Sean Nero

Par­ty peo­ple filled the Tra­garete Road, New­town, Port-of-Spain pa­n­yard of PCS Sil­ver Stars for an evening of mu­sic like no oth­er last Sat­ur­day at the 20th edi­tion of Parang and Steel.A pro­duc­tion of reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on PCS Ni­tro­gen Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra, the event at­tract­ed mu­sic lovers in throngs; the ma­jor­i­ty of them were re­turn­ing pa­trons for the six-hour en­ter­tain­ment feast.

Parang group Fuego Caribueno, gospel singer Sean Daniell, Baron (Tim­o­thy Watkins), sin­gle-pan band St James Tripo­lians, DJ Remixx and the host band formed the mu­sic sup­ply chain that filled the precincts of the pa­n­yard with a su­perb blend of mu­sic for an ea­ger group of dance-a-holics.Ku­dos are in or­der for the pre­dom­i­nant­ly youth con­sti­tut­ed Sil­ver Stars pan­nists who con­tin­ue to en­er­gise the mass­es with every mu­si­cal note struck.

The week­end pre­mier of Parang and Steel was an ac­cu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this. The band had them mov­ing to vin­tage kaiso num­bers as well as chart-top­ping hits, while St James Tripo­lians in­ject­ed a J'Ou­vert jam-like ses­sion by can­vass­ing the venue.

Pa­trons mer­ri­ly trekked be­hind the pop­u­lar sin­gle pan band.Back on stage Daniell had jokes. No. He was not hired as a co­me­di­an, but as a vo­cal­ist. His comedic at­tempts, how­ev­er, seemed to evoke the re­spons­es he clear­ly hoped for...pa­trons were laugh­ing. And as fate would have it, his songs of praise sure­ly had a place in Sil­ver Stars' mu­sic min­istry.

No mat­ter how many times Baron per­forms at the con­cert se­ries, the re­sponse to his cher­ished en­ter­tain­ing style was al­ways one of rev­er­ence.The vet­er­an en­ter­tain­er with his hon­ey-coat­ed vo­cal chords and choice anec­dotes al­ways held the at­ten­tion of mu­sic afi­ciona­dos.

With so many male vo­cal­ists on the play­bill, it took parang group Fuego Caribueno to even things out.

The bevy of beau­ties lead­ing its vo­cal line-up changed the mu­si­cal tex­ture on the evening's pre­sen­ta­tion.Dis­play­ing ex­quis­ite mu­si­cian­ship and de­liv­er­ing sweet ser­e­nal, Fuego Caribueno com­plet­ed the mu­si­cal blend at the first of five con­sec­u­tive Sat­ur­day show­cas­es of Parang and Steel.