THE Steel and Parang event hosted by the Harvard Club in conjunction with resident steelband Harvard Harps Steel Orchestra was a treat for patrons at the club’s premises in St Clair, recently.
This event returned to its past glory and had patrons basking in the spirit of the Christmas season.

Parang band Los Diamantes, led by Roy Edwards, opened the live entertainment with ‘La Pascualidad’, followed by ‘Ave O Maria Ave’, ‘Alegria’, ‘Viva’, and ‘Barlovento’.
The band then put a local flavour into their performance and gave patrons ‘Trini Christmas’, ‘Ramdhanie Parang’, ‘Gimme Love’ and ‘Margarita Christmas’, before getting back to some authentic parang with Anda Parrandero and El Gavilan. Los Diamantes closed their highly-entertaining session with ‘Rio Manzanares’, ‘Baila’ and ‘Vamos A Gozar’.

Vocalist Carlton Luison swayed the crowd with ‘This Christmas’ and ‘Give Love on Christmas Day’, before Patrice Smith, who had received a bit of personal bad news just before her performance, composed herself to deliver a fine performance of ‘Swimming To Tobago’ For Christmas and ‘We Paranging in the Sea’, and even engaging one of the Harvard elders in the process.

Harvard member D Laventillian then sang his own parang soca song Oreo, and followed with a reggae number ‘Changing World’.
DJs Stephen and Andy ramped up the tempo to get patrons on the dance floor and they remained there for Harvard Harps’ fiery performance of ‘Full of Vibes’, ‘Give It To Ya’, ‘Sweet For Days’, ‘Moliendo Café’, ‘Tell Santa Clause’, ‘Insane’, ‘Talk’, ‘Bassman’ and ‘Sugar cake’.

Then came Grammy-award winner Anslem Douglas who entertained with ‘Dancing With You’, ‘Shadow Parang’, ‘Irie Tonight’ and ‘Stick Fight’. And upon request, he expertly delivered ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ and ‘The Christmas Song’ before closing with his 1994 hit Soca song ‘Ragga Poom Poom’.

Though Sonrie the Band, led by Antonio Flores, took a while in setting up on stage, as it got into its Latin and Caribbean music repertoire, patrons took to the dance-floor once again, making way for pannist Noel La Pierre to close the event on a high with festive songs that included ‘Eat something Before You Go’, ‘Gloria’, ‘Black Cake and Sorrel’, ‘Ayer’, ‘Fast Wine’, ‘My House’, ‘Good Morning’, ‘Feeling a Feeling’ and ‘Trini Parang’. (NEWSDAY)