Kings of the Road: JW and Blaze

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton

Jillionaire Juice, our Trinidad correspondent and resident carnival-stalker  (does that make him a Carny?) just put us on to this song, which dominated the festivities in T&T this year, knocking out returning champs like Machel Montano and Fay-Ann Lyons to win the Road March title for 2010. For all you non-trinis out there, that basically means “Palance” was the song heard most at certain designated “judging posts” along the parade route for carnival, and it’s easy to see why. Although they tarted up the video with a bit of comedy–breaking out into a Bollywood-style dance number in the middle of an office setting–the song itself is pure street dance. This is soca stripped down to it’s bare essence: triple-time drums, frentic horns, upful chords and a lot of jumping going on, lyrically speaking.

Now, we’ll just have to wait until Jillionaire touches back to find out what the hell “Palancing” means.