AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

De­spite not hav­ing a pan-yard to call home, Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors con­tin­ues to de­fy all odds with their con­sec­u­tive Panora­ma win.

The To­ba­go-based steel­band con­tin­ues to bask in their glo­ry, fol­low­ing last Sat­ur­day’s Panora­ma small con­ven­tion­al bands fi­nals.

Arranged by To­ba­go na­tive, Ojay Richards, Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors com­mand­ed the coun­try’s at­ten­tion, with their elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance of the so­ca clas­sic, Col­in Lu­cas’ Dol­lar Wine.

Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors was one of the six To­ba­go small steel bands to com­pete in last week’s cham­pi­onship.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Richards ad­mit­ted that To­ba­go con­tin­ues to be a force to be reck­oned with, due to the sac­ri­fices they are forced to make.

“Mon­ey has to be spent to come down to pre­pare, to come down to Trinidad. It’s not like we just home in our back­yard. We put in the in­vest­ment in­to our bands and in our arrangers…we take it se­ri­ous­ly,” Richards said.

With there be­ing a two-year break since Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors’ 2020 vic­to­ry, Richards said a lot had to be done to over­come their chal­lenges to en­sure a con­sec­u­tive panora­ma crown­ing.

“De­pend­ing on stor­age spaces or what­not, pans may be­come rusty and be­come un­us­able, they have to be re­fur­bished. The play­ers and all might be­come, you know, rusty and you have to loosen them up again and warm up again,” he said.

The 11-year-old steel­band still has no phys­i­cal space that be­longs to them to con­duct prac­tice ses­sions and store their in­stru­ments. In­stead, they utilise the car park at the Shaw Park Food Hub, hold­ing on­to their be­lief that ‘God will pro­vide.’

“If any­thing, it gave us more courage to ac­tu­al­ly work hard to win. So we could prob­a­bly, you know, look good in some­one’s eyes and they de­cide you know, ‘let’s help out Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors to get them in­to a pan the­atre or some­thing.’”

When asked what is the key to grab­bing two con­sec­u­tive wins, Richards said, “be­ing dis­ci­plined in your prepa­ra­tion.”

“Our goal is to take it one year at a time…And you nev­er know, based on our con­sis­ten­cy, we may or may not up­grade from a small, to medi­um to a large (band).”