Ian Wa­son

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore says the re­sults of the 2024 Panora­ma fi­nals were just and fair.

Mo­ments af­ter bp Rene­gades and Massy Trinidad All Stars were de­clared joint win­ners of the Large Con­ven­tion­al Band cat­e­go­ry at the Queen’s Park Oval in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day, Ram­sey-Moore said bpTT played no role in or in­flu­enced the out­come of the re­sults.

“Bp (British Pe­tro­le­um) is just a spon­sor. They have noth­ing to do with the judg­ing. They do not se­lect judges. They are not part of the process. The Pan Trin­ba­go judg­ing process is one of the fairest you can find any­where in the world,” she said, as she ac­knowl­edged there were some peo­ple who feared a con­flict of in­ter­est in bpTT be­ing a spon­sor of both the com­pe­ti­tion and Rene­gades.

Ram­sey-Moore said she felt the tie was a fair re­sult. “Rene­gades is a great band, All Stars is a great band. All our bands are great. And tonight, I can tell you any num­ber could have played tonight. We are sat­is­fied. The process has been ex­e­cut­ed and we have a win­ner. Hap­py Car­ni­val.”

How­ev­er, the Pan Trin­ba­go boss did hint that this year could see the last tie.

“For a ma­jor com­pe­ti­tion like this, when I saw the scores, I thought to my­self, wow, is it that mov­ing for­ward we have to prob­a­bly get a tiebreak­er or some­thing of the sort? Be­cause for these ma­jor events, we would like to see one win­ner. Things can change up a bit, but maybe it is a de­ci­sion to be made by the gen­er­al mem­ber­ship.”

This is the third tie in Panora­ma af­ter 1971 (Har­monites and Star­lift) and 1985 (Des­per­a­does and Rene­gades).

With the re­sult, the Char­lotte Street-based Rene­gades surged ahead of Des­per­a­does for the most Panora­ma wins with 13, while All Stars are third with 11.

Arranger Du­vone Stew­art, re­spon­si­ble for four of the Rene­gades wins, said he took 18 days to arrange the song.

“But it was very, very tricky to the point that I want­ed to bring some­thing new to the ta­ble. But just to tell the sto­ry, to make the blind see, to make the deaf hear, and bring across that feel­ing that we are all Trinida­di­ans, know­ing that we are em­bed­ded in our DNA,” Stew­art said.

In ad­di­tion to the steel or­ches­tras, the spec­ta­tors were fur­ther en­ter­tained by a drone show mid­way through the com­pe­ti­tion that beau­ti­fied the night sky over the Sa­van­nah. The drones wel­comed the pa­trons and vis­i­tors to T&T and to the Car­ni­val.

Ram­sey-Moore was full of praise for the drones.

“It was an ex­cel­lent show. When you look at it, it was like a movie,” she said, prais­ing by spec­ta­tors.

Health­care work­ers came to the as­sis­tance of one pan play­er who passed out on the stage af­ter her per­for­mance with Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps. She was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal.

Panora­ma in the past had com­bined the medi­um and large bands fi­nals on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day. In 2020, how­ev­er, the medi­um bands got their own stage in To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, some pa­trons were not to pleased the event fin­ished ear­ly. But Ram­sey Moore ex­plained that the ear­ly fin­ish had its ben­e­fits.

“No, it’s not too short. It’s good tim­ing. When you think that the num­ber of the sup­port­ers that come here are se­nior cit­i­zens.

”While you have the younger peo­ple play­ing the in­stru­ment, a num­ber of the pa­trons are se­nior cit­i­zens, and twelve forty-five is a good time for them to go home.”

She added, “Maybe we should have an af­ter-par­ty for the younger peo­ple. Maybe we’ll look at that for next year.”