Joel Julien

For on­ly the third time in its his­to­ry, the Blue Di­a­monds Steel Or­ches­tra has qual­i­fied for the Panora­ma semi­fi­nal.

And the band’s cap­tain Wayne St Clair Babb is hop­ing that Blue Di­a­monds can fi­nal­ly go all the way this year.

St Clair Babb has thanked So­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano for help­ing the small con­ven­tion­al band achieve its po­ten­tial and reach this far.

The ma­jor­i­ty of pay­ers in the band are teenagers.

Mon­tano be­came to the band’s bene­fac­tor last month af­ter read­ing a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle high­light­ing the fi­nan­cial woes of the un­spon­sored steel­pan side.

He gift­ed the band with some new steel pans, a new trap set, a ban­ner, and jer­seys for all their play­ers.

When the Panora­ma judges vis­it­ed the band’s George Street, Port-of-Spain pa­n­yard on Sun­day, Mon­tano was present.

Blue Di­a­monds made it to the Panora­ma semi­fi­nal in 2006 when they played the song “Gold” by Ce­cile “Mae­stro” Hume.

They missed the fi­nal by three points then.

In 2017, the band re­turned to the Panora­ma semi­fi­nal when they played Ald­wyn “Kitch­en­er” Roberts song “Miss Tourist”.

They missed the fi­nal by sev­en points then.

This year, Blue Di­a­monds is hop­ing to make the Panora­ma fi­nal stage, St Clair Babb said.

The band is play­ing Mon­tano’s 2008 So­ca “Blaz­ing The Trail” arranged by Tris­ton Mar­cano this Panora­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to re­sults re­leased by Pan Trin­ba­go, Blue Di­a­monds is in a three-way tie for po­si­tion 19 in the small band cat­e­go­ry with a to­tal of 266 points.

They are cur­rent­ly tied with Crescen­does Mu­si­cal and Tu­na­puna Tipi­ca.

A to­tal of 30 small bands are sched­uled to be in the semi­fi­nal on Sat­ur­day.

There is cur­rent­ly al­so a three-way tie for first place at the mo­ment in the small bands com­pe­ti­tion.

The T&T De­fence Force, T&TEC New East Side Di­men­sion and Up­town Fas­ci­na­tors are all cur­rent­ly tied with 278 points at the top of the ta­ble.