SASCHA WIL­SON

Pan arranger ex­tra­or­di­naire, Lennox ‘Bob­by’ Mo­hammed, has passed away.  He was 78 years old. 

So­cial me­dia has been flood­ed with glow­ing trib­utes, to­day, fol­low­ing news of his pass­ing.

On­ly two years ago, a street near Har­ris Prom­e­nande was re­named in his ho­n­our by the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.  The one-way street, which be­fore then was called Har­ris Prom­e­nade East, runs to the back be­hind the band­stand to Li­brary cor­ner.

Lennox “Bob­by” Mo­hammed led the San Fer­nan­do-based steel band Guin­ness Cav­a­liers to vic­to­ry in the na­tion­al steel­band Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions, cap­tur­ing two Panora­ma ti­tles in 1965 and 1967.

He al­so made his­to­ry as the youngest arranger, at age 22 years, to win the Panora­ma ti­tle. 

Pay­ing trib­ute to the pan icon, PanTrin­ba­go said he was in­tro­duced to pan at age 15 years.

"Bob­by de­scribes him­self as an in­no­va­tor and trend­set­ter in that he was the first per­son of East In­di­an de­scent to suc­ceed at the high­est lev­el as a steel­pan arranger. He stat­ed that in those days, steel­bands were dom­i­nat­ed main­ly by Afro-Trinida­di­ans from Port of Spain, so it was a sur­prise and shock when his rel­a­tive­ly un­known south band won Panora­ma ti­tles,” the PanTrin­ba­go state­ment not­ed.

It added: “Bob­by’s in­no­v­a­tive style on Panora­ma mu­sic left a per­ma­nent foot­print on Panora­ma mu­sic to­day. He was in­stru­men­tal in de­vel­op­ing what is de­fined as the sound of the ‘south bands’. He fash­ioned a Panora­ma ‘bass move­ment’ that us­es paus­es and sud­den drops. His use of dy­nam­ics and dra­ma in the Panora­ma set­ting was orig­i­nal and re­mains a com­mon ap­proach to­day."

PanTrin­ba­go al­so ob­served that fol­low­ing his glo­ry days in the 1960s, “Bob­by” Mo­hammed dis­ap­peared from the scene for some time, to em­brace a high­er call­ing.

"He as­cribes this to the Will of God. He stat­ed that God touched his life, and he was able to claw his way back from the brink of per­son­al dis­as­ter to one of hope for him­self," PanTrin­ba­go stat­ed.

Thank­ing him for his con­tri­bu­tion, PanTrin­ba­go added that Mo­hammed was the re­cip­i­ent of the Hum­ming­bird Medal Gold na­tion­al award in 1992.  He al­so was pre­sent­ed with the Re­pub­lic Day Award from the non-gov­ern­men­tal group, Cit­i­zens for a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.