Four-time Panora­ma cham­pi­ons Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra will not be able to change its tune of choice for the Panora­ma fi­nal ac­cord­ing to a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion of Pan Trin­ba­go.

How­ev­er, Ex­o­dus’ man­ag­er Ainsworth Mo­hammed said the band will be tak­ing Pan Trin­ba­go to court to chal­lenge its de­ci­sion.

On Tues­day, Ex­o­dus’ man­age­ment de­cid­ed it was chang­ing its tune of choice from Austin “Su­per Blue” Lyons’ Rag Storm to Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller’s Sa­van­nah Grass fol­low­ing a poor show­ing in the semi­fi­nal on Sun­day.

The nine-mem­ber Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive lead by Pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore met on Wednes­day to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion and vot­ed that it was too late for the band to do so now.

The Panora­ma man­age­ment com­mit­tee was al­so part of the meet­ing and vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly bar­ring Ex­o­dus from mak­ing the change.

Ram­sey-Moore said there was no rule ex­press­ly stat­ing that a band was al­lowed or pre­vent­ed from chang­ing its Panora­ma tune of choice.

She said in light of this am­bi­gu­i­ty it was then left up to the ex­ec­u­tive to de­cide whether or not it would be al­lowed.

“We have had the meet­ing and we have tak­en the de­ci­sion not to al­low Ex­o­dus to change its tune at this stage of the com­pe­ti­tion,” Ram­sey-Moore told Guardian Me­dia.

“Ex­o­dus has asked to change the song and they have done that based on the si­lence of the Panora­ma rules. The rules are silent on that and does not say a band can­not change its song, but the rule al­so does not say that a band can change their song,” she said.

“The rule al­so states that where the rule is silent the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee can take a de­ci­sion on it,” Ram­sey-Moore said.

Ram­sey-Moore said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a band chang­ing its Panora­ma tune of choice is some­thing that Pan Trin­ba­go will look at, but not at this stage of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The Panora­ma fi­nals will to take place on March 2, at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Ram­sey-Moore said Pan Trin­ba­go’s Sec­re­tary com­mu­ni­cat­ed the de­ci­sion to Ex­o­dus.

All bands were giv­en a dead­line of Jan­u­ary 2, to state what their tune of choice for Panora­ma 2019 would be, Ram­sey-Moore said.

Ex­o­dus asked for an ex­ten­sion of that dead­line and of­fi­cial­ly sub­mit­ted Rag Storm as their choice on Jan­u­ary 17.

Mo­hammed said the band got le­gal ad­vice on Tues­day be­fore it made the de­ci­sion to change its tune of choice to Sa­van­nah Grass.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed con­firmed that the band was ver­bal­ly in­formed of Pan Trin­ba­go’s de­ci­sion and has al­ready start­ed draft­ing le­gal doc­u­ments to chal­lenge it.

“We are go­ing to court over this. We are tak­ing them to court,” Mo­hammed said.

Ex­o­dus play­ers start­ed prac­tis­ing the Sa­van­nah Grass on Tues­day.

The band al­so in­formed Lyons and his man­ag­er Tony Chow Lin On on Tues­day about the de­ci­sion to change tunes.