Pe­ter Ray Blood

The ques­tion on every­one's lips on Sun­day was, "What is to be achieved?" The main play­ers were all there–gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion, dig­ni­taries, cler­ics, mu­si­cians, spon­sor reps, hun­dreds of cops and sol­diers, emer­gency and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel, and thou­sands of spec­ta­tors–all in­gre­di­ents for the mak­ing of a very suc­cess­ful ven­ture. Staged by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Pan Trin­ba­go, Pan Re­lay was or­gan­ised, ac­cord­ing to ad­vi­sor to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Roy Au­gus­tus, "to give (Wit­co) Des­per­a­does the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stay on the (Laven­tille) hill to pre­pare for Panora­ma (2011), and to keep the place (Laven­tille) safe." I agree with Au­gus­tus that the true test is still to come dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

As I made my way up Laven­tille Road in a maxi taxi shut­tle, pro­vid­ed by or­gan­is­ers from On D Greens on Pic­cadil­ly Street, I mused while ob­serv­ing some un­savoury look­ing char­ac­ters lin­ing the wind­ing road­way.

Had I been a bona fide gangs­ta, I would not on­ly be at my best be­hav­iour that Sun­day, but I would be out en­joy­ing my­self to the max, dressed to kill, bling­ing, with my girls in tow, at a well-stocked bar with my favourite bev­er­ages. As a gans­ta, this show of mil­i­tary force and sweet pan mu­sic was on­ly for five hours and, as morn­ing fol­lows night, Mon­day morn­ing was sure to fol­low when I could re­sume my work and ne­far­i­ous and un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ties...un­afraid of po­lice, army and the law.

De­cem­ber 5 was like nir­vana to any true-blood pan en­thu­si­ast and archiev­er of good pan mu­sic. Al­most every "big gun" in the north-east pan world ei­ther per­formed along the road­way, at the top of the hill at the Our La­dy of Fa­ti­ma Shrine, or in Des­per­a­does' pa­n­yard. On D Greens, be­gin­ning prompt­ly at the ad­ver­tised 3 pm start, and putting to lie the no­tion that pan­nists "doh like to play pan in de day, and in hot sun," was reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on PCS Sil­ver Stars. The New­town band was fol­lowed by Blue Di­a­monds, Phase II Pan Groove and Gon­za­les Sheik­ers.

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