Pe­ter Ray Blood

Be­fore go­ing any fur­ther, I must ad­mit that I made an er­ror in last Fri­day's col­umn when I ex­pressed con­cern about the mur­der rate pass­ing 400 for the first time in my life­time.

Truth be told, the mur­der rate has pre­vi­ous­ly crossed 500, reg­is­ter­ing 550 in 2008, and 509 the fol­low­ing year. Thanks to read­ers who re­spond­ed to cor­rect me. But, may I add, one mur­der, 40 or 400, in a coun­try of 1.3 mil­lion cit­i­zens, is un­ac­cept­able. Up to press time yes­ter­day, we had reached 22 mur­ders for 2014 thus far. So who knows, we may yet break all records.

Six days be­fore the of­fi­cial cli­max of Christ­mas, the so­ca switch be­gan in earnest with Yorke Inc's New Year's Day Dutch Par­ty, Ann Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin. Per­sis­tent rain put a damper on the par­ty but guests stuck it out, danc­ing un­der tents un­til mid­night.

Fash­ioned af­ter the old-school, tra­di­tion­al house par­ty, guests were re­quired to walk with a bot­tle to the Yorke shindig, this year cel­e­brat­ing its 35th an­niver­sary. The par­ty was first held at Ger­ard Yorke's Wood­brook res­i­dence on Al­fre­do Street. The first "par­ty" was sup­posed to be a small lime in his gallery but end­ed up with a yard-full of peo­ple. Its first disc jock­ey was Christo­pher Poy­er, suc­ceed­ed by DJ Amitaf.

On New Year's night the DJs were Du­ane of Slam 100FM, CG and Dr Ross of CT Vibe 105.1FM, King Int, Bran­don, Kei­th Suite and Kabu­ki. Al­so seen were so­ca artistes Black­ie and Os­car B.

Guests were greet­ed by a trio of sam­ba dancers from N9 Dancers, led by Nali­ni Akal. They were com­ple­ment­ed by the nu­mer­ous el­e­gant­ly-clad fe­male guests in at­ten­dance.

The week­end's fete ac­tiv­i­ty reached fever on Fri­day night when Pan Trin­ba­go of­fi­cial­ly launched the Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. The fol­low­ing night, Tribe ICE, the first Car­ni­val "big fete," was held at Jean Pierre Com­plex, eas­i­ly the biggest par­ty on the week­end, with the largest turnout.

Pan Trin­ba­go's first at­tempt to launch a Na­tion­al Panora­ma in the form of a fete was a suc­cess, though not ex­pect­ed to make too much of a prof­it. Per­haps, for sub­se­quent stag­ings of this event, Pan Trin­ba­go ought to ad­ver­tise on ra­dio sta­tions young peo­ple lis­ten to, like Slam 100FM? Or­gan­is­ers claim that a mag­is­trate or­dered the steel­band or­gan­i­sa­tion to pay a hefty fee for 45 po­lice of­fi­cers. They have in­ter­pret­ed this as ex­ploita­tion and stig­ma­ti­sa­tion against the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty.

A sur­pris­ing­ly large crowd turned out ear­ly, some by 9 pm, for the all-pan af­fair, al­though most pa­trons seemed to be the reg­u­lars who at­tend pan events na­tion­wide. This ven­ture is Pan Trin­ba­go's at­tempt to re­turn pan as a main source of mu­sic in Car­ni­val fetes, ap­par­ent­ly fash­ioned af­ter Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars' suc­cess­ful So­ca by the Riv­er ini­tia­tive. Seen among those in at­ten­dance were Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas and deputy Port-of-Spain may­or Ker­ron Valen­tine.

In­clud­ed on the billing were 2013 Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, mul­ti­ple cham­pi­on Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, To­ba­go's Pan Ex­plo­sion, Free­lancers and Steel Fuzion. The lat­ter pleas­ant­ly sur­prised every­one by bring­ing two vo­cal­ists who sang many of the pop­u­lar songs by so­ca artistes in­clud­ing Machel, Bun­ji and Mr Fa­mous. The fete went be­yond 2 am, and was end­ed by Roy Cape All Stars, fea­tur­ing Blaxx and Black Stal­in.

Pressed for an ex­pla­na­tion of al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety by Pan Trin­ba­go fol­low­ing last year's Pan is Beau­ti­ful XII, pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az as­sured that all out­stand­ing prize monies would be paid to win­ners as soon as the Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­istry re­leas­es funds. He said "un­spon­sored bands" were al­ready paid.

So­ca mu­sicin the ear

Judg­ing from the pro­fu­sion of new mu­sic al­ready heard on the air­waves, Car­ni­val 2014 is ex­pect­ed to be a pul­sat­ing af­fair. For starters, lots of peo­ple are ea­ger­ly await­ing what's to come from Bun­ji Gar­lin in the wake of his suc­cess­es last year at the Soul Train and MTV Ig­gy awards. His Truck and Red Light Dis­trict are on heavy ro­ta­tion. The usu­al sus­pects, in­clu­sive of Machel Mon­tano, De­stra, Ben­jai, Kes, Na­dia Bat­son, Fay-Ann, Patrice Roberts, Denise Bel­fon, Blaxx and Su­perBlue al­so have po­ten­tial hits on ro­ta­tion.

One of my favourite tracks this year is The Seam­stress by Prophet Ben­jamin, who again repris­es his hu­mor­ous side as he did last year with Throw Wine.

Oth­er tracks worth a lis­ten in­clude Car­ni­val Vir­gins (Blaxx); Bruck It (Machel Mon­tano); Run Away (KI & Olatun­ji); Pro­fes­sor Feter (KI); Loli­ta (KI & Neval Chate­lal); SeeAl­ice/Tief Back Mih Woman (Black­ie); Drink Some­thing (Shal Mar­shall); Mash Up/Vir­gin (De­stra); Liar Liar (Mar­cia Mi­ran­da); Shake Yuh Bum Bum (Timaya); Chut­ney Ta­ban­ca (Patch); Boom Boom (Anslem Dou­glas); Doh Beg (Ker­win Du Bois); Catch Me (Faye-Ann Lyons); On the Truck (Ms Alysha); Loose (Na­dia Bat­son & Lyrikal); Lock­down (Ker­win Du Bois & Lyrikal); Bad Habits (Kes); Rol­ly Pol­ly (Mr Kil­la); Wet Fete (Gypt­ian & Kes); Play de Mu­sic � Man­go Rid­dem (Kes); Nev­er See Come See (Kes); Cheap Man (God­frey Cher­ry Ince); Nev­er Done (5 Star Akeil & Na­dia Bat­son); To Meh Heart (5 Star Akeil); Sunani (Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter & Neval Chete­lal); Give It All to Mih/Lick It In (Ben­jai); In­side ah Dat (Pe­ter C Lewis); Par­ty Be­hind Mih (Crys­tal "CC" Charles); and, every­thing on the San Fer­nan­do rhythm.

Pan in the air

Songs de­signed for the steel­band and this year's fes­ti­val are as in­fec­tious and jumpy as the oth­er so­ca of­fer­ings. For in­stance, there's Su­perBlue with Spankin' in Trib­ute to An­tho­ny Williams, a dit­ty writ­ten by the singer and pro­duced by Jue­lio at Nu Gen­er­a­tion Stu­dios.

Oth­er sweet pan songs in­clude Pan is Car­ni­val, com­posed by Pel­ham God­dard, with lyrics by Alvin Daniel and sung by Rod­er­ick "Chucky" Gor­don, and Crazy's Pan in Yuh Pw­ef­fen.

Al­so pro­duc­ing a pan song is de­fend­ing joint In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca monarch Machel Mon­tano, with No Scene, while De­stra con­tin­ues her com­mit­ment to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment with First Time.

In terms of what steel­bands may be play­ing, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus' choice is Pan is Car­ni­val while PCS Sil­ver Stars has opt­ed for Liam Teague's The Rea­son. Vet­er­an Wood­brook band, now based on Mu­cu­rapo Road, White Oak Star­lift will be play­ing Kei­th Sal­cedo's arrange­ment of Mon­tano's Hap­pi­est Man Alive. In the East, So­lo Har­monites has cho­sen Men of Steel, to be arranged by Seion Gomez; and, bird­song has re­tained the ser­vices of US pan­man/com­pos­er Andy Narell to arrange We Kin­da Mu­sic.

Go­ing South, La Brea Nightin­gales, which shook up the Sa­van­nah at last year's com­pe­ti­tion, is re­turn­ing with Pan in the At­mos­phere, arranged by Ter­rence "BJ" Mar­celle. An­oth­er south­ern band to reck­on with, Siparia Del­tones, mu­si­cal­ly led by Carl­ton Zan­da Alexan­der, will per­form Play More Lo­cal.

Like last year when Clive Tele­maque com­posed a humdinger of a song for Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, he's back again with two com­po­si­tions this year, named Ex­cite­ment and This It. I am cer­tain one of Tele­maque's bands, To­ba­go's Carib Dix­ieland, will play one of these songs.

I am sad­dened that no one will ever hear Em­manuel "Oba" Synette's newest com­po­si­tion, one which I would have liked hear­ing Robert Greenidge arrange for Wit­co Des­per­a­does. Synette was the com­pos­er of In My House and Pic­ture on My Wall, songs which gave Des­per­a­does back-to-back Na­tion­al Panora­ma ti­tles in 1999 and 2000. But, the laid back in­di­vid­ual that he is, he seems to pre­fer play­ing his com­po­si­tions for pas­sen­gers in his ve­hi­cle in­stead of push­ing them on the air or for steel­bands.

Go­ing for king

The "se­ri­ous", con­ven­tion­al ca­lyp­soes are al­so out and two love­ly ones are by for­mer na­tion­al mon­archs Singing San­dra and Kurt Allen. San­dra's dit­ty is named Madi­ba, a com­pre­hen­sive­ly com­posed song by Christophe "Quasar" Grant and arranged by south's Ju­nior "Ibo" Joseph. Allen, who is a past In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch as well, has penned the thought-pro­vok­ing Moun­tain, an in­spi­ra­tional dou­ble en­ten­dre in­spired by El Tu­cuche, Trinidad's tallest moun­tain.

And, so the mu­sic of Car­ni­val 2014 is out and aplen­ty, and is one com­mod­i­ty this year's fes­ti­val will not short on.

Car­ni­val 2014 Hot Tracks

�2 Spankin' � Su­perBlue

�2 Epic � Machel Mon­tano

�2 Hap­pi­est Man Alive � Machel Mon­tano

�2 Mon­ster Win­er - Ker­win Du Bois, feat Lil Rick

�2 Be­hav­ing the Worst � Skin­ny Fab­u­lous

�2 Red Light Dis­trict � Bun­ji Gar­lin

�2 Truck on the Road � Bun­ji Gar­lin

�2 Roll Call � De­stra

�2 Blazin' � Chucky

�2 Play More Lo­cal � Mr Fa­mous

�2 Con­quer Meh � Lyrikal

�2 Bum Bum � Timaya

�2 Just a Lit­tle Bit � De­stra

�2 Feel 2 Wuk � Shal Mar­shall

�2 Ten to One � Blaxx