Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

As soon as Katzen­jam­mers Steel Or­ches­tra was an­nounced the win­ner of the Medi­um Band Panora­ma Fi­nals 2025, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore wast­ed no time in ad­dress­ing the crit­i­cism she knew was com­ing.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, she told the crit­ics to “rock so with the bull (sic).”

In the post, she ques­tioned why past ex­ec­u­tives could per­form with their bands with­out is­sue, while her band’s par­tic­i­pa­tion now seemed prob­lem­at­ic.

She then sar­cas­ti­cal­ly sug­gests that judges, whose in­tegri­ty was pre­vi­ous­ly un­ques­tioned, some­how feared her, prob­a­bly “with a gun point­ed to their heads say­ing (katzen) jam­mers or noth­ing.”

Ram­sey-Moore said the judges had no rea­son to com­pro­mise their in­tegri­ty.

But hours be­fore her Face­book post, stand­ing firm­ly be­hind her band’s vic­to­ry, Ram­sey-Moore pre­emp­tive­ly dis­missed any al­le­ga­tions of bias, mak­ing it clear that Katzen­jam­mers’ suc­cess was based on tal­ent, abil­i­ty and pure skill—as de­cid­ed by the judges—not per­son­al con­nec­tions.

Katzen­jam­mers, man­aged by Ram­sey-Moore, se­cured an­oth­er win with an arrange­ment by Kersh Ram­sey—Ram­sey-Moore’s nephew.

How­ev­er, just like af­ter the band’s vic­to­ries in 2023 and 2024, she was quick to shut down any claims that fam­i­ly ties in­flu­enced the out­come, call­ing out crit­ics as “ful­ly dunce.”

Asked on Sun­day night by Guardian Me­dia how con­cerned she was about an­oth­er round of pos­si­ble crit­i­cism, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter she had had to—on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions over the past two years—de­fend the band, its skills and her ties with the arranger, she said, “I’m not afraid to an­swer that ques­tion.

“I am not run­ning from that at all. I own it (Katzen­jam­mers). Kersh is my nephew, but he is an ex­cel­lent mu­si­cian.

She point­ed out that many cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers al­so played in their bands, which the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion al­lowed.

“As long as you’re in Pan Trin­ba­go, you must be a mem­ber of a band. So, whether it is this pres­i­dent or any oth­er pres­i­dent or even mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive.

Katzen­jam­mers is the band I be­long to, and they de­serve to win; they played well. All the oth­er bands were ex­cel­lent, but there can be on­ly one win­ner if there is not a tie.”

Through­out yes­ter­day, some in the pan com­mu­ni­ty raised con­cerns about fair­ness. But Ram­sey-Moore made it clear that she would not en­ter­tain any ac­cu­sa­tions of wrong­do­ing, stand­ing by Katzen­jam­mers’ vic­to­ry as a well-earned tri­umph.

Mean­while, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said it was un­fair to project up­on Ram­sey-Moore any malfea­sance as the rea­son why her band won.

“The oth­er side of the coin is, should they not par­tic­i­pate at all?” he asked.

He de­scribed the crit­i­cism as fool­ish.