Panora­ma 2023 her­alds the first live Car­ni­val since 2020—and Had­co Phase II Pan Groove mae­stro Dr Len “Boogsie” Sharpe is wel­com­ing it with his own tune, “We Come out to Par­ty”.

The song’s lyrics cel­e­brate the end of the Pan­dem­ic lock­downs and the re­turn to free Car­ni­val rev­el­ry on the streets.

Sharpe com­posed the melody and the song was de­vel­oped by a dream team: arranger/pro­duc­er Le­ston Paul, lyri­cist Christophe Grant and vo­cal­ist Aaron Dun­can.

Sharpe of­ten com­pos­es the tunes of choice for Phase II and has sev­en Panora­ma-win­ning melodies un­der his belt, with ti­tles he com­posed and arranged for the band win­ning the fes­ti­val in 1987, 1988, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2014. Dur­ing an in­ter­view with him at the pan yard in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, band mem­bers were al­ready at work on his arrange­ment.

They were ex­cit­ed to hear the song, he said, adding, “The play­ers en­joy how I do my own mu­sic.”

Vo­cal­ist Aaron Dun­can is a young ca­lyp­so and so­ca su­per­star who has dom­i­nat­ed the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so and So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tions and is poised to have a great ca­reer as an adult artist. “I fell in love with his voice,” said Boogsie, who had nev­er worked with the young celebri­ty be­fore Paul rec­om­mend­ed him for the project.

Dun­can was thrilled to have this op­por­tu­ni­ty. “I feel ho­n­oured, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the leg­end him­self, Boogsie Sharpe,” he said. “When he pitched it, I found it to be an amaz­ing song and just know­ing it would have been the fea­tured song for Phase II, I im­me­di­ate­ly want­ed to be a part of this project.”

Lyri­cist Christophe Grant is al­so a first-time col­lab­o­ra­tor with Sharpe, and was al­so brought to the project on the pro­duc­er’s rec­om­men­da­tion. Grant has writ­ten Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle-win­ning songs for sev­er­al ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, in­clud­ing the late Singing San­dra (“Voic­es from the Ghet­to”) and Denyse Plum­mer (“Nah Leav­ing”). Paul asked him to keep this song light, Grant said. “He thinks we need that sort of cathar­sis, that sigh of re­lief af­ter the two-year lock­down, and peo­ple want to ex­plode on the streets,” Grant said. “I didn’t hes­i­tate to agree be­cause Phase II is an in­sti­tu­tion and Boogsie is a cul­tur­al gift to this na­tion.”

Le­ston Paul’s ex­haus­tive cat­a­logue of par­ty and pan hits is enor­mous, and he was keen to add this song to the list. The team col­lab­o­rat­ed on the song over What­sApp chats, he said. “Af­ter Boogsie sent me the melody he want­ed most of all for the lyrics to have this friend­ly ap­peal to the av­er­age par­ty-go­er.” He added, “Work­ing with the ge­nius Boogsie him­self, pre­ci­sion of notes and phras­ing was of ut­most im­por­tance.”

Pre­lim­i­nary Panora­ma judg­ing of the North­ern Re­gion large con­ven­tion­al bands is sched­uled to take place on Jan­u­ary 31, 2023.

This Car­ni­val will be a boss Car­ni­val, like we nev­er wit­nessed in our life­time,” Dr Sharpe said. “Lock­down was hard for every­body. This year it will be nice. We have a beau­ti­ful song,” he said, humbly thank­ing the Fa­ther for his mu­si­cal gift and adding his thanks to Paul, Grant and Dun­can. He es­pe­cial­ly thanked Had­co’s co-CEO John Hadad for tak­ing care of the band through the two years of lock­down. “This Car­ni­val will be a bumper Car­ni­val. You could imag­ine peo­ple miss­ing Car­ni­val for two years?”