Exodus reigns in Panorama thriller

Wes­ley Gib­bings

This Panora­ma sea­son’s per­sis­tent front-run­ners, bP Rene­gades, were pipped at the line by Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus by a sin­gle point at Sat­ur­day’s Large Con­ven­tion­al Band Fi­nal, giv­ing the Tu­na­puna band its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive and sixth over­all ti­tle.

Not to be vast­ly out­done, Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars de­liv­ered one of the evening’s more mem­o­rable arrange­ments, fin­ish­ing third just one point be­hind Rene­gades.

A sim­i­lar­ly close mar­gin al­so sep­a­rat­ed fourth to eighth placed bands, and the ninth from the tenth.

In a post-com­pe­ti­tion on­line dis­patch, or­gan­is­ers Pan Trin­ba­go de­scribed the pro­ceed­ings as hav­ing been “the most elec­tri­fy­ing” of the steel­pan show­downs that be­gan with the sin­gle pans last No­vem­ber.

When First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas opened the pro­ceed­ings on Sat­ur­day it was clear that this year’s event would be one of the tight­est in years.

The Sur­rey Vil­lage band ex­e­cut­ed an Am­rit Sama­roo treat­ment of Rum and Co­ca Co­la with an on­stage Valen­tine’s Day skit that ap­peared to be the fi­nal chap­ter in a so­cial me­dia se­ries —When Rum Meets Cokes—pro­duced and di­rect­ed by Gerelle Forbes and Tyk­er Phillip.

It was an in­no­va­tion in so­cial me­dia pro­mo­tion of a band and its song, matched on­ly by Rene­gades’ lizard-themed on­line memes fea­tur­ing mod­el rep­til­ian ap­pear­ances at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing the pa­n­yard, the Panora­ma stage, at a dou­bles stall, and else­where.

The meme was how­ev­er mocked by Massy Trinidad All Stars when they played sec­ond and a large pot on stage be­came the fi­nal rest­ing place of a large plas­tic lizard at the end of their ren­di­tion of Scrunter’s The Will which brought the vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian on­stage with Ker­nel Roberts.

Next came Rene­gades with arranger, Du­von Stew­art, wear­ing a lizard head mask that did not stay on too long dur­ing the band’s ex­hil­a­rat­ing ver­sion of Mighty Spar­row’s 1969 hit, The Lizard. The play­ers were dressed in school uni­forms and a “teacher” was on stage with a long gua­va whip to keep them in line.

There was every in­di­ca­tion at that stage that the au­di­ence was in for an in­ter­est­ing ride, with now cus­tom­ary skits, props, dancers, celebri­ty ap­pear­ances, con­fet­ti, smoke ma­chines, and py­rotech­nics.

Pro­man Star­lift’s Last Train pro­vid­ed a cue for the elab­o­rate. Equipped with a large mod­el train spout­ing steam and sound­ing its horn, the Dante Pan­tin arrange­ment gen­er­at­ed suf­fi­cient “choo-choo” alerts to an­nounce a com­pet­i­tive mu­si­cal jour­ney.

Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars fo­cused more ex­clu­sive­ly on Ojay Richards’ in­tense mu­si­cal take on Full Blown. The per­for­mance gen­er­at­ed near-unan­i­mous ap­proval from an au­di­ence marked by vis­i­ble par­ti­san sup­port for each of the 11 fi­nal­ists.

Then, if spec­ta­tors thought it was all over, Phase II Pan Groove un­der the ba­ton of Len “Boogsie” Sharpe came on with a live­li­er, up­scaled in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Free­town Col­lec­tive’s 2025 re­lease, Trou­ble, than that heard at the se­mi-fi­nal.

T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps were up next with Clarence Mor­ris in con­trol of the band’s de­liv­ery of Last Train which, as was the case with Star­lift’s ver­sion of the Mi­cal Te­ja song, in­spired stac­ca­to riffs to sim­u­late the sounds of ar­riv­ing and de­part­ing trains.

Peren­ni­al heavy-hit­ters, Des­per­a­does, then took the stage with a pris­tine Carl­ton Alexan­der arrange­ment of an­oth­er Mi­cal Te­ja song, We Ca­lyp­so. This, too, was among the main crowd favourites with melod­ic lib­er­ties tak­en to ex­plore ca­lyp­so themes over the years.

Fol­low­ing Des­per­a­does were de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, to de­clare its mu­si­cal cre­den­tials through Ter­rence “BJ” Mar­celle’s ver­sion of Cyah Be­have, re­leased this year by Aaron “Voice” St Louis.

Band man­ag­er, Ainsworth Mo­hammed, had last week arranged a mu­si­cal “pan­chay­at” with the arranger, mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Pel­ham God­dard, drill mas­ter Khan Cordice, and pro­duc­ers Carl “Beaver” Hen­der­son and Le­ston Paul to dis­cuss fine-tun­ing of the arrange­ment.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed told T&T Guardian he felt “fan­tas­tic and elat­ed” at the re­sult and was thank­ful “to all my peo­ple in­clud­ing the sup­port­ers, the play­ers, the arranger, and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor.”

When Ex­o­dus ex­it­ed the stage, the com­pe­ti­tion was clear­ly not yet over. Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra of Black Rock, To­ba­go brought Machel Mon­tano on stage for Kersh Ram­sey’s arrange­ment of Too Young To So­ca to re­mind the au­di­ence that, even past mid­night, there was more to come.

Not so fast, ap­peared to be the mes­sage de­liv­ered by last-in-line Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra with one of the more out­stand­ing arrange­ments of the event - An­dre White’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Voice’s Cyah Be­have. Many in the au­di­ence were con­vinced the San Fer­nan­do band had “mis­be­haved” much more than the Ex­o­dus con­tin­gent.

Apart from durable front-run­ners Rene­gades and Ex­o­dus, the con­test—over 20 days of per­for­mances—wit­nessed a con­tin­u­al reshuf­fling of po­si­tions. It all be­gan on Jan­u­ary 25 and con­tin­ued at the se­mi-fi­nal which was held at the QPS on Feb­ru­ary 1.

Rene­gades had held a con­sis­tent lead over Ex­o­dus – by 2.5 points at both the pre­lims and se­mi-fi­nal. Sil­ver Stars and Des­per­a­does al­ways promised to fea­ture strong­ly at the Fi­nal.

All fi­nal­ists, ex­cept for All Stars, Phase II Pan Groove, and Skif­fle had slid on the ta­ble both in points scored and plac­ings.

Star­lift were the biggest up­ward movers from sev­enth place at the pre­lims to joint fifth with Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps. Su­per­novas al­so ap­peared to be on to some­thing with a six-point im­prove­ment in points and a jump to joint sev­enth place go­ing in­to Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal.

But, as in pre­vi­ous years, there al­so promised to be a shift­ing of plac­ings based on trim­ming and ad­just­ing in keep­ing with judges’ ob­ser­va­tions and the in­ter­nal work­ings of the bands and their mu­si­cal teams.

In the end, Ex­o­dus took top ho­n­ours, a tro­phy, $1 mil­lion in prize mon­ey, and con­tin­ued its reign for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year.

RE­SULTS

1. Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus - 289

2. Bp Rene­gades - 288

3. Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars - 287

4. Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra - 284

5. Massy Trinidad All Stars - 283

6. Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra - 282

7. Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra - 281

8. Phase II Pan Groove - 280

9. T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps Steel Or­ches­tra - 278

10. Pro­man Star­lift Steel Or­ches­tra - 277

11. First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas Steel Or­ches­tra - 275