Semi-finals recap

I slept until 1 pm Sunday afternoon to prepare for an entire night of moving and playing pan. After I woke and showered my friend Fellie (pronounced Fa-lee) picked me up at 4 and we went down town to meet our band - Starlift. The whole Panorama event takes place just east of Port-of-Spain in an enormous field called Queens Park. This is what it looks like on google maps.



The small and medium bands had been performing all day so there where thousands of people and thousands of steel pans already there. It was more steel pans than I had ever seen in my whole life.











All these pans are lined up in a road right in front of the park. It's called "the drag" and it operates like this: All the bands line up with ALL of their equipment and members in the order they are going to perform. We arrived at 7 just after dark. Then you push everything up real close and you practice your tune while a whole bunch of people stand in the street and eat and listen. They walk right up to you and stand right next to your pan and watch your hands. They mean business! Then once a band has finished performing way ahead of you, everyone moves up. So you play, then push, then reset everything, then play, then hangout, maybe eat, then play, then push, etc. We did that from 7 until midnight making our way closer and closer to the grandstand. Here I am in the street:



We finally took the stage at about 1 am. Not bad all things considered. There was only one band that went on after us so we waited by the main stage to hear the results. That was probably around 2 am. Here are they are:

http://www.ncctt.org/home/news/231-finalists-for-the-blinkbmobile-national-panorama-finals.html

We loaded some pans and left the yard around 3 am. I think I went to sleep at about 4.