Pe­ter Ray Blood

New Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas paid an im­promp­tu vis­it to Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove's pa­n­yard on Sat­ur­day night. A sur­prised Phase II leader Len "Boogsie" Sharpe and band man­ag­er Er­rol Sker­ritt wel­comed the min­is­ter to the Wood­brook venue as the steel or­ches­tra cel­e­brat­ed its 40th an­niver­sary.

With huge lu­mi­nous sil­ver flags flut­ter­ing in the breeze at the en­trance to the pa­n­yard, a mam­moth crowd was en­ter­tained by live per­for­mances from reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, Wit­co Des­per­a­does and the host band. The evening's pro­gramme was host­ed by Ron­nie Mo­hammed.

Al­so at­tend­ing were for­mer chief jus­tice Clin­ton Bernard, at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly, deputy Port-of-Spain may­or Ker­ron Valen­tine, Mervyn Telfer, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az and mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive. Ear­li­er on, there was al­so a large turnout at the Mar­cel­la Street Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, in Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille, where a memo­r­i­al was held for Phase II Pan Groove pan­nist Franklyn Ol­livier­ra.

This tes­ti­mo­ni­al was or­gan­ised by for­eign-based Her­man "Ushkay" Thomas and Charles Small-May­nard. It fea­tured per­for­mances by Com­pos­er, who host­ed the evening's pro­gramme, King Austin, Ken Hare­wood, Pun­chilla, Unistars steel­band and Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion. Glow­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als of Ol­livier­ra's life were de­liv­ered by com­mu­ni­ty el­ders, in­clud­ing for­mer deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­er Ran­ny Coutain, Ce­cil Phillip, Clif­ford Al­fred and oth­ers. Ol­livier­ra suf­fered a heart at­tack and died three weeks ago.