Coda

Just wanna end this blog ting with an endish type post. i stopped blogging long ago but i'm making this my official last blog. i remember about 3 years ago when B and I sat in Exodus' panyard as she explained to me what a blog was. i just wrote it off as another wierd thing that she did and knew that i would not be cought dead doing it.
well who knew that i would be one of them in such a short space of time, not as enthusiastic or consistent as others but blogging none the less. So i'l stop here now lest i begin to say something meaningful or deep. Adieu adieu to you and you and you. its been a trip.
d

Trinidadians r wierd

today i was cursed at by a driver for crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing. He was most upset that i caused him to momentarily decrease his speed so that i could gain access to the other side of the road. His exact words were " Like yuh want me kill yuh modda c*nt!" I honestly found it kinda funny but still very disturbing. Trinidadian drivers really seem to think that pedestrian crosings are street murals.

big band

this is a heads up. on saturday 28th april at the closing ceremony of te cricket world cup, a joint steelband (roughly 300 players) will be performing Exodus' winning arrangement of Pan in A Minor. ITs about 175 players from Trinidad, mainly exodus players but they got other players to join them (my exams have perectly coincided with this event so i will be in Trinidad). I heard the 175 of the trinidadians and it was sounding so good. i've never seen/heard such a large amount of pan players playing the same song, so look out for i cuz it should be good.

panorama

This panorama was a good experience. it helped inprove my technical abilities, appreciate the competion more, have a better understanding of the criteria for arranging and judging; but it wasnt really fun.
I go to an all day pan tuning course, from there i go to uwi where i am a full time student and then usually go straight to the pan yard where we usually practiced till the following morning. i was tired every day. Its the same song every night. Almost every night changes are made to the song.
for some reason this year the vibes werent really there, partly because the song was very fast and it had plenty runs. in fact the only time i enjoyed playing that song was on the stage for the finals, which was an amazing experience, by the time we reached the middle of the arrangemnt i was breathless. but that feeling came too late for me.
for some reason i decided to play in junior parnorama also. some of u might remember a band called Golden Hands ( they wore purple clothes for the world festival and they had gold pans). well i played with them (d. seconds). it was incredible to play with people sooo much younger than me who were handling themselves amazingly well on the pans. dont let the term junior panorama fool you, its stiff competition and the music isnt so easy. this was also an excellent experience but also very time consuming as their panyard is in south trinidad so i learnt the whole panorama tune from a score.
overall it was good and i recomend it to anyone, but only once a year.

ash wednesday

dont get me wrong, the carnival season is fun and exciting but i'm so happy that its over. i'm begining to see why it can only happen once a year.

big soca songs this year

Jumbie- machel montano (my prediction for road march song)
higher than high- machel
light it up- machel and patrice
i dare you - destra
alequa- sherwin winchester
cold sweat - crazy
sugar boy- patrice roberts
woman by my side- peter ram and sherwin

there are others but i like these

we jammin again

i know i've basically stopped blogging, but i figure some of u might find this sort of interesting.
This morning around 2:00 there i was in the queens park savana pushing racks on the stage for panorama semi-finals. never mind we were there from 5 pm the day before and we ate at 6 pm, and there were no spectators in the savana to play for cuz it was 2:oo on a monday morning. all in all, it was a worthwile experience. very tiring and draining but i'm sure it will positivly impact on me sometime in the future. it still gets me everytime i hear a big band for panorama or even when we're practicing how powerful the bands sound. u really feel as if u getting hit with the music.
the rehersals leading up 2 the semis were annoying, every night, drill drill drill, make changes , drill in the changes, add more runs, drill in the runs. drillin till u wrists in pain. what especially annoyed me was that they would add a run or someethimng and start to practice it at performance tempo almost immediatly, and then wonder why we not playing it properly. there's still one run that is near to imposible to play at the speed they want it, so hopefully i could get most of dem notes by finals.

results after semi finals
1 phase 2
2 all starts
3 exodus
4 tropical angel harps
5 starlift
6 invaders
7 renegades
8 desperadoes

its something like dat. the first 3 are right 4 sure.