With that victory, Guinness Cavaliers, and south, had arrived. They had come into town, taken on some of the greatest bands we have produced, at the top of their game, and had won in a landslide. Following their victory, the country witnessed one of the most wonderful gestures to be seen in the steelband movement at the time, which was that Renegades allowed Cavaliers to store their pans in their panyard over the Carnival period.
The band had decided after the victory to play mas in Port-of-Spain that year, and needed a place to store their pans and from where their mas would originate. Renegades obliged. This is Renegades of 1965, who had the Lawbreakers Gang with men like Papito Bostock, Dr Rat and Little Axe as prime supporters. And they took Guinness Cavaliers in and the band was able to play its music on the roads of Port-of-Spain throughout that Carnival.
The next year, 1966, with Kitchener's My Brother, Guinness Cavaliers came second, and I would be tempted to say the judges cheated, except that the winners in that year was Despers playing Sparrow's Melda. Let's leave that alone.In 1967, Guinness came again, playing Kitchener's Sixty-Seven and winning the finals. In 1969 they came back yet again with Mas in Brooklyn coming second but winning the people's choice. These two winning songs can be heard on You-tube.
In the years after 1965, one could hear the Panorama version of Melody Mas by Cavaliers played on the radio. Then that playing stopped. And I have not heard that tune again for 40 years, nor seen the music on sale anywhere. I think this to be a great tragedy. This performance by Guinness Cavaliers on final night in 1965 was inspired, and we should have to account to the generations if we cannot produce for their pleasure one of the very highest expressions of creativity we have seen on a Panorama stage.
We have to find this music and make sure that it is properly archived, along with other great Panorama and music festival performances. People would have their own opinions about what have been the great final night performances or the greatest Panorama tunes of all time.For me, among the great performances besides Melody Mas, were Pan in Harmony by Despers; Rebecca by Despers; Woman on the Bass by Catelli All Stars; Niggerman by Silver Stars; Gold by Third World; Pan Rising by Phase II, and Natasha by Starlift.
Lennox "Bobby" Mohammed, in a purple period of the 1960s, drew upon his boundless creativity to give to south Trinidad and to this country one of the glorious periods in pan when, on final night, you had to wait till you heard Guinness play before you could say who won the Panorama.In 1965 this great man gave to the country in Melody Mas the greatest Panorama performance ever, on a night of heavyweights, when he dethroned the great Panam North Stars with his previously unknown band. This man was iconic. Someone told me that he was at the funeral of Bertie Marshall and that he had gone up to eulogise him. I was happy to hear that. Bobby belonged in that company. He is one of the great panmen. He could do wonders with the minor chord.
In San Fernando, except for the excitement and great anticipation with which people greeted Southern Marines of Marabella (being shamelessly partisan here), there probably was no greater anticipation in the 1960s than that which attended the arrival of Guinness Cavaliers at library corner on Carnival day.Long before you saw the band you heard their vaunted basses, as I did one J'Ouvert Morning, when, with the band still on Lord Street and me at Library corner, I could hear the dramatic bass line of Is Paris Burning, the theme song of the movie by that name.
Theodore Lewis
St Augustine