Nicole Dray­ton

Nei­ther rain or flood last Sat­ur­day could keep the true sup­port­ers of Wit­co Des­per­a­does away from the Cen­tral Bank Fore­court when the Laven­tille Hill steel or­ches­tra did a farewell con­cert. To­day, the ten-time Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on em­barks on a 21-day tour of Nige­ria.Apt­ly named The Resur­gence, be­cause of the band's new­ly elect­ed youth­ful man­age­ment com­mit­tee, and Des­per­a­does de­ter­mi­na­tion on win­ning Panora­ma in the year of the na­tion's 50th an­niver­sary, there seemed to be a rein­vig­o­rat­ed at­ti­tude from the band's mem­ber­ship and in its mu­sic.The band's new com­mit­tee reads, Ju­nior Hud­son (man­ag­er); An­tho­ny Joseph (as­sis­tant man­ag­er); Kirt Gor­don (cap­tain); An­dre Rob­ley (vice cap­tain); Mi­ran­da Mar­tin (sec­re­tary); Rose­ford Cour­tain (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary); Ju­nior Steven­son (trea­sur­er); Nathaniel Moses (as­sis­tant trea­sur­er); and, trustees Kevin Glas­gow and Glen­ford Wal­lace.

Very few in Sat­ur­day's au­di­ence man­aged to stay mo­tion­less in their seats as toes were tap­ping, as bod­ies swayed to Des­per­a­does per­form­ing pop­u­lar hits like Su­per Blue's Re­bec­ca, 1955 hit sin­gle Love Is A Many Splen­dored Thing, and Baron's in­fec­tious parang so­ca Span­ish Woman.Sat­ur­day wasn't just about sweet pan mu­sic as the pro­gramme ac­tu­al­ly opened with three-time Road March cham­pi­on Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert get­ting much au­di­ence in­volve­ment with his su­per sin­gle Give God the Praise. In fact, some peo­ple in the au­di­ence sug­gest­ed that this should be Des­per­a­does' Bomb se­lec­tion for 2012.

Af­ter in­ter­mis­sion there was more ca­lyp­so, this time from 2009 Na­tion­al Ju­nior So­ca Monarch Er­phaan Alves al­so in­cit­ing crowd par­tic­i­pa­tion.Dur­ing the show, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az spoke of the Niger­ian tour. Re­veal­ing how the tour ma­te­ri­alised, he dis­closed: "When Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards vis­it­ed the coun­try (Nige­ria) re­cent­ly for the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the new pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan, in May of this year, he was ac­com­pa­nied by the band (Des­per­a­does). For­mer Niger­ian pres­i­dent Oluse­gun Obasan­jo so thor­ough­ly en­joyed the band's per­for­mance that he asked for them to re­turn."So, from No­vem­ber 23, this year, the band will play through­out the coun­try. How­ev­er, for the cap­i­tal of Abu­ja (for­mer­ly La­gos) leg, on No­vem­ber 30, Des­per­a­does is play­ing along­side Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore and Len "Bo­gise" Sharpe."Be­ing the sixth largest econ­o­my in the world, and with the largest pop­u­la­tion on the African con­ti­nent, the tour of the Nige­ria will be not just a pro­mo­tion of the steel­band, but will al­so be rais­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go flag high."