Yvonne Webb

Twen­ty-four-year-old Shenelle Abra­ham is about to make pan his­to­ry for Panora­ma 2012. Ju­nior Sam­my Group Skif­fle Bunch, for­mer­ly spon­sored TCL Group, has tak­en the bold and coura­geous step to have this young, in­ex­pe­ri­enced, and vir­tu­al­ly un­known arranger, who hap­pens to be a fe­male, take them to vic­to­ry for Na­tion­al Panora­ma 2012. She is one of a group of young, new arrangers who have been hired by four big bands, as they seek to leave an in­deli­ble mark on this year's com­pe­ti­tion. Rene­gades has a first-time arranger in the per­son of Du­vonne Stew­art, Har­monites has de­cid­ed to take the risk with Seon Gomez, Des­pers is stak­ing it's claim with An­dre White and Skif­fle with Abra­ham. Skif­fle CEO and skip­per, Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, said he and the band have placed ut­most con­fi­dence in the young woman, whom he sees as a sound in­vest­ment for the fu­ture. He said he ex­pects there will be cu­rios­i­ty to see how she is go­ing to work out, but as­sert­ed, "she is the fu­ture of pan.

"What we are see­ing now is a chang­ing of the guards, there are a lot of young arrangers out there, and those who are not brave enough to take the risk now, may very well pay a price for it lat­er down the road." Re­grel­lo, a for­mer Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for San Fer­nan­do West, said his band has al­ways tak­en risk, re­fer­ring to their con­tract with Andy Narell, a for­eign­er to do their arrange­ment. "Peo­ple knocked us for that, but to­day that piece Cof­fee Street, is con­sid­ered a Panora­ma gem." In an in­ter­view at the Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do, pa­n­yard ear­li­er this week, Abra­ham said, "I think I have an ad­van­tage. I think as a youth, I can bring a sense of youth­ful feel­ing to the band which con­sists of a lot of young play­ers. It is eas­i­er for them to re­late to and play my mu­sic." Hav­ing arranged for small band St Mar­garet's Su­per­star, Abra­ham said she knows what the judges are look­ing for. This time around, she in­tends to fuse her ex­pe­ri­ence, from Flori­da Memo­r­i­al Uni­ver­si­ty, where she trained un­der the as­tute lead­er­ship of Dawn Bat­son, with the Car­ni­val spir­it. Pan lovers can al­so ex­pect to hear some clas­si­cal ranges in the arrange­ment, as clas­si­cal mu­sic is her favourite genre of mu­sic.

In terms of her gen­der, Abra­ham said she has not giv­en it much thought. "I don't think of my­self as a fe­male arranger. I most­ly think of my­self as be­ing a young arranger and what I can bring to the ta­ble. Work­ing with Skif­fle, they give me the re­spect as an arranger." Now un­der the pan mi­cro­scope, the young woman, a dou­ble math­e­mat­ics and mu­sic de­gree hold­er, who has nev­er arranged for a medi­um sized or large band, is not daunt­ed by her prospects. In fact she wel­comes the chal­lenge. "It is a tran­si­tion, from work­ing with a small band, es­pe­cial­ly when you have to con­cen­trate on try­ing to get the pow­er and just the im­por­tant lines. Some­times a lot of the back­ground mu­sic gets a lit­tle lost." "Work­ing with Skif­fle, I am now more aware, I can us­es my bass­es, how I want. I can do what ever I want with the mid­dle sec­tion," she said. Abra­ham al­so ex­pressed joy at hav­ing to work with so may G-Pans at Skif­fle. "A lot of times you get so ac­cus­tomed to work­ing with the con­ven­tion­al in­stru­ments with the lim­it­ed range. With the G Pan, I can have a wider range." Re­call­ing the of­fer to arrange for a large band, Abra­ham a Holy Name Con­vent stu­dent and "town girl" from Bel­mont, who played with All Stars, said it was a dream come true, but at first she thought Re­grel­lo was jok­ing.

"Be­cause there are so many oth­er ex­pe­ri­enced arrangers out there. That night, when the of­fer came, I re­mem­ber I could not sleep. I was re­al­ly ex­cit­ed and then the en­thu­si­asm died a bit when I thought I would be com­ing up against a mae­stro like Boogsie and oth­ers. "But Skif­fle has re­al­ly made me very com­fort­able. I have set­tled down. I am im­pressed with the ded­i­ca­tion of the play­ers who show sup­port and re­spect while I am ex­per­i­ment­ing. "They con­tin­u­ous­ly re­in­force their be­lief in me, so that re­al­ly helps. I like the south­ern hos­pi­tal­i­ty. The at­mos­phere is re­al­ly dif­fer­ent from All Stars was a more ma­ture band, but at Skif­fle 70 per cent of the play­ers are un­der 20, so it's more like a peer re­la­tion­ship we have." Speak­ing about her chances in this year's com­pe­ti­tion, Abra­ham in­tends to put on her game face and go out there with ut­most con­fi­dence. "I think we can make the fi­nals and chal­lenge the oth­er top bands, but the judges' de­ci­sion is fi­nal." Skif­fle Bunch will be per­form­ing Play Your­self, com­posed by Clive Tele­maque and vo­calised by Crazy.