Sean Nero

Po­lice abrupt­ly end­ed a scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mance from City Sun Val­ley at Fri­day's stag­ing of Sweet and Sin­gle, Come and Min­gle held at the Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, pa­n­yard of Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra.A pro­duc­tion of Nos­trund Sym­pho­ny Steel Or­ches­tra, the event fea­tured an eclec­tic mix of vo­cal­ists, tas­sa drum­ming and pan.

De­spite ap­peals from band of­fi­cials for per­mis­sion to play its Panora­ma 2012 se­lec­tion ti­tled Jump and Break­away from Ron­nie Mc In­tosh, arranged by Dane Gul­ston, law­men were not in a mag­nan­i­mous mood and de­clined all re­quests for the band to play one more mu­sic item.This led to a clash of words be­tween of­fi­cials of the band, of­fi­cers of the north­ern re­gion of Pan Trin­ba­go and po­lice of­fi­cers in­tent on ex­e­cut­ing the law.

The thor­ough­ly in­fec­tious mu­sic show­case came to a dis­ap­point­ing end when law­men in­sist­ed that the band not play a sin­gle mu­si­cal note pass the stroke of mid­night.That re­port­ed­ly was the time set for the close of the pro­gramme in ac­cor­dance with the dance­hall li­cence.

Ger­ard Mendez, man­ag­er of City Sun Val­ley and chair­man of Pan Trin­ba­go's north­ern re­gion, said, "When we fin­ished play our penul­ti­mate tune it was two min­utes to mid­night. I ap­proached the (se­nior) of­fi­cer. The of­fi­cer could have been a lit­tle flex­i­ble. I think he act­ed high-hand­ed­ly!"On top of that, he, as the se­nior of­fi­cer, had one of his ju­nior of­fi­cers use the 'n' to de­scribe steel­band peo­ple. He did not chide his ju­nior of­fi­cer for call­ing pan peo­ple 'ole nig­ga'.

"I am go­ing to write the (act­ing) Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. We are in a pa­n­yard, the home of mu­sic. You have to be flex­i­ble. We were in (Trinidad) All Stars Pan Yard."