2 weeks Ago By Express Editorial
THE National Junior Panorama, the annual competition among junior bands of national steelbands as well as primary and secondary school bands, is an early Carnival calendar item that inspires sheer pride and joy. Among the multiplicity of moments of creative excellence during the Carnival season, the application of players, their parents/guardians and teachers shines through in the skilful execution of tunes that move audiences. Their innocent joy in the music is the truth in the Mighty Shadow (Winston Bailey)’s lyric “Music fills the world with happiness/Plenty sweetness and togetherness”.
San Fernando Boys’ RC School music teacher Lydia Seecharan will hear no argument from us for choosing “Dingolay” for her boys in Sunday’s competition. Shadow was a poet, she said of the late iconic calypsonian whose music travels organically across generations, as all classics do. Ms Seecharan arranged the song and told her boys “dingolay” means dance.
The youths made their sticks dance and they in turn made their teacher hop with joy as they mobbed her after they were adjudged winners of the primary school category. Some children who had never played the pan learned to do so at such a high level as to win a coveted trophy for their school. In so doing they dethroned Guaico Tamana Presbyterian School who last year celebrated a hat-trick.
St Margaret Boys’ Anglican School finished second and third place went to Febeau Government Primary School. Such was the exhilaration at the Queen’s Park Savannah that we are saddened that in the context of Carnival’s competitive arrangements, some of these young children placed and others did not, for all of them shone gloriously and inspired happiness in all of us. Children, not much older but assuming the diligence required of young adults, competed with similar industry in the secondary schools category.
Bishop Anstey & Trinity College East captured winners’ rights with Jovanni Gibson and Joaquim Headley’s arrangement of Voice’s (Aaron St Louis) “Sweet Voice”. St Francois Girls’ College with a McKeem Joseph and Nato Elie arrangement of Black Stalin’s (Leroy Calliste) “Bun Dem” shared second place with NAPS Colleges Combined playing a Desiree Seecharan arrangement of “Buss Head” sung by Machel Montano and Bunji Garlin (Ian Alvarez). CIC/St Joseph’s Convent PoS came in fourth playing “How Ah Livin” sung by Farmer Nappy (Darryl Henry).
In the Under 21 category BP Renegades Youth Steel Orchestra placed first, while second place saw a four-way tie among FCB Supernovas Youths, Shell Invaders Youths, Trinidad All Stars Youths and Tropical Angel Harps Youths. For yet another year, the magnificence of the youths from these schools and youth orchestras was set against very different stories of youth violence just barely contained by a national state of emergency. These exuberant youths performed while their rights, those of their parents/guardians, arrangers and so many other contributors to their success are suspended under the SoE.
And for yet another year, the opposing portraits of youth experience are difficult to ignore. We have advocated in their space for steelband culture and its place in communities across the nation to be mobilised for the recuperation of our young people. The will and a politics-free means by which to do this continue to elude us, but we continue to advocate for those melodies and harmonies to which we could all dingolay.
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