Despite it being his first time arranging for Panorama, or any steelpan orchestra at all, 21-year-old David Yundi, is confident in his abilities and that of small conventional steelband, Genesis Pan Groove.
The steelband placed 20th in the preliminaries but moved up to ninth in the semi-finals, and played Bun Dem by the late Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste in the finals on Saturday. He said with the band’s significant improvement from the prelims to the semis, and with the feedback and constructive criticism he got from the judges, he was confident about the finals.
“There’s a lot to improve on but we made some changes to tackle those weak points they told us about. I think we’re in a good position.”
His sudden urge to arrange sparked when he was a competitor in the online steelpan competition, PanoGrama, last year. He had to pick a song, arrange it, and improvise on it.
“I kind of had an awakening. In those three rounds of the competition I realised, if people like and enjoy this music and my improvisation so much, I guess I could do this on a larger scale. That’s how I decided on Panorama.”
He told Sunday Newsday he asked the arranger for Trinidad All Stars Steel Orchestra, his lecturer at UTT, Leon “Smooth” Edwards, if he knew of any bands for which he could arrange. Smooth recommended Yundi to the manager of Genesis and she accepted.
[caption id="attachment_995832" align="alignnone" width="690"] Arranger David Yundi intends to attend the University of Florida to get his master’s degree and then doctorate in the performing arts, - AYANNA KINSALE[/caption]
Initially, he had some dissenters and there were times that he thought he could do better, but those doubts pushed him to do more and he never doubted his ability.
Yundi said he enjoyed the challenge of Bun Dem because most arrangers preferred to do songs in major. Bun Dem, however, is in E minor as well as a two-chord song, which arrangers usually stay away from.
“I seconded the motion for this song because you can’t really do much in two chords, but I felt I could show the judges and arrangers there’s still a lot you could do with just two chords.”
Initially, he just wanted to make the composer proud and give the audience something to remember with his arrangement. But when Stalin died in December, instead of making him proud, he wanted to give Stalin “a good send off.” His death also increased the resolve of the band as a whole, to do their best.
Yundi said his start in steel pan was an accident.
He recalled, in 2009, when he was eight years old, he was walking around St Margaret’s Boys Anglican School after classes when he heard music. He was curious about the sound he was hearing and walked into the pan room to find some of his fellow students in the middle of a steelpan class.
The conductor asked if he was there to play pan and he said yes, even though he did not know what the instrument was. He fell in love and never left, and played with the St Margaret’s Boys Anglican School Steel Orchestra for 11 years.
“The difference with
