Pe­ter Ray Blood

What a Panora­ma fi­nal. Ex­cel­lent mu­sic, great cos­tumery, fire­works and plen­ty con­fet­ti, and an earth­quake. All this and more cel­e­brat­ed the 50th an­niver­sary of the an­nu­al steel­band com­pe­ti­tion, held on Sat­ur­day night, be­fore a large au­di­ence at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Just as Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars com­menced its de­fence of the large con­ven­tion­al band ti­tle, per­form­ing Lean "Smooth" Ed­wards' arrange­ment of Clive Tele­maque's Bounce & Dri­ve, a 5.0 earth­quake hit at 1.27 am. Very few pa­trons at the venue felt the seis­mic oc­cur­rence but many fans, on hear­ing of the quake af­ter­wards, jok­ing­ly quipped that it was All Stars' per­for­mance shak­ing the Sa­van­nah.

De­spite a riv­et­ing per­for­mance by All Stars, it was Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, the penul­ti­mate com­peti­tor in the large band cat­e­go­ry, which re­al­ly gave an earth-shak­ing per­for­mance.

Con­duct­ed by arranger Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, the Wood­brook band notched its sixth lien on the cov­et­ed ti­tle play­ing Sharpe's More Love, de­thron­ing All Stars by five points.

Sat­ur­day's fi­nals, con­test­ed by the medi­um and large steel­bands, got off to strong start at 7.35 pm with the per­for­mance by San Fer­nan­do Pan El­ders, play­ing Du­vonne Stew­art's arrange­ment of De Fos­to's We Come Out to Play. By the halfway mark of the medi­um bands, at 9.10 pm, with five of the ten fi­nal­ists fac­ing the judges, it came as no sur­prise that the en­tire pro­gramme nev­er end­ed un­til 3.10 am, six hours and 40 min­utes af­ter its start.

Steel­band's um­brel­la body, Pan Trin­ba­go, needs to have a se­ri­ous look at this an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion, if on­ly for its length. Per­haps it is time that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to hav­ing the small and medi­um bands con­test their fi­nals at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, with the sin­gle pan en­sem­bles hav­ing their's at a venue like Vic­to­ria Square or South Quay. This would leave Panora­ma Sat­ur­day night ex­clu­sive­ly to the large con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tras.

With three large bands tak­ing an hour to per­form, Pan Trin­ba­go can then in­crease the num­ber of fi­nal­ists from ten to 12, start the show at 7 pm, so that it will end around mid­night.

White seemed to be the pre­ferred choice of colour for the mu­si­cians, while most of the bands seemed to in­clude the use of con­fet­ti to high­light their per­for­mances.A new fea­ture as well was the "war­rior cry" ut­tered by many mu­si­cians be­fore their play­ing, es­pe­cial­ly by the To­ba­go bands. Even­tu­al medi­um band win­ner, NL­CB Buc­cooneers, was one of the best dec­o­rat­ed bands on the night. Per­form­ing Seion Gomez's arrange­ment of the late Mae­stro's Gold, the To­bagob­and had large im­ages of the lo­cal he­roes named in the ca­lyp­so mount­ed on gold mo­tifs atop its racks. Over­all Buc­cooneers gave a fan­tas­tic per­for­mance, and its win was well de­served.

On the night, some of the arrangers imag­i­na­tive­ly in­ter­pret­ed their se­lec­tions. Among these were Sharpe (More Love); Ray Hol­man (Su­pana); Win­ston Gor­don (More than an oil drum); Pel­ham God­dard (Gold); Shel­ton Besson (We Come Out to Play); and, Gomez.

Phase II's per­for­mance was re­al­ly a win­ning one as Sharpe taste­ful­ly ex­ploit­ed nu­ances of tone and pitch with his cap­ti­vat­ing arrange­ment, ex­e­cut­ed by a per­fect­ly re­hearsed and or­ches­trat­ed ag­gre­ga­tion. Pa­trons were fas­ci­nat­ed as well by the con­fi­dence and dex­ter­i­ty ex­ud­ed by ten-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty School stu­dent Ruth Bartholomew, mas­ter­ing the tenor, up front and cen­tre with her much old­er coun­ter­parts.

As in every Panora­ma fi­nal since 1963, there is deep dis­ap­point­ment for many par­tic­i­pants af­ter the re­sults are an­nounced and, this year, among the most dis­ap­point­ed had to be two for­mer cham­pi­ons, Wit­co Des­per­a­does and PCS Sil­ver Stars, who placed a low­ly sixth and eighth re­spec­tive­ly, de­spite ex­e­cut­ing seem­ing­ly im­proved per­for­mances from their semi­fi­nal show­ing.

By plac­ing sec­ond, All Stars was de­nied a hat-trick of na­tion­al ti­tles, which must have been a dis­ap­point­ment. There may have been a lit­tle con­so­la­tion though for the leg­endary Duke Street band as the pub­lic texted it as win­ner of the Peo­ple's Choice award, ahead of Phase II and Des­per­a­does, re­spec­tive­ly.

Se­cur­ing the Peo­ple's Choice award among the medi­um bands was Pan El­ders, who placed tenth over­all by the judges. Run­ners-up in this cat­e­go­ry were Buc­cooneers and Courts Laven­tille Sound Spe­cial­ists, re­spec­tive­ly. Sound Spe­cial­ists placed sec­ond in the medi­um band fi­nal, ahead of last year's medi­um cham­pi­on Petrotrin Katzen­jam­mers.

Come Sat­ur­day night, Pan Trin­ba­go cul­mi­nates its C2K13 agen­da by stag­ing Champs in Con­cert at the Sa­van­nah, at 7 pm. At this show, the Panora­ma win­ners in every cat­e­go­ry will per­form, along with some spe­cial guest artistes.