Shel­don Os­borne

The an­nu­al Pan, Parang and Pork fund-rais­ing fete host­ed by Caribbean Air­lines In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra de­liv­ered every­thing promised last Sun­day. The event took place at Queen's Park Oval, On D Greens, Have­lock Street, St Clair. Pa­trons en­joyed a well-stocked bar and a var­ied Christ­mas menu that catered to pork lovers as well as veg­e­tar­i­ans and those who pre­fer oth­er types of meat.

The event al­so pro­vid­ed live lo­cal Christ­mas mu­sic of every genre, with em­pha­sis on pan and parang as the name of the event promised. In­vaders played a va­ri­ety of Christ­mas favourites to the de­light of the many pan lovers present. Parang band Fuego Caribeno (Caribbean Fire) lived up to its name with a fiery per­for­mance. Mar­cia Mi­ran­da and Ir­win "Scrunter" Reyes-John­ston, artistes who have be­come pop­u­lar over the last decade for their Christ­mas mu­sic, al­so gen­er­at­ed a live­ly re­sponse.

But even though pa­trons of all age groups seemed to en­joy all of the mu­sic of­fered at the event, very few took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dance. Things changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, when Scrunter, the evening's last per­former, took the mike: When the mas­ter parang and ca­lyp­so artiste com­plained that too many pa­trons were sit­ting down, the ma­jor­i­ty of them got up, tak­ing up Scrunter's in­vi­ta­tion to join him on the floor. Scrunter dished out most of his Christ­mas reper­toire, but the crowd favourite was his newest of­fer­ing, Ah Want Meh Pen­sion. Pa­trons sang along loud­ly and danced to the pop­u­lar new parang so­ca dit­ty.

To the amuse­ment of all, Scrunter had some in­di­vid­u­als an­swer­ing "yes, "no," or "not yet," as one by one he asked those near­est to him, both young and not-so-young, if they were "get­ting dey pen­sion." Some pa­trons al­so got danc­ing lessons from the self-styled parang so­ca king as he taught some of the women to do the heel-and-toe and oth­er dances that go with Scrunter's ex­cit­ing mix­ture of parang, so­ca, and folk melodies. Pro­ceeds from this year's event will go to­wards im­prov­ing fa­cil­i­ties at In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra's Her­itage pa­n­yard site, on Tra­garete Road, in Wood­brook.