Crowd favourites lose outBY ANDRE BAGOO Sunday, April 20 2008
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Marsicans won in the single pan category....
TWO UNPOPULAR choices with the audience walked away with the top prizes at the end of Friday night’s Pan in the 21st Century Competition, prompting panmen involved to question whether or not the annual event serves to foster or stifle the versatility of our national instrument.
The clear crowd favourites in the Pan Down Memory Lane competition for single pan bands and the Pan in the 21st Century competition for conventional bands failed to secure the judges’ nods by the time all of the results were announced at 2am on Saturday at the Northern Greens Venue.
Tobago’s Katzenjammers, led by Gemma Duke, emerged the clear winner in the conventional bands category with 276 points. The Black Rock band performed Edwin Pouchet’s elegant yet effective arrangement of Diana Ross’s ‘When You Tell Me That You Love Me’ late into the competition, managing to wake up a restless Northern Greens crowd by simply sticking to the spirit of the original composition.
Katzenjammers previously tied for the top spot back in 2004 and had topped the preliminary round of judging in the pan yards.
In second place was the TCL Skiffle Bunch, who earned 266 points with a bravura rendition of Chuck Mangioni’s ‘Feel So Good’, while third place went to Pan Elders out of San Fernando. They earned 263 points performing the remix of Alicia Key’s popular ‘No One’.
But clear crowd favourite, last year’s winners Silver Stars, did not make the top three. Led and arranged by Edwin Pouchet, the band, costumed in black and red and with sparkling Jackson-esque gloves, startled the audience with the opening notes to their audacious and challenging rendition of Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’.
A young boy, dressed as Michael Jackson, accompanied the band, drawing tremendous applause from the audience for his moonwalk.
For their efforts, Stars were awarded a tie for fifth place with 259 points. The audience booed when this was announced.
San City, from Carib Street, San Fernando, delivered a brilliant rendition of Gloria Estefan’s “Reach”. They at times kept their pitch almost unbearably low as if to demonstrate that the steel-pan is as good soft as it is loud. For this valuable lesson, they earned 12th place (out of 12 bands) with 250 points.
In the single pan band category, the Marsicans out of Arima pipped defending champs Scrunters Pan Groove into second place, earning 264 points. Marsicans delivered one of the high-points of the evening — a fine arrangement of Benny Mardonnes’ ‘Into the Night’ by Marlon White. Scrunters followed with 261 points and third place went to Pan Family with 258 points. Crowd favourite the St James Tripolians only managed a tie at fourth place with 256 points.
But even before the results were announced, competitors in the single pan band category questioned one of the rules of the competition.
Rule 6 of the official Pan Trinbago regulations for the annual event, which is designed to demonstrate the versatility of the steel-pan, stipulates that “bands must play a non-calypso tune in calypso tempo”.
Panmen noted that this requirement meant that some performances simply did not work as certain slow songs, such as Pat Boone’s Cuando Cuando (which was performed on Friday night), do not translate well when jammed into a calypso tempo.
“It limits an already limited instrument,” said Roger Sardinha, who arranged for fourth-placed Our Boys in the conventional category and for Dem Boys in the single pan category. “I think they should let us present the music as it is,” he said.
