San Juan Eastside Symphony’s manager and owner Andre Franco said the band is elated with its eight single pan title.
The band won the first title for Carnival 2025 playing Barbadian band Spice and Company’s 1993 single, The Guns. The single pan finals took place on December 14 at the Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain.
The 2024 winner, Chord Masters Steel Orchestra came second and Metro Stars Steel Orchestra placed third among the 25 competing bands.
In a phone interview on December 16, Franco said everyone worked hard to get the band its eighth title.
The band earned 284 points with its arrangement of the song.
Ace arranger Duvone Stewart put the piece together.
“We have been working hard. Between 2010 to now, we got eight champions, three seconds and two thirds and we think we have been consistent with the Panorama and competition,” Franco said.
The band won its first five championships with Stewart, two with arranger Carlan Harewood and then returned to having Stewart as its arranger in 2024.
The band chose The Guns because it wanted to send a message about crime in Trinidad and Tobago.
“There are too many guns in the town. This one have a gun, that one have a gun and that is why we chose that song," he said, quoting the lyrics.
“It bad, it really bad. We have a group of young players in the band and we want them to understand it from that level,” he said.
Franco said Stewart would always try to arrange national-building songs and do so in a “nice” way.
The band won $275,000.
Indigenous festival
Meanwhile, Pan Trinbago president Beverley Ramsey-Moore envisions the single pan leg of Panorama becoming an indigenous festival.
She shared her hope after speaking to the recently concluded single pan leg of the competition.
Ramsey-Moore said she hoped to speak to the executive about the indigenous festival so it could materialise for the 2026 competition. The executive would look at each category and discuss possible innovations it could introduce, she said.
She suggested this as one of the possible innovations for this category after saying there were some who wanted to get rid of the category.
Ramsey-Moore repeated that the single pan was TT’s indigenous pan.
“Some people are of the view that we should finish away with this category but that will never happen under our watch because we feel we must pay homage to those who would have invented the instrument.”
She said the competition’s various elements could morph into a festival which could include indigenous foods as well as partnerships with groups like the Emancipation Support Committee of TT and the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community.
“The additions could be made to have an entire day of fun and festival.
“Just as we have the Savannah Party, a whole day of activity, then we could have a whole day of indigenous festival which includes the single pan final.”
The sold-out tickets was an indicator to Ramsey-Moore that the event was growing.
“It was one of the events we had to do a lot of work in terms of marketing a
