In the ear­ly days of Panora­ma, the 1960s, for the se­mi-fi­nals the bands used to have to start beat­ing at the en­trance to the Sa­van­nah near Memo­r­i­al Park, and they would con­tin­ue along the track, paus­ing in front of the grand stand, be­fore leav­ing the stage.

They used to be judged as they moved along. This is the stage I wish to set for the Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals of 1965. I wasn't there for it, but that is be­side the point, be­cause what hap­pened on the track that se­mi-fi­nal Sun­day was the ar­rival of Guin­ness Cav­a­liers and the leg­end of Lennox "Bob­by" Mo­hammed.

I am rekin­dling that mo­ment in his­to­ry be­cause I have a mor­tal fear that there are cit­i­zens who are pan lovers to­day who may nev­er have heard about the band and its great cap­tain, and worse, have nev­er heard the ren­di­tion of the tune they played that day, which was Mas by Lord Melody, known since as Melody Mas.

Now in 1965, the band I was sup­port­ing in the Panora­ma was South­ern Marines. If you were from Mara­bel­la, as I was then, that is who you sup­port­ed. Now Guin­ness Cav­a­liers was from San Fer­nan­do, a new band that was a splin­ter from Gon­do­liers.

The cap­tain (and tuner) of South­ern Marines was the leg­endary Mil­ton Lyons (Squeez­er), who in his own right had won the na­tion­al ping pong soloist com­pe­ti­tion in one of the great steel­band mu­sic fes­ti­vals held at Queens Hall. In the south­ern panora­ma that year there had been fierce com­pe­ti­tion be­tween Marines and Cav­a­liers. Now these two south­ern bands had to make the trek to Port-of-Spain to com­pete in the na­tion­al se­mi-fi­nals.

The cus­tom when the band re­turned to Mara­bel­la from a big com­pe­ti­tion was for mem­bers to gath­er at the cor­ner where they re­flect­ed on how the com­pe­ti­tion went, and which per­for­mances stood out. To my sur­prise that year, the men were unan­i­mous in praise of Guin­ness Cav­a­liers.

They said Guin­ness was the last of 42 bands that year to per­form, and that peo­ple were al­ready leav­ing the Sa­van­nah, but that once the band had struck the first mem­o­rable bars of the tune, the dead­ly bass un­leashed, peo­ple scam­pered back to the Sa­van­nah from as far as Rene­gades pan yard and Jern­ing­ham Av­enue, ac­com­pa­ny­ing the band along the Sa­van­nah track for the en­tire dis­tance of their per­for­mance.

Here were South­ern Marines men, ef­fu­sive about the per­for­mance of their great south­ern ri­val, and pre­dict­ing that they would be a force in the fi­nals the next week.In­deed, when the fi­nal­ists for the Panora­ma were an­nounced the next day, Guin­ness Cav­a­liers had the high­est points. South­ern Marines, play­ing Spar­row's Solomon were al­so in­clud­ed among the 10 fi­nal­ists.

Through­out the week of the fi­nals there was fer­vent pan talk every­where, and much ex­cite­ment at the prospect that an un­known south band had tak­en the se­mi-fi­nals by storm, best­ing pow­er­hous­es like Des­per­a­does, Panam North Stars, Sil­ver Stars, and In­vaders. I was at­tend­ing John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute at the time and, to my sur­prise, my friends from town, all steeped in pan and or­di­nar­i­ly quite dis­mis­sive of south bands, were say­ing that Guin­ness was the band to beat.

Come fi­nal night and Guin­ness Cav­a­liers, led by Bob­by Mo­hammed with his fa­mous bell - used to get the band start­ed and sig­nal changes of key - de­stroyed every­body, with what to my mind, was the great­est Panora­ma per­for­mance in the en­tire his­to­ry of the event.The vic­to­ry be­gan with his choice of tune. Lord Melody was not known for au­thor­ing tunes for the steel­band, and in 1965 Guin­ness Cav­a­liers was the on­ly band play­ing his Mas.

Bob­by had heard some­thing in the tune that oth­er arrangers could not.And what he did to it was very lit­tle, ex­cept of course for the won­der­ful in­tro­duc­tion, then those splen­did lit­tle es­capades that he in­vent­ed as he moved from one pas­sage to the next.

Then there was the ten­sion he cre­at­ed be­fore the bass­es dropped thun­der­ous­ly. The tune was mag­i­cal, and Panam North Stars, win­ner of the first two panora­mas in 1963 and 1964, as well as the Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in 1962, had to set­tle for sec­ond that night, beat­en by a per­for­mance for the ages.

Con­cludes to­mor­row

Theodore Lewis

St Au­gus­tine