SAN­DRA L BLOOD

They start­ed in ear­ly April, blow­ing up so­cial me­dia with their videoed ren­di­tion of Heal the World dur­ing the ini­tial stage of the pan­dem­ic’s glob­al lock­down. In­cor­po­rat­ing 15 of their male and fe­male lo­cal and for­eign sea­soned pan play­ers, re­spec­tive­ly, BP Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra would present to the world a sooth­ing, first-rate re­pro­duc­tion of the 1992 re­lease from the late Michael Jack­son.

Lead­ing by ex­am­ple, this ef­fort in­spired oth­er steel or­ches­tras and so­lo pan play­ers in and out of T&T, to do same—ser­e­nade the world, stim­u­late es­sen­tial work­ers, as­sist pan lovers at home break the couch-pota­to bore­dom and en­cour­age them to get up and dance, sing, munch and sip on their favourite snack and drink; get some­thing and wave; so­cialise through watch par­ties and on­go­ing ex­change of com­ments dur­ing per­for­mances…en­joy the “new nor­mal.”

A spe­cial year for Rene­gades in more ways than one, as apart from as­sist­ing with heal­ing the world and ad­vo­cate safe prac­tices, they cel­e­brate their 50-year part­ner­ship with their spon­sor fam­i­ly, BPTT, where sign­ing took place in June back then.

Lofty phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties were planned, ini­ti­at­ed on Jan­u­ary 20 with a gala con­cert at Queen’s Hall, but it was at the band’s spon­sor-night gath­er­ing at their pa­n­yard, on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, on Feb­ru­ary 13, where the 50th was sealed with a Tai­ji­tu kiss, the Yin and Yang.

The Chi­nese re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy dic­tate that the Yin rep­re­sents dark­ness, cold­ness and hard­ness, while the Yang is the white swirl rep­re­sent­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty, warmth and soft­ness among oth­er things, but the two work to­geth­er for the com­mon good. The yin-yang com­pris­es “sets of two op­pos­ing and com­ple­ment­ing prin­ci­ples, and is a com­plex re­la­tion­al con­cept in Chi­nese cul­ture,” ad­vis­es Dr Jun Shan, PhD, and pres­i­dent of Csym­bol.com and ArtChops, on­line guides to Chi­nese cul­ture and char­ac­ters.

On that evening, ac­cord­ing­ly, pres­i­dents of BPTT and Rene­gades Claire Fitz­patrick and Col­in Greaves, ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, and pre­sent­ed the Yin and Yang.

As the force of the pan­dem­ic keeps the world on its head redi­rect­ing to stretch minds and al­ter plans, many re­lat­ed phys­i­cal cel­e­bra­to­ry events have been squashed, but in keep­ing fans con­nect­ed, of rel­e­vance, and af­ford­ing the world op­por­tu­ni­ties to cel­e­brate their gold­en an­niver­sary with them, Rene­gades em­barked up­on a se­ries of vi­ral en­ter­tain­ment.

In­spired by their Heal the World video, was their six-se­ries, prime­time Wednes­day’s Beat the PAN­dem­ic so­lo con­certs, show­cas­ing six Rene­gades stage-side play­ers, which start­ed on April 8 with per­for­mance by their mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Du­vone Stew­art, and con­clud­ed on May 13 with the per­for­mance of their ju­nior steel or­ches­tra’s drill mas­ter Bar­ry Man­nette.

This gave rise to a height­ened prime­time block­buster con­cert, Beat the PAN­dem­ic…The Al­liance, on May 20, where the six play­ers al­ter­nate­ly com­bined their tal­ent and scope of mu­si­cal genre, of­fer­ing the world an in­ter­wo­ven fab­ric of gospel; reg­gae; clas­sic; vin­tage ca­lyp­so, so­ca, dis­co; rock; ra­ma­jay; and sen­ti­men­tal, fol­lowed by an af­ter par­ty with DJ Avaron (Avaron Van­loo), on-air pre­sen­ter and pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant, of Cal­gary, Cana­da.

From May 1, their Be­yond Hori­zon Re­live the 70th An­niver­sary Con­cert Ex­pe­ri­ence be­gan, with a sec­ond and third held on May 8 and 22, fea­tur­ing the se­nior and ju­nior steel or­ches­tras, re­spec­tive­ly.

Con­tin­u­ing to fly the T&T pan flag at full mast en­ter­tain­ing and en­gag­ing the world in this vir­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence, a new slate of Wednes­day block­buster fea­ture per­for­mances is in store from May 27.All con­certs, 8 pm, free thus far.