beyond The Horizon, Carnival Is Colour, Colours In the Wind, D'Spirit of Carnival, Exotic Species, Future & Back, Guilty Pleasures, Mas Jamboree, Precious Jewel, Sea Fantasy, Temptation, The Awakening, Toronto Revellers and Carnival Nationz. source