Cori Baynes

It is the goal of al­most every ju­nior steel­pan or­ches­tra to come out of the "lit­tle league" and make it big on the in­stru­ment's grand­est Car­ni­val stage with a per­for­mance that would im­press all pan lovers. For the mem­bers of the south­ern-based Gold­en Hands Steel Or­ches­tra, this dream be­came a re­al­i­ty dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Car­ni­val sea­son, when it placed sec­ond in the small bands cat­e­go­ry of the panora­ma fi­nals. Com­ing off the ju­nior stage, the or­ches­tra's de­but at the se­nior lev­el def­i­nite­ly paid off, as its test piece Din­go­lay, which was arranged by band mem­ber Vanes­sa Headley, was a true re­flec­tion of the band's ded­i­ca­tion and hard work.

Re­cent­ly, the mem­bers of Gold­en Hands showed their ap­pre­ci­a­tion to their com­mu­ni­ty for its un­wa­ver­ing sup­port through­out its ex­is­tence. The event, which had as its theme Tak­ing the Na­tions, was held at the or­ches­tra's pa­n­yard at In­de­pen­dence Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do and fea­tured nu­mer­ous per­for­mances, as well as a video show­ing of the band's ac­tiv­i­ties for the Car­ni­val sea­son. In keep­ing with the theme, the mem­bers of the or­ches­tra, as they did at the Panora­ma fi­nals, each pinned a for­eign coun­try's na­tion­al flag on­to their jer­seys. This was done to sym­bol­ise the or­ches­tra's hopes to have the sound of the steel­pan heard in every coun­try of the world. Led by band cap­tains Pe­te Brax­ton and Keon Mar­cano, Heal the World was the first se­lec­tion on the Gold­en Hands' playlist and all in at­ten­dance got a taste of the qual­i­ty of per­for­mance that the or­ches­tra had to of­fer.

The next of the band's tunes was the pop­u­lar song What a Won­der­ful World, which was arranged by Dane Hinds. Bring­ing the cur­tain down on the event was the per­for­mance of the ca­lyp­so Din­go­lay and, as the mem­bers played lusti­ly, the au­di­ence nod­ded and clapped in ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Speak­ing af­ter­wards, the band's arranger and CEO Vanes­sa Headley said that their plac­ing at the fi­nals left the mem­bers feel­ing ac­com­plished and a bit over­whelmed. "This is some­thing we have al­ways been look­ing for­ward to do­ing. We al­ways com­pet­ed in the ju­nior cat­e­go­ry but step­ping up to se­niors is a whole dif­fer­ent ball game," she said. "We went in there, de­ter­mined to do out best and that is ex­act­ly what we did–and we couldn't be more pleased with the re­sults."