Sean Nero

Reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on PCS Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra has giv­en del­e­gates at the just-con­clud­ed Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment (CHOGM) Con­fer­ence an­oth­er rea­son to re­turn to T&T–sweet pan mu­sic.

At the or­ches­tra's an­nu­al Parang and Steel con­cert se­ries last Sat­ur­day, held at its Tra­garete Road, New­town, Port-of-Spain, head­quar­ters, the cham­pi­on band played host to del­e­gates from the 54-coun­try bloc. Those turn­ing out for the cul­tur­al evening were tru­ly in the mood to un­wind and en­gage in an evening of sheer frol­ic. While it wasn't Sil­ver Stars' first CHOGM-re­lat­ed per­for­mance for Heads of State or del­e­gates, con­di­tions en­sured that it was the most the­atri­cal­ly in­fec­tious.

Led by Ed­win Pouchet, Sil­ver Stars had the ho­n­our of per­form­ing for Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth II and Prince Philip dur­ing their ar­rival at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port last week Thurs­day. Three days lat­er, it was at the Peo­ple's Space, lo­cat­ed at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, as ac­tiv­i­ties to mark the con­fer­ence wound down. But Sat­ur­day's show­ing al­lowed the band the lat­i­tude to fill the spot­light in all its splen­dour, leav­ing an in­deli­ble mark on those tak­ing in the sweet sounds on steel. Sil­ver Stars scored points with its de­ci­sion to open its pre­sen­ta­tion with the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Fox theme song, be­fore de­liv­er­ing main­stream favourites such as Bad from the late Michael Jack­son, Phan­tom Of the Opera from An­drew Lloyd Web­ber and Love Theme from Bar­ry White.

The band's in­ter­pre­ta­tions of ca­lyp­so se­lec­tions, such as How Many More from the late Duke, Kelvin Pope, and Par­ty from the reper­toire of Dr Leroy Cal­liste, Stal­in, sent CHOGM del­e­gates wild. Sil­ver Stars mixed in the theme for the Broad­way hit and big screen movie Ma­ma Mia and en­sured that the ex­cite­ment was sus­tained. The week­end edi­tion of Parang and Steel saw the host band share the spot­light with vo­cal­ist Wendy Shep­pard and Point Fortin-based parang group San­couche. With all the Christ­mas mu­sic on the evening's pro­gramme, it was Shep­pard treat­ment of a Spar­row med­ley, which com­prised Lizard, Mel­da as well as Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly, that saw her score big with the mass­es. San­couche had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for lay­ing down all the au­then­tic ser­e­nal on a show­case where pa­trons danced, waved and were sure­ly on the brink on mis­be­hav­ing.