"Gold" - Panorama Arrangement
by Seion Gomez

"Gold" - sung by Machel Montano, Rikki Jai, Karene Asche and Duane O’Connor:

"Gold" - Performed by NLCB Buccooneers and arranged by Seion Gomez:

Abstract

‘Gold’, originally composed by Cecil ‘Maestro’ Hume in 1976, was a tribute to our first Olympic gold medalist, Hasley Crawford, for winning the 100m race at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. It was then rewritten in 2012, in tribute to Keshorn Walcott, who won the javelin gold at the 2012 Olympic games, in London, Brian Lara and Dwight Yorke, who excelled in sports, Penny Commissiong, Giselle La Ronde, Wendy Fitzwilliam and Anya Ayoung-Chee for beauty and fashion and of course, Hasley Crawford.

Background and Process

The remake had a very attractive structure, comprising of four verses, with each verse dedicated to a specific category of sport or beauty, while displaying an abundance of national pride. As the arranger, Gomez thought this would be the perfect panorama choice for NLCB Buccooneers. The ingredients within this song consisted of pure energy, an abundance of culturally formed rhythms and a smooth moving melody with seamless transitions, which made it easy for me to build musical ideas for this arrangement. This is definitely the musical approach that should be used to compose music geared for steelpan and panorama.

‘Gold’ was chosen as the tune of choice for NLCB Buccooneers for the 2013 panorama season. With just the verse and chorus learned, there was already a feeling of euphoria moving through the village of Buccoo which strongly suggested the possibility of the band winning panorama. Moving through each stage of the competition became easy as the band was more than prepared for each showing. With instruments tuned by Sherwin ‘Fessor’ Pierre, Ben Jackson as the drillmaster and my arrangement, which made full use of the ingredients given in this song, the end result was nothing less than a clean sweep of competitions for 2013. The band won both the National Panorama competition in the medium category and the THA Panorama competition.

Inspiration for this arrangement came very easily, it was as though the song came with an added manual on how to arrange it for panorama. I used the natural structure of the song to his advantage, utilizing the rhythms and motivic elements throughout the arrangement. Each verse of the original song was dedicated to a specific category of national achievement. Having this in mind, I gave each verse its own key, which automatically gave the four variations their own feel and identity. Unlike other arrangements he has done, Gold was created using four major keys, a minor key, a recap in the original key, then a jam and ending. The main purpose of the original song was to celebrate our national achievements. I kept this in mind and used the opening lines of our national anthem, "Forged from the love of liberty, In the fires of hope and prayer" to begin the minor section of his arrangement. After developing the main theme in the minor mode, I modulated back to the original key and created a jam within the chorus of the song. To end this jam section, I used the opening phrase of Bugler’s Dream Olympic Fanfare by John Williams, which led to a rhythmic break, similar to what is heard at the national stadium during football games. This was followed by our most infamous chant "T and T, We want ah goal". This chant is played four times, however, on the third and fourth time being played, it is accompanied by the background instruments playing the closing lines of our national anthem "Here every creed and race finds an equal place, And may God bless our nation". This arrangement was one of my more creative works, a true representation of Trinbago energy.