Amid pan triumph, what's bands' future

CONGRATULATIONS to bp Renegades and Massy All Stars, joint winners of the 2024 Panorama Large Conventional Bands competition with 285 marks each.

The winners edged out their closest competition, Exodus, by a margin of just two marks.

Saturday night's competition marked the culmination of long nights of intense work by hundreds of musicians and their support teams as they worked to refine arrangements in a dramatically short season.

Saturday night offered a concert of excellence, as 11 bands demonstrated a decisive mastery of the instrument and its capacity to present music.

The close results suggest a creative form that has left behind straightforward, easily understood marking rubrics to enter the realm of emotional response.

Unlike other competitions which operate with clear, readily explained rules and benchmarks that are inarguably metered and measured, Panorama is judged, in the end, on the response of the judges.

Consider the marks that separated the top large bands in this year's semifinal round. The marks spread was just nine marks out of a total potential score of 300. Even within that range, there were four instances of tied scores.

In the final round, there were two ties, the other between Desperadoes and Proman Starlift for fourth place.

The spread of marks in this decisive round of judging widened to 11, from the top-placed tie to the 11th placed band. The top five bands were separated by a spread of just five marks.

Is an increase in close judging an indicator of greater difficulty in teasing apart creative performances at this level?

Is it time for Pan Trinbago to begin thinking about other ways to leverage the skill of a new generation of steelband musicians who deserve careers beyond a spot on the stage on competition night?

Pan Trinbago president Beverly Ramsey-Moore declared herself to be pleased at the increasing involvement of young musicians in the steelband movement after seeing the turnout for the medium conventional band finals on February 4.

Given the excellence of musicianship among the 11 top bands that competed in the 2024 final, demonstrating talent that largely left the judges stymied, does a framework that delivers large rewards for marginal indicators of relative excellence really work in 2024?

Should steelbands be performing for pride, rather than chasing cash, with the state investment in the steelband spread over an entire year instead of just the two months of Carnival?

In the 2024 semifinal round, Harmonites, a band which has won the large band category four times between 1968 and 1974, qualified, but could not muster the resources and players to compete.

State spending on the steelband might be better invested in fortifying the three pillars of the modern panyard, musicianship, community and business development, rewarding and supporting initiatives that advance each of those aspects of the panyard.