There are steelband arrangements that are known all over the world. Moreover, these arrangements are quickly becoming musical standards for the steel orchestras. What makes a steelband music arrangement a masterpiece or "classic"?
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It has to be a piece that can work in any era. The Beatles, Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder are a few composers that have made that jump. In pan - Trinidad All Stars' Woman on the Bass, Deperadoes' Rebecca and Boogsie's Happy Birthday are classics in my opinion - these arrangements would even sound good on a conventional orchestra.
I would say people make a classic a classic. It has to be generally adored by most people before I can say a performance is a classic. It has to be a tune that people call for whenever the band plays. One that the band cannot leave the venue without playing. One that people respond to today the same way they did when it was played the first time. 'Woman on the Bass' by Smooth and All Stars comes to mind. Although its not my personal favourite, people respond to it as wildly today as they did back in 1980. Thats a classic in my mind.
A classic is a musical piece that crosses all boundaries and resonate with everyone, regardless of background or musical affiliations, country or language. It makes you stop and go 'wow'.
Happy Birthday by Boogsie with Phase II, Rebeca by Bradley with Desperadoes, Woman on the Bass by Smooth with All Stars, Pan in A Minor by Jit with Renegades, Pan by Storm with Pro, Stranger by Bradley with Pantonic, Dus by Pelham with Exodus are just a few that come to mind.
It's a classic when no other arranger tries that song after one arranger does it just right. Like Silver Stars' (Junior Pouchet's) "Dr. Zhivago," "Gaudeamus Igitur," "Ghost Riders" and others.
some tunes i love for a while, then they drop off my radar. i hear them again and i remember "boy i used to LOVE that one", but it doesn't make my heart leap like it once did.
other tunes i can hear once in a blue moon, .. and when i hear it again say, 5 years later, and it captivates me all over again just as it did when it was fresh to my ears, and i hear even more new things in the arrangment, and i wanna listen to it over and over again, studying every note like i did when i first heard it - to me, that's what makes something "classic".
Used to be that 'Pan in A Minor' was a standard, however, now it has become (and im going to refer to a rock song here) a 'Stairway To Heaven' in the pan world. It's almost as if 'Pan in A Minor' has become a song that one just doesn't play in the panyard anymore.
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Happy Birthday by Boogsie with Phase II, Rebeca by Bradley with Desperadoes, Woman on the Bass by Smooth with All Stars, Pan in A Minor by Jit with Renegades, Pan by Storm with Pro, Stranger by Bradley with Pantonic, Dus by Pelham with Exodus are just a few that come to mind.
other tunes i can hear once in a blue moon, .. and when i hear it again say, 5 years later, and it captivates me all over again just as it did when it was fresh to my ears, and i hear even more new things in the arrangment, and i wanna listen to it over and over again, studying every note like i did when i first heard it - to me, that's what makes something "classic".