Wes­ley Gib­bings

From all in­di­ca­tions, Sat­ur­day’s Panora­ma Large Con­ven­tion­al Band Fi­nals promis­es to be a humdinger of an event fol­low­ing re­mark­able move­ments up and down the points ta­ble be­tween the pre­lim­i­nary and se­mi-fi­nal rounds, ac­com­pa­nied by dra­mat­i­cal­ly evolv­ing mu­si­cal arrange­ments.

The com­pe­ti­tion is be­ing host­ed at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port of Spain from 7 pm

T&T Guardian was able to reach sev­er­al arrangers at the top, mid, and bot­tom lev­els of the points stand­ing, and the feed­back was that even close fol­low­ers of the com­pe­ti­tion, will en­counter sev­er­al pleas­ant changes when the bands play on Sat­ur­day night.

So far, on­ly BP Rene­gades and Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus have stood their ground in po­si­tions one and two, though Rene­gades widened the points gap from 1.5 to 4 at the Feb­ru­ary 5 semis. Arranger Du­vone Stew­art dis­played cre­ative dex­ter­i­ty with his ren­di­tion of Black Man Feel­ing to Par­ty and has promised even more.

Stew­art, who has copped nu­mer­ous com­pet­i­tive wins lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly, and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, was philo­soph­i­cal when ap­proached by T&T Guardian on how he sees the con­test this year. “Mu­sic is a mis­sion,” he said, “to me it is not a com­pe­ti­tion. Every­body has their own race to run, I am just run­ning the race that God has set out for me.”

As is the case with Stew­art’s Black Man, Ter­rence “BJ” Mar­celle’s arrange­ment of Tourist Leg­go has ex­pe­ri­enced an evo­lu­tion of its own, and this evening’s com­pe­ti­tion is like­ly to wit­ness even more crowd-mov­ing mu­si­cal ma­noeu­vres.

Mar­celle is not known for many fight­ing words, but says he is “feel­ing good about the tune … we worked on the tune … every­body has the vibes, every­body wants to win … we’re feel­ing good go­ing in­to this.”

At the last en­counter, HAD­CO Phase II Pan Groove swapped places with Massy Trinidad All Stars with Len “Boogsie” Sharpe’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of We Come Out To Par­ty to oc­cu­py third spot. Boogsie is well known for his free-flow­ing tin­ker­ing with all as­pects of his arrange­ments and this evening’s au­di­ence can pre­pare for a mod­i­fied take on the late Black Stal­in’s par­ty stan­dard.

All the while, it is not that All Stars has been stand­ing still. Leon “Smooth” Ed­wards and his ex­pe­ri­enced out­fit are known to hit mu­si­cal highs at the right time. Play­ing Stage on Fire, the band has been heavy on-stage the­atrics. Ed­wards is one of the most suc­cess­ful pan arrangers in Panora­ma Large Band his­to­ry with nine vic­to­ries—all with All Stars.

“The tune is nev­er fin­ished, you know,” Ed­wards said. “Even af­ter Panora­ma, you look back at the tune and say: ‘I could have done this and that’.”

“So, what I am do­ing now is look­ing close­ly at the tune and think­ing about what we will do on fi­nal night,” the All Stars arranger said when he spoke with T&T Guardian on Wednes­day.

All four front-run­ners al­so bring ex­ten­sive Panora­ma records with them. BP Rene­gades has run away with top ho­n­ours 11 times, the last time in 2019. Ex­o­dus has won 4 times, Phase II 7 times and All Stars 10 times.

Des­per­a­does, which moved up three places to eighth place at the semis, hold the all-time Panora­ma record with 12 wins, and are de­fend­ing 2020 champs.

Sil­ver Stars are two-time win­ners in 2009 and 2010, and Star­lift has won three times. All of the oth­er com­peti­tors have been keen com­peti­tors over the years, and some have been peren­ni­al win­ners in oth­er cat­e­gories.

En­ter­ing this phase of com­pe­ti­tion has how­ev­er met Pro­man Star­lift slid­ing down­ward af­ter a fifth-place per­for­mance in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies. They open this evening’s pro­ceed­ings and will be look­ing to­ward clos­ing both the mu­si­cal and com­pet­i­tive gaps.

First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas, which plays at po­si­tion 11, slipped two po­si­tions to tie with Star­lift on 12th in the semis. Arranger, Am­rit Sama­roo, says his team, com­pris­ing a com­bi­na­tion of young and ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers, will be pulling out all stops.

“We are work­ing to­wards do­ing a good show,” he said. “At this point, we re­al­ly have noth­ing to lose, so we are go­ing to give every­thing that we could.”

“I did some work on the song (Ju­bi­la­tion) based on the judges’ com­ments and based on the gen­er­al feed­back from the band and sup­port­ers,” Sama­roo added.

“We have fans to please. We have sup­port­ers to please and I don’t plan to blow up the song and do some­thing too dif­fer­ent, be­cause a lot of peo­ple were pleased with the song.”

Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars goes in­to the Fi­nals hav­ing placed ninth at the semis—down two places at the semis and tied with NL­CB Buc­cooneers and Des­per­a­does. They play ninth this evening.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Skif­fle, play­ing Black Stal­in’s Bun Dem, and which moved one place up­ward from sev­enth to sixth at the se­mi-fi­nals will be look­ing to ac­cel­er­ate the pace.

Shell In­vaders close the pro­gramme, play­ing at po­si­tion 13. They have so far held steady in fifth place at both the pre­lim­i­nar­ies and semis. Along with the oth­er 12 com­peti­tors, they are ex­pect­ed to ag­gres­sive­ly climb the lad­der to the very top.

With Rene­gades go­ing in­to the Fi­nals as odds-on favourites, tailed mar­gin­al­ly by Ex­o­dus and a com­pet­i­tive bunch on both their heels, Panora­ma 2023 promis­es to close this year’s steel­band com­pe­ti­tions on an all-time high.

side­bar

Or­der of ap­pear­ance

1. Pro­man Star­lift

2. Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Skif­fle

3. HAD­CO Phase II Pan Groove

4. Massy Trinidad All Stars

5. Des­per­a­does

6. NL­CB Buc­cooneers

7. Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus

8. NL­CB Fon­claire

9. Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars

10. T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps

11. BP Rene­gades

12. First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas

13. Shell In­vaders