OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A lack of mon­ey and spon­sor­ship are the rea­sons the Har­monites Steel Or­ches­tra was dis­qual­i­fied from the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Large Band Semi­fi­nals on Jan­u­ary 28.

The Mor­vant band, which has been in ex­is­tence for over 60 years, was sched­uled to be the first large band to per­form at the semi­fi­nals. How­ev­er, the band nev­er showed up.

Ac­cord­ing to the rules of Pan Trin­ba­go, the band had to be dis­qual­i­fied.

Speak­ing can­did­ly about the band’s woes yes­ter­day, Har­monites man­ag­er Mark Quam­i­na said the de­ci­sion not to show up was made by the en­tire team.

He said mem­bers, de­spite their hard work and hopes for suc­cess, con­ced­ed that they sim­ply could not af­ford to com­pete.

Quam­i­na said they made the right de­ci­sion.

“We saw what hap­pened with Val­ley Harps Steel Or­ches­tra. If you don’t have the num­bers, what would hap­pen? So we took the de­ci­sion that it didn’t make any sense fi­nan­cial­ly, al­so be­cause we’re in debt. Go­ing dou­ble in debt didn’t make much sense. Right now, the band is un­spon­sored,” he ex­plained.

Har­monites, which won the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion on four oc­ca­sions in 1968, 1971, 1972 and 1973, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pre­lim­i­nary round of this year’s na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion.

But in re­cent times, Quam­i­na Har­monites has not been very ac­tive.

“Pri­or to 2023, the band didn’t come out to Panora­ma for a cou­ple of years, I be­lieve, and they made a push last year and came out, and I came back in af­ter Panora­ma,” the man­ag­er said.

Har­monites was last spon­sored by So­lo Bev­er­ages.

The man­ag­er ex­plained that the band is heav­i­ly in debt and with­out a place in the fi­nal, op­por­tu­ni­ties to make mon­ey are slim.

He ap­pealed to cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go to step for­ward and help.

But de­spite Har­monites’ fi­nan­cial strug­gles, the band is fo­cused on help­ing the youth in the Mor­vant/Barataria and en­vi­rons com­mu­ni­ties.

“We are try­ing to turn the pa­n­yard in­to a home­work cen­tre, get chil­dren off the streets, be­ing idle, and en­cour­age them to learn mu­sic and mu­sic the­o­ry. Those are the fu­ture plans. Some may say it’s slow, but one step a day should achieve where it should be.

“Our fo­cus right now is to clear debts first be­fore en­ter­ing some­thing to in­cur more debts. So right now, it’s about how best we can turn around the sit­u­a­tion and build from the ground up,” Quam­i­na said.

The band man­ag­er said he and the mem­bers are still op­ti­mistic that come next year’s Car­ni­val, the band will be able to par­tic­i­pate and make it all the way to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage.