Gold­en Hands Steel Or­ches­tra is fo­cused on beat­ing a path to vic­to­ry in this year’s Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion as a trib­ute to late founder Fran­ka Hills-Headley.

Per­form­ing Lord Nel­son’s clas­sic Mih Lover, arranger Vanes­sa Headley-Brew­ster said this year they are play­ing in trib­ute to her moth­er who passed away last Au­gust.

In an in­ter­view at their pa­n­yard in San Fer­nan­do dur­ing the Panora­ma pre­lim­i­nary judg­ing in the Small Con­ven­tion­al Steel­band cat­e­go­ry on Fri­day night, Headley-Brew­ster said they came close to not com­pet­ing this year. “Orig­i­nal­ly we with­drew from the com­pe­ti­tion for many rea­sons, fi­nan­cial and oth­er­wise, but the out­cry was so great by peo­ple who would have played with us over the years. They said they want to do this one for miss, what­ev­er it is you need, let’s get it done and it re­al­ly was a fam­i­ly, team ef­fort to get to this point and, hope­ful­ly, straight to the fi­nals.”

She re­called dis­cus­sions with her moth­er about mak­ing the 31-year-old or­ches­tra a steel­band con­ser­va­to­ry. “What this is, is pre­serv­ing our his­to­ry, our present and our fu­ture.”

Not­ing that her or­ches­tra caters to youths as young as three years old, she de­clared proud­ly, “We are a youth steel or­ches­tra. That’s where the fu­ture is.”

Mean­while, Old Tech Steel Or­ches­tra, at their pa­n­yard in Pleas­antville, was al­so con­fi­dent of get­ting the judges’ qual­i­fy­ing nod with their per­for­mance of Lor­raine.

Arranger Sean Ram­sey said they had qual­i­fied for the semi­fi­nals 13 times and six times in the fi­nals.

Re­call­ing that the or­ches­tra was formed in 1994 as a school band (San Fer­nan­do Sec­ondary), but the name was changed to Old Tech in 2007, he said the ob­jec­tive was to en­cour­age young peo­ple’s in­ter­est in the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. The or­ches­tra has al­most 60 mem­bers from San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons.

Ram­sey said that they not on­ly teach the art of steel­pan play­ing but al­so en­cour­age, mon­i­tor and as­sist chil­dren with their school work. He said they would wel­come as­sis­tance from cor­po­rate T&T in build­ing a home­work cen­tre equipped with a com­put­er sys­tem for the mem­bers. Ram­sey said ed­u­ca­tors have al­ready vol­un­teered to help.

“Most of the bands who will be pro­mot­ing young peo­ple will want to get that type of as­sis­tance from NGOs, the Gov­ern­ment and dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es. But one of the things, I would like to en­cour­age peo­ple to do is to al­ways try to be in­de­pen­dent. With the ‘gimme’ syn­drome you will al­ways have some prob­lems be­cause when peo­ple see you try to help your­self,  they help you.”

The oth­er bands judged that night in­clud­ed South­ern Stars (D South Band) in Siparia, South­ern Marines Steel­band Foun­da­tion in Mara­bel­la, Todd’s Road Rhythm Raiders in Cou­va and Long­denville Clay­tones in Ch­agua­nas.