SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Celebri­ty front­line pan­nist for Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra (TAS­SO) Dane Gul­ston and award-win­ning-ca­lyp­son­ian Lord Nel­son, 94, are sched­uled to per­form at Nani­ki Bar­ba­dos Mu­sic Fes­ti­val 2025, Be­yond the Trees to­mor­row.

Pro­duc­er/di­rec­tor of Nani­ki Bar­ba­dos, Tom Hinds said this year’s event is part of We Gath­erin’ St Joseph.

We Gath­erin’ seeks to en­cour­age peo­ple of the di­as­po­ra to come home and cel­e­brate, and is ded­i­cat­ed to peo­ple in var­i­ous of­fices who have done ex­cep­tion­al work in the 12 Bar­ba­dos parish­es to which, each is as­signed to a month.

April’s Gath­erin’ is Ad­ven­ture, and ac­cord­ing to Hinds, the cast for this year’s mu­sic fes­ti­val will in­deed be an ad­ven­ture.

Shar­ing the stage with Gul­ston and Nel­son will be Mark Forde, the Lowrey Leon Project Band fea­tur­ing Ja­mal Slo­combe, Bet­ty B, Niki­ta, Bug­gy Nhak­ente, and Hashim Du­rant, Kaylee Al­i­man and reign­ing Ba­jan Kaiso Monarch Adri­an Clarke.

Re­cent­ly re­ferred to as ‘ever­green’ Lord Nel­son, dis­cov­ered his tal­ent for singing while de­ployed in Ko­rea as a US Ma­rine. Among his ac­com­plish­ments are a wide ar­ray of al­bums, EPs and sin­gles; Ca­lyp­so King of New York (1960), Life­time Achieve­ment Award (2019), and Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Let­ters (2022). His most re­cent of­fer­ing was a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kes in 2022, Do We Ting.

Dane Gul­ston be­gan his mu­si­cal ca­reer at age 7 . He joined TAS­SO in 1982 and has brought an un­matched fire to the phys­i­cal and mu­si­cal land­scape of the band.