Wes­ley Gib­bings

It was clear last Sun­day that all 14 Large Band se­mi-fi­nal­ists had de­ter­mined to up their game in one of the keen­est pan show­downs in decades. Every­body im­proved on their scores, and in many cas­es, mar­gins closed.

Play­ing last, af­ter mid­night, BP Rene­gades, with a scin­til­lat­ing Du­vone Stew­art arrange­ment of Black Stal­in’s 1991 hit Feel­ing to Par­ty en­tered the pro­ceed­ings with a slen­der 1.5-point lead over Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus which had scored 266.5 in the pa­n­yard pre­lim­i­nar­ies last week.

Sun­day’s re­sults how­ev­er re­flect­ed a widened four-point gap be­tween the top two bands. Af­ter the two bands per­formed, there was clear crowd sup­port for what they had heard, in the form of stand­ing ova­tions in the Grand Stand and bois­ter­ous rev­el­ry in the North Stand – though the crowd there had dwin­dled sub­stan­tial­ly by the time BP Rene­gades took to the stage.

More than once, stage an­nounc­ers called for or­der in the bulging North Stand and warn­ing that the en­tire event could have been shut down if pa­trons did not “clear the aisles.”

On at least two oc­ca­sions, as well, bands be­gan their per­for­mances over the sound of mu­sic emerg­ing from the near­by Greens. For the most part, though, per­form­ers and dee­jays on the Greens com­plied with the stip­u­la­tion to mute their ac­tiv­i­ties while steel­bands played.

The keen­ness of the com­pe­ti­tion at the pre­lim­i­nar­ies had be­lied a 17-point dif­fer­en­tial be­tween BP Rene­gade’s rank­ing and RBC Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters’ score of 251. On Sun­day, the mar­gin grew to a 17-point gap be­tween the top per­former and RBC Re­demp­tion Sounds which re­mained in cel­lar po­si­tion and is now out of the rest of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, go­ing in­to Sun­day’s se­mi-fi­nal round, the top five were all mul­ti­ple Panora­ma win­ners. BP Rene­gades with 11 wins, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus with four, Massy Trinidad All Stars (sec­ond in the pre­lim­i­nary round) with 10, HAD­CO Phase II Pan Groove sev­en and Pro­man Star­lift three.

Su­per-achiev­er, Des­per­a­does with a record 12 Panora­ma wins, went in­to Sun­day’s en­counter in 12th place. The band has al­so had a record of re­mark­able Panora­ma turn­arounds. There was some ev­i­dence that a re­ver­sal is in process as they came in tied in ninth po­si­tion with 262 points – a 10-point in­crease over the band’s pre­lim­i­nary tal­ly.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with six of the 14 bands play­ing pre-2023 favourites, the semis ap­peared at times to be a con­test be­tween old and new pan-ap­pro­pri­ate mu­sic.

Ex­o­dus and Pro­man Star­lift dug deep with 1976 hits – Tourist Leg­go (Ex­o­dus) and Spar­row’s Witch Doc­tor (Star­lift).

Oth­er bands that ven­tured in­to the mu­si­cal archives were Shell In­vaders, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, and Buc­cooneers, all play­ing Black Stal­in’s Bun Dem. In fact, the ca­lyp­so great who died on De­cem­ber 28, was the most played per­former on the evening – four times over­all when you add Rene­gades’ se­lec­tion.

Like­wise, among the bands play­ing cur­rent hits, three of them of­fered dif­fer­ent arrange­ments of Voic­es’ Long Live So­ca – NL­CB Fon­claire, Des­per­a­does, and RBC Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters. They, iron­i­cal­ly, played in po­si­tions one, two and four on Sun­day – with a break for Skif­fle play­ing a tidy Kendall Williams/Marc Brooks/Odie Franklin arrange­ment of Bun Dem.

There had been con­cerns about All Stars’ mu­si­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Stage on Fire in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies, and a se­mi-fi­nal re-jig was ap­par­ent, notwith­stand­ing the band’s third place stand­ing fol­low­ing the pre­lim­i­nary round. They how­ev­er slid one place down­ward, al­beit with mar­gin­al ad­just­ments to the arrange­ment.

It was al­so clear that de­spite Rene­gade’s pre­ci­sion de­liv­ery at the pa­n­yard last Wednes­day, Stew­art held ad­di­tion­al aces up his hy­per­ac­tive sleeves. So too with most of the oth­er arrangers and some may have not­ed Carl­ton “Zan­da” Alexan­der’s ad­di­tion­al work with Des­per­a­does fol­low­ing a dis­ap­point­ing pre­lim­i­nary plac­ing.

The typ­i­cal­ly un­pre­dictable Len “Boogsie” Sharpe al­so clear­ly re-di­rect­ed some of Phase II Pan Groove’s en­er­gy on We Come out to Par­ty, lead­ing to its place­ment swap with All Stars at the top five.

De­spite Am­rit Sama­roo’s en­er­getic in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Ju­bi­la­tion for Su­per­novas and a re­sult­ing im­prove­ment in the score – from 254 to 261 - the band was rel­e­gat­ed to a 12th place tie with Pro­man Star­lift.

The first note was struck by NL­CB Fon­claire at 6.45 pm af­ter the band had be­gun oc­cu­py­ing the stage even be­fore the last Medi­um Band, Pam­beri, had prop­er­ly mo­bilised to ex­it. By 12.15 am Mon­day, it was all over.

As has been the case in times past, room for both as­cent and de­scent was avail­able on the Sa­van­nah Big Stage. This year was no ex­cep­tion.