Con­grat­u­la­tions must go out to the win­ners of this year’s Na­tion­al Ju­nior Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

At the end of hours of per­for­mances by some 33 young bands at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day, Guaico Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School emerged win­ners in the Pri­ma­ry School Di­vi­sion, Na­pari­ma Com­bined (a com­bi­na­tion of Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School and Na­pari­ma Col­lege) took the Sec­ondary Schools ti­tle and T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps Youth Steel Or­ches­tra copped the Un­der-21 ti­tle.

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore went on to note that record crowds turned out for the fi­nal and that the body was pleased with its suc­cess.

There were al­so some mile­stones for the win­ners.

Guaico Pres­by­ter­ian, play­ing a Tris­ton Mar­cano arrange­ment of the late Dex­ter “Blaxx” Stew­art’s Same Way, con­tin­ued their ster­ling run with a third ti­tle. They start­ed their run of ex­cel­lence with vic­to­ries in 2019 and 2020 be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic force a dis­rup­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion. They al­so won the ti­tle for the Most Sup­port­ive Band.

The school ad­min­is­tra­tion nat­u­ral­ly cel­e­brat­ed the pupils’ achieve­ment with a spe­cial as­sem­bly yes­ter­day. Most no­tably, how­ev­er, was Prin­ci­pal Mar­garet Gopaul Mo­hammed’s rev­e­la­tion that the band was made up of most­ly pupils from Stan­dards Three to Five, with the ma­jor­i­ty of them be­ing new to the ac­tiv­i­ty.

But Guaico’s suc­cess is no overnight one. The pupils had the sup­port of the teach­ers, par­ents and the com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing spon­sors in Brand Source and the East­ern Busi­ness Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, in their ef­fort, since fund­ing a steel­band is a cost­ly en­deav­our, as even the most pop­u­lar se­nior bands in the coun­try will at­test to.

The for­mu­la for suc­cess was the same for Na­pari­ma Com­bined, who re­turned to win­ner’s row, af­ter suc­cess in 2019, play­ing an arrange­ment of Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez’s Big Bad So­ca. They too had a strong sup­port base be­hind their dri­ve to the ti­tle through the Old Boys and Alum­ni bod­ies.

In­deed, it is the be­hind the scenes sup­port for these ac­tiv­i­ties which make the dif­fer­ence each year, since the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Pan in Schools pro­gramme has been al­lowed to fall in­to abeyance over the last cou­ple years.

Luck­i­ly for the Min­istry, sev­er­al of the schools fea­tured in the week­end’s ac­tiv­i­ties have kept their steel­band pro­grammes go­ing through the ef­forts of mu­sic teach­ers and sup­port­ing par­ent­ing groups. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, sev­er­al schools in im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties or who lack that kind sup­port fall by the way­side. An ex­am­ple of this was Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School, whose cam­paign this year was in jeop­ardy due to a lack of fi­nances un­til JMMB Ex­press came to their res­cue with a $20,000 spon­sor­ship. We al­so had the sce­nario of Pan Trin­ba­go hav­ing to send the pri­ma­ry school en­trants straight to the fi­nal due to the drop in the num­ber of en­trants.

Need­less to say, this news­pa­per is cer­tain that there con­tin­ues to be a keen in­ter­est in the coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment with­in schools. How­ev­er, the min­istry must do all in its pow­er to en­sure that pro­grammes to fa­cil­i­tate the ac­tiv­i­ty are main­tained, since fi­nanc­ing is a crit­i­cal as­pect of its con­tin­ued sur­vival.

For now, how­ev­er, we urge all stake­hold­ers to reach out and sup­port these young­sters in their ef­fort to keep this as­pect of T&T’s Car­ni­val cul­ture alive, since we are sure it is in good hands.