Mosaic Steel Orchestra

DEVELOPING STEEL PAN is at the top of the agenda of this island’s largest steel orchestra.

CEO and Musical Director of Mosaic, David Walcott says the more than fifty strong band is a community made up of pannists from across the island and he added that it is constantly expanding.

With more than a dozen tenor pans, five double tenors, seven double seconds, a base section combined of nearly 30 and an engine room of nearly ten Mosaic doesn’t just play calypso or Soca but a mixture of genres, which makes it one of the more listened to local steel groups.

“We are structured like a business with a whole chain of command, a committee runs the band and the aim is to develop good players and leaders,” Walcott said.

With a lack of serious steel pan competition in Barbados Mosaic travels the region to share the stage with similar groups, days before the wrap up of the Crop Over season they head to Antigua’s Panorama to play with the Ebonite.  

“We’ve created relationships with bands in other territories. It allows members to play with people better than themselves which helps them to get better.”

Walcott, who is an accomplished musician wants local pan groups to work together to strengthen the art form and he stressed that unity is needed among the groups. He hopes that in the near future steel orchestras can take on the role of backing bands; he says this will not happen until pan groups create these opportunities for themselves.

Mosaic is still receiving kudos from their performance at the ICC Cricket World Cup matches at Kensington Oval.

During Crop Over you can see them at several fetes across the island and they are hoping to appear at the national events Pan Pun De Sand and Pan in De City.      

• Steel Pan

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