Pe­ter Christo­pher

Ace pan arranger Du­vone Stew­art has copped the Panora­ma triple crown—lead­ing bp Rene­gades and Pan El­ders to vic­to­ry in the large and medi­um steel­band fi­nals at Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day morn­ing.

The To­ba­go-born arranger, 42, scored his first vic­to­ry with De­fence Force Steel Or­ches­tra which won the small steel­band Panora­ma at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Thurs­day night.

In a marathon Panora­ma per­for­mance, 19 bands—nine large and ten medi­um—thrilled pan afi­ciona­dos with scin­til­lat­ing mu­sic.

But it was clear­ly Rene­gades, how­ev­er, which con­tin­ued its dom­i­nance with its now 11th vic­to­ry and a three-peat of wins since 2017 with Stew­art's arrange­ment of Dar­ryl "Farmer Nap­py" Hen­ry's Hookin Meh, one of the Car­ni­val's most pop­u­lar songs.

The Char­lotte Street band was in the lead in this year's large band com­pe­ti­tion through­out the pre­lim­i­nar­ies and semi­fi­nals

Stew­art said his vic­to­ry was on­ly a part of a jour­ney to raise the pro­file of pan in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He broke down in tears on the Sa­van­nah stage af­ter learn­ing of his his­toric vic­to­ry.

"The win, medi­um, small, large con­ven­tion­al 2019 can be equalled. It can be bro­ken but my name is in the his­to­ry books. And I vivid­ly em­brace and I hope young arrangers re­spect it like­wise and build from it," said Stew­art, who de­scribed the suc­cess as un­for­get­table.

He said if his suc­cess meant that he was the new stan­dard bear­er for the fra­ter­ni­ty, he would be "will­ing to take on the chal­lenge".

"From Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go, to the Sa­van­nah, it's a jour­ney, it was a jour­ney and it will al­ways con­tin­ue to be a jour­ney. As long as I live I will al­ways con­tin­ue to preach pan. I will con­tin­ue to preach the love for this in­stru­ment that made me the in­di­vid­ual that I am. And I'm al­ways go­ing to be the flag­ship, the new flag­ship of this in­stru­ment.

"This vic­to­ry is for pan. This vic­to­ry is for the new ex­ec­u­tive which just formed to take pan back to where it is sup­posed to be and to the pres­i­dent and to the ex­ec­u­tive run­ning a suc­cess­ful, en­er­getic, lov­ing Panora­ma sea­son," said Stew­art, "To every­body out­side, pan is alive. In pan we trust and pan is the win­ner."

He paid trib­ute to icons like Len "Boogsie" Sharpe and oth­er arrangers who in­flu­enced him and called on his con­tem­po­raries to build sim­i­lar pro­files in pan to in­spire the fu­ture.

"We have a lot of arrangers who made me who I am. Len Boogsie, Leah Scoon Ed­wards, Clive Brath­wait­he, you name it. These guys paved the way for us to be where I am at," said Stew­art, "When­ev­er I try to make mu­sic I try to make the blind see and make the deaf hear with all the arrange­ments that I have done in my life."

Stew­art hailed Rene­gades as one of the great­est steel­bands in the world, af­ter lead­ing them to their 11th Panora­ma vic­to­ry. He said it was too ear­ly to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the band recre­at­ing its hat-trick of wins from 1995 to 1997 but rather want­ed to savour his win for now.

"I'm hap­py, I'm blessed. Every arranger's dream is to win this cham­pi­onship, this Su­per­bowl. This grant­ed space that we all come to­geth­er to show­case our skill, our mu­si­cal ide­ol­o­gy with what we put for­ward for this event. Every­body wants to win but on­ly one could win, two could win, three could win."
He said he was go­ing af­ter the win again, should he be able to next year.