Postby TriP » October 14th, 2014, 9:10 pm
Local Carnival Bandleader
Trinidad and Tobago and the Mas fraternity has lost another legend. Carnival Bandleader, Stephen Lee Heung, passed away last evening at St. Clair Medical Hospital due to complications arising from a lung infection.
Veteran masman Stephen Lee Heung has died a week after a book chronicling his history in mas was launched.
The book We Kind ah People, The Trinidad Carnival Masquerade Bands of Stephen Lee Heung with photography by George Tang and text by Ray Funk, was launched on October 7. The book is dedicated to his late wife Elsie.
A five time winner of the Band of the Year title, Lee Heung is one of the great bandleaders who changes the Carnival landscape. He briefly led small bands in the 40s and played with the legendary Harold Saldenah but it was in 1964 that he formed a major band, out of San Juan, called Two Ten Carmen, which featured Egyptian costumes. In 1947, he produced Siam and the following year he did House of Hanoverians, with his wife, sisters and female friends taking to the streets, which was a bold and historic move. At that time the only women’s band on the street was Nurse Reyes’ Bajan Cooks.
Lee Heung’s trek to the top started in 1964 with Kabuki which placed third in the Band of the Year competition to Silver Stars, the only steelband to have won a Band of the Year title with Gulliver’s Travels, and Harold Saldenha.
In 1965 his band placed second with Versailles and in 1966 Crete, the first production from his house at Number Four Alberto Street, was again runner-up.
The Lee Heungs won their first Band of the Year title in 1967 with China – The Forbidden City. In 1975, ’76 and ’77 they won the Band of the Year title and retained the Angostura Challenge Trophy.
In 1983, the Lee Heungs were back in winner’s row, for the last time, with Rain Forest, Elsie won the Queen of Carnival as Diana Goddess of the Hunt, a beautiful part macaw and part Scarlet Ibis costume. She won the title a second time, while the band produced three Kings of Carnival.
In 1975 Lee Heung received the Humming Bird Medal – Gold. China the Forbidden City was the first band sent abroad by the government to the Montreal Expo in 1967, and then on to Toronto’s Caribana. We Kind Of People was sent to the Dallas Trade Fair in 1975.
Peter Minshall who Stephen got to design his band (Paradise Lost) for him.
Stephen was 93.
The following is a listing of Lee Heung's Carnival presentations:
1964 - "Japan - Land of the Kabuki"
1965 - "Les Fetes Galantes Des Versailles"
1966 - "Crete"
1967 - "China, The Forbidden City," 1st
1968 - "Primeval - The Rites of Spring"
1969 - "1001 Nights"
1970 - "Conquest of Space"
1971 - "Yucatan"
1972 - "Russian Fairy Tales"
1973 - "East of Java"
1974 - "Terra Firma"
1975 - "We Kind A People," 1st
1976 - "Paradise Lost," 1st
1977 - "Cosmic Aura," 1st
1978 - "Love Is ..."
1979 - "Hocus Pocus"
1980 - "The Bermuda Triangle"
1981 - "Shangri-La"
1982 - "Victory at Trafalgar"
1983 - "Rain Forest," 1st (Tied)
1984 - "Regatta"
1985 - "Charade"
1986 - "Sombrero"
1987 - "Cocyea Village"
1988 - "Laserium"
1989 - "Pow Wow"
1991 - "Toute Bagai"
1992 - "Columbus 1492-1992"
1993 - "Safari"
1994 - "Festivals"
My deepest condolences to the Lee Heung family.
Rest In Peace.
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