GHS makes it six-in-a-row (+Videos)
There is a recipe for winning the St Vincent Electricity Services (VINLEC) National Junior Panorama competition.
And Johnny ‘JP’ Pompey, the six-time winner along with the Girls’ High School (GHS), knows the formula.
But the prolific arranger, who last Sunday June 30, spearheaded the GHS’s sixth consecutive win, is keeping it to himself. Second in the competition with 227 points was the Bishop’s College Kingstown (BCK) with Professor’s “Mas in the Hospital”. “I can’t let that out, that is my secret, I can’t let that out the bag,” Pompey told SEARCHLIGHT Sunday night at Carnival City, Victoria Park when asked how he pulls it off.
During the competition, the GHS, performing Delroy “Fireman” Hooper’s “Soca Battlefield”, defeated nine other schools to take their sixth consecutive title. They scored a total of 245 points. Pompey, who started playing pan at age 13 as a student of the Bishop’s College Kingstown (BCK) thanked the players, parents and teachers of the GHS for assisting him in helping the players reach this milestone. “I feel really, really good, the hard work paid off. I was working really hard for this sixth straight win and I got it,” Pompey commented minutes after the results were announce
He said the players worked on the song over a two-month period and he is grateful that 46 of the over 60 players who started, stuck around to the end. The GHS is an all girl school, but the band includes a few males, allowed by the rules of the competition, but Pompey believes that the competition can do without them.
The rule states that five members of the band may come from outside the participating school. Pompey said that he used one male player on a pan and two in the riddim section. Fourth place was the CW Prescod Primary School with “Jam Dem”
“They keep going back and forth, so they need to sort themselves out,” Pompey said of the rule makers who added that they had the rule in place before, changed it, now they have brought it back. He said that the problem of lack of players can be solved by going on a comprehensive drive in the participating schools to train different players every year.
“Every September we have a minimum 60 persons learning to play pan at the GHS, so if they have similar programmes in other schools and you get 15 or 20 whatever you get, train new persons, keep training new people,” stated Pompey who is taking part in the Senior Panorama competition this Friday with the band Epic Sounds. Coming in second in the competition with 227 points was the Bishop’s College Kingstown (BCK) with Professor’s “Mas in the Hospital”. Third place went to New Grounds Primary School with “Whine of your Life” from Orande “Bomani” Charles. They scored 210 points.
by Searchlight.vc
