Sean Nero

Ken­neth Gup­py Brown will re­place Am­rit Sama­roo as arranger for nine-time Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­ons bp Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra for Panora­ma 2010. The sur­prise de­vel­op­ment fol­lows the sack­ing of Am­rit Sama­roo on the week­end by the Rene­gades board of di­rec­tors–end­ing an un­in­ter­rupt­ed 40-year Sama­roo mu­sic dy­nasty with the Char­lotte Street pow­er­house. Dr Jit Sama­roo was the arranger for the band for 38 years un­til his health failed. His son, who took Rene­gades Youth Steel Or­ches­tra to a hat-trick of wins at the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Panora­ma lev­el, was hand­ed the ba­ton to con­tin­ue shap­ing Rene­gades mu­si­cal fu­ture in the adult Panora­ma for 2008 and 2009 re­spec­tive­ly. While Rene­gades pres­i­dent Michael Mar­cano yes­ter­day con­firmed that man­age­ment had giv­en Brown the job to pre­pare the band for com­pe­ti­tion in un­der 20 days, Sama­roo was still await­ing a de­ci­sion from the ex­ec­u­tive.

The band's tune of choice was Ed­win Pouchet's "Bat­tle Zone", sung by Anslem Dou­glas. Up to last night, both Dr Jit Sama­roo and bp chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Robert Ri­ley were un­aware of the de­vel­op­ment. Mar­cano said: "We were un­able to agree on terms and con­di­tions for his ser­vices. It's not that he is no longer the arranger. He will not arrange this year. We de­cid­ed to try some­thing dif­fer­ent. There are no hard feel­ings. "When Jit fell ill we were in a quandary for an arranger. Since that the band took the de­ci­sion to work with a num­ber of young peo­ple in the event that the same should hap­pen. We have worked with Du­vone Stew­art and Ken­neth Gup­py."

Lament­ing that com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween he and Rene­gades' man­age­ment had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, Sama­roo said the sep­a­ra­tion was mu­tu­al. "My heart is with the band. I grew up watch­ing my fa­ther work with the band, but a dis­agree­ment on the mu­si­cal di­rec­tion of the band led to this. "Peo­ple still see me as a lit­tle boy. I want­ed re­spect, but some peo­ple would have said it was mon­ey. Mon­ey was not an is­sue for me. It's tick­lish for my ca­reer," Sama­roo said. He made it clear he had noth­ing per­son­al with the play­ers and that he has al­ways done it out of love. "We used to op­er­ate as a fam­i­ly. I have a lot to of­fer, but I'm sor­ry it won't be with Rene­gades," he said.