Kevon Felmine

Af­ter the fourth steel­band passed the judges dur­ing the Car­ni­val Mon­day Night Steel­band Com­pe­ti­tion in San Fer­nan­do, one woman said, "I am still wait­ing to hear a re­al band play." An­oth­er said: "Is this all the bands in San Fer­nan­do? Like I have to wait for Skif­fle to pass."

The usu­al ex­cite­ment on Car­ni­val Mon­day night was not vis­i­ble on the faces of those gath­ered and so many of them be­gan to walk around aim­less­ly. How­ev­er, the mid­night mas res­cued the cel­e­bra­tions for hun­dred of spec­ta­tors as for the first time in many years, mas­men brought cre­ativ­i­ty to the com­pe­ti­tion which had been plagued by or­di­nary jer­sey mas.

Af­ter mun­dane per­for­mances by on­ly four steel­bands out of six, fan­cy sailors with well-timed chore­og­ra­phy, a fes­tive Mar­di Gras de­pic­tion and a group of raunchy night nurs­es awoke hun­dreds of spec­ta­tors. How­ev­er, lazy po­lice of­fi­cers, who chose not a pa­trol by feet, con­stant­ly hin­dered the mas­quer­aders' per­for­mances be­fore the judges as they fre­quent­ly drove back and forth.

There was no DJ at the judg­ing point and al­so no em­cee to give de­tails of the per­for­mances to the spec­ta­tors. The pan com­pe­ti­tion, a trib­ute to late ca­lyp­son­ian Stan­ley Cum­mings, bet­ter known as Squib­by, kicked off at 10 pm with on­ly three bands ac­tu­al­ly en­ter­ing the com­pe­ti­tion. Al­though bands were not asked to reg­is­ter, they were re­quired to play one of Squib­by's songs.

Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies' Skif­fle and San Fer­nan­do new­bies South Lan­derz did not en­ter but chose to en­ter­tain. They played Ray Hol­man's com­po­si­tion of Sook­nah and Machel Mon­tano's She Ready, re­spec­tive­ly. By the time the sixth band, Gold­en Hands Steel Or­ches­tra, passed they met emp­ty ta­bles and chairs where the judges once sat.

Kick­ing off the com­pe­ti­tion, South Lan­derz gave a slow ver­sion of the song which a few peo­ple chipped their feet to. San City Steel Or­ches­tra ex­e­cut­ed a well arranged ren­di­tion of Squib­by's Dis­tant Drum. How­ev­er, with 17 play­ers, the band sound­ed un­bal­anced as the mu­sic from the back­ground pan drowned out the tenors.

Old Tech Steel Or­ches­tra, a usu­al crowd favourite, start­ed beau­ti­ful­ly with Squib­by's Iron Man, and with good tem­po they got spec­ta­tors danc­ing. De­spite the ef­forts of the teenagers, er­rors by in­di­vid­ual play­ers could be heard by those stand­ing near­by. They left the judg­ing point with a sweet de­liv­ery of Latin com­po­si­tion Ma­lin­do Cafe.

How­ev­er, it was not the song they were be­ing judged on. It was not un­til Ju­nior Sam­my Group of Com­pa­nies' Skif­fle played, that the cus­tom­ary pan-jam ses­sion as­so­ci­at­ed with Mon­day night pan be­gan. In their typ­i­cal man­ner, the play­ers rocked the float and chant­ed "hey" and "yeah" as they de­liv­ered the best per­for­mance of the night.

Sweet back­ground melody ac­com­pa­nied the tenors and dou­ble tenors, and the rhythm sec­tion car­ried a well timed beat. The mas com­pe­ti­tion kicked off ten min­utes be­fore mid­night with the rev­ellers of Mon Re­pos Posse dis­play­ing an or­di­nary por­tray­al of Sec­tion 34. Dar­ren Shep­pard & As­so­ciates took a nov­el ap­proach to the mas when they teamed up with Fu­sion Steel­band to present Mar­di Gras.

In­stead of the reg­u­lar mu­sic trucks ac­com­pa­ny­ing mas­quer­aders, they had live artistes singing along to pan melodies, which sent mas­quer­aders in­to a fren­zy. 2 Bad Pro­mo­tion added hu­mour to the cel­e­bra­tions with their por­tray­al of Naughty Nurs­es.

Be­gin­ning with a short skit dis­play­ing men with hand and head in­juries, the sexy nurs­es showed that ail­ments that oc­cur around Car­ni­val time can on­ly be cured with rum.