This year, Duvone Stewart was determined to repeat history. The arranger for Renegades Steel Orchestra had his sights set on the Holy Grail: the hattrick, the trifecta, three Panorama wins in a row. It had only been done once before in the history of the national competition — by Renegades in 1997, under the leadership of the legendary Jit Samaroo.
Having piloted the band to victory in 2018 and 2019, then 2023 and 2024, Stewart was poised on a knife’s edge. Given the extraordinary level of competition, with powerful legacy bands fighting tooth and nail for the yearly championship, a hattrick is a near-impossible feat. Which is to say, the type that Stewart, 48, embraces with gusto.
“I know I have the mindset and the confidence necessary to win,” he told me in the panyard, a week before the finals. “The rest is up to God.”
The bad news for Stewart and the band is, they lost — coming in a close second to Exodus Steel Orchestra. The good news is: he is undaunted. “Music is a mission, not a competition,” Stewart is fond of saying.
Still, he’s won more competitions than most. They have, in fact, defined the course of his life, ever since he aced the well-loved children’s talent show 12 and Under when he was 10.
But the story begins much earlier. Duvone Stewart was born in Tobago in 1976, the eldest son of two steelpan enthusiasts. His father, a dockworker, was vice-captain of Tobago All Stars and an ardent supporter of the fabled Desperados; his mother, a seamstress, also played in the band.
He had seen firsthand “the discipline, the self-motivation, the spiritual beliefs” necessary to be a great arranger; and he believed that he had been “chosen” — by God, and by Jit — to carry on the legacy
“When he was two or three years old, he would line up tin pans below the house, and he would lick the life out of those pans, from early morning,” recalls Nancy Percival, Duvone’s mother, who later left Tobago to train as a nurse in the United States.
At the age of eight, Duvone discovered his destiny. Accompanying his parents to the panyard one Saturday night, “I saw the instrument and fell in love with it,” he says simply. “Steelpan is the greatest instrument that God ever created.”
Legend has it that by the end of the night, he was picking out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a tenor pan: apocryphal or not, a year later he was on the road with the band at Carnival, playing Crazy’s “Suck Mih Soucouyant”.
“He had to stand on a crate to play,” laughs his mother. “People were amazed to see this little boy on the road, hitting it out non-stop; getting it right.”
The band’s musical director (and principal of Bishops’ High School in Tobago), Gwyneth Armstrong, recognised his instinctive talent. She offered him — gratis — lessons in music theory; he eventually completed Grade 8 exams.
She also launched a junior section of the band, where young Duvone eagerly honed his skills, practising every day after school. “I always wanted to be a panman,” he explains. “I never turned back from pursuing the dream.”
At home, there was total support. “Pan was always in the house,” says Nancy Percival. “Duvone and his cousin were both playing, waking up the neighbours.”
His 12 and Under success in 1986 won him a trip to Disney World; later, another national competition would bring a much greater prize. Playing Mozart’s Sonata in C at the Schools Music Festival in 1991, he came fifth. But something about his playing attracted the attention of Jit Samaroo. Sensing promise, Samaroo contacted Mrs Armstrong and offered the teenager the opportunity to train with Renegades in Port of Spain.
“I’d never dreamt of coming to Port of Spain until that moment,” muses Stewart. He still remembers the thrill of arriving at the Renegades panyard for the first time: the excitement of hearing the bands practising, music filling the air as he and his father walked up Charlotte Street from the ferry dock.
Life changed drastically for the 15-year-old. Each Friday — his parents having negotiated special permission from his principal — he would leave school early to catch the 1pm ferry; beat pan all weekend; and return on Sunday night to resume classes the next day at Signal Hill Secondary School.
He spent his nights on the boat, where his uncle was a cook. After only five or six weeks of practice, he was onstage with Renegades at the 1992 Panorama finals, playing “Bee’s Melody” (they came in third).
It was an exhausting schedule, but it paid off. In 1996, the young virtuoso — who was already winning every solo competition in sight — won himself a scholarship to study classical music at the University of the West Indies (The UWI).
Port of Spain became his permanent base; he moved in with a cousin on Nelson Street. His parents, ever supportive, sent him money to survive. His father brought food on the weekend ferry — “just for moral support,” explains Percival, “letting him know we’re here.”
Nelson Street is an inner-city neighbourhood famed for all the wrong thing (drugs, guns, gangs), but close to the steelband heartland, where the instrument — and the early bad-boy bands — originated. “Renegades came out of the lawbreakers era,” says Stewart. “I didn’t have the opportunity to experience it, but I heard the stories. The war was always around.”
It was a far cry from tranquil Tobago: “I saw it all — guns, drugs, love, murder, peace,” he told me. But he also learned about “the unity of the panyard, the camaraderie; the good and the bad things that come out of it.” He was befriended by Wayne Alleyne, a father-figure to many in the Nelson Street community. He kept Stewart on an even keel.
“Wayne was a realist,” Stewart says soberly. “He made everything okay for me. He encouraged me to go to work hard in the panyard and steer clear of trouble. He was my best friend.”
Stewart played for Renegades until 1998, building his skills and — incidentally — his fame as a top pannist. “There was never a national competition that Duvone Stewart took part in that he hasn’t won,” he said in The Man Behind the Music (2023), a documentary on Stewart produced by the late Mark Loquan and directed by Maria Nunes.
Still, things weren’t always perfect: by the time he graduated from The UWI, fame had gone to his head. “I had my ups and downs — gambling, drinking, nightlife, running down women; taking advantage of my celebrity status. The down times was there; the dark days was there. I was in destructive mode.”
Renegades had been suffering through a dry spell since Samaroo’s fabled hattrick in 1997; Stewart’s mission was to turn that around
He credits his dear friend, Candice Andrews-Brumant — now Renegades’ band captain — for getting him “out of the gutter”, and back on track.
Once again, Fate stepped in to guide his steps. Invited to arrange a tune for La Horquetta Pan Groove, which had suffered a long and ignominious losing streak, Stewart was able to pull the band into the finals that year (2001 Single Pan Category). Under his continued tutelage, La Horquetta was soon a repeat champion in its class.
That was the beginning of his extraordinary success as an arranger. Since then, Stewart hasn’t looked back, arranging for a multiplicity of bands in various categories, and winning in one or more categories every year, for 20 years in a row. In 2019, he won small, medium and large: a trifecta in its own right.
He had learned from the best: Stewart describes his years of working under Jit Samaroo as “free tuition”. He had seen firsthand “the discipline, the self-motivation, the spiritual beliefs” necessary to be a great arranger; and he believed that he had been “chosen” — by God, and by Jit — to carry on the legacy.
“Panorama music is about the soul of the people, the spirit of Carnival,” he says. “We get to express ourselves in a unique way.” His own way of working is unique: he uses a mathematical formula for creating chords that give single pan bands the richness and texture of their larger counterparts.
Samaroo retired in 2007, for health reasons. Stewart was offered the musical leadership but declined: he didn’t feel he was ready. In 2012, he accepted. Renegades had been suffering through a dry spell since Samaroo’s fabled hattrick in 1997; Stewart’s mission was to turn that around.
They came in fourth that year; and for the next five years, the band was “knocking on the door”, he says, consistently coming in third. “I knew that one day the door would open. We were still feared by everyone.”
The door opened, memorably and tragically, in 2018. Just as the band was starting to prepare for Panorama, Wayne Alleyne was shot and killed by one of the Nelson Street gangs. Stewart still gets emotional talking about it.
“I see him every day,” he says. (He means this literally: his apartment overlooks the cemetery where Alleyne is buried.) “He’s there with me all the time. I’ll never have another friend like Wayne.”
The pain from his friend’s death poured out of him and into the music that he chose for the competition: “Year for Love”, by Voice. People who heard it at Panorama say Stewart’s arrangement “made their pores raise”. Renegades won. And kept on winning — though never quite a hattrick.
Ask a Renegades player to describe Stewart’s approach to arranging, and you’re likely to hear the word “full”. “He finds the spaces, he knows when to hit certain things,” says triple-cello player Stacy Doughlin. “He knows how to capture the different strengths of the different instruments. Now the band feels full when he arranges. It’s sweetness.”
Band captain Candice Andrews-Brumant agrees: “Duvone is in a class by himself. His songs are full: he takes advantage of the chords, extends them as far as he could to get the fullness. He definitely has his own style. And he has an energy that the band feeds off. If he’s in a good place, we are always productive, and it’s fun.”
Stewart’s skills as both player and arranger have taken him across the world. Since 2004, he has worked full-time — at times remotely — for the University of Nantes, in France. Much of his year outside of Carnival is spent teaching masterclasses and performing concerts in Europe and elsewhere (he is particularly proud of having introduced steelpan to the Maldives where, he says, the pan version of their national anthem is still played daily on radio and TV). His dream is to someday arrange for a Tobago steelband, and see them victorious.
Ask Stewart himself what is his greatest achievement, and the answer may surprise you: it’s not all his musical victories, or even his international renown. It’s his weight. Starting as a chubby kid, he gradually ballooned to 440lbs.
Ask a Renegades player to describe Stewart’s approach to arranging, and you’re likely to hear the word “full”
“I loved to eat,” he confessed in the Loquan documentary. “I didn’t even know it was getting out of control.” His health remained robust, and it clearly didn’t affect his talent; but his friends — and especially his mother — were deeply concerned.
Eventually he realised that something needed to be done: his waistline was 60” and his shirt size was 6XL. He understood that he was on a fatal path, and that if he died, his goals to inspire and motivate the younger generation of pan players would die with him. “I had to save my life.”
In 2016, he underwent gastric surgery that removed 90% of his stomach; 18 months later, he was down to 180lbs. “No one recognised me,” he chuckles. “People thought I was dying.” Today, his diet is spartan: eggs, salads, vegetables.
What gave him the courage to take such drastic action? Stewart’s reply is simple, encapsulating every move he’s ever made: “I did it for pan.”
His mom, smiling, declares: “That’s my Duvone!”