The T&T Guardian is run­ning a two-part se­ries that ex­plores the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the steel­band move­ment and of the Car­ni­val sta­ple, Panora­ma. To­day, mu­sic crit­ic and an­a­lyst Nigel A Camp­bell looks at how the pan move­ment can de­vel­op oth­er sources of rev­enue and stop its de­pen­dence on gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

PART 1

The an­nu­al rit­u­al of the steel­band Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion has be­gun in T&T, and con­tin­ues apace through the stages cul­mi­nat­ing on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day with the fi­nals. With the fi­nan­cial cut­backs in all ar­eas of the econ­o­my in­clud­ing Car­ni­val, there is a recog­ni­tion that the sum of the parts have to be ef­fi­cient and ex­cel­lent to make the whole bet­ter.

The holis­tic view tak­en by some com­men­ta­tors and pun­dits–of Panora­ma be­ing in need of "fix­ing"–has raised the ques­tion of why has this analy­sis not been done and im­ple­ment­ed be­fore this re­ces­sion, and why, even in these times, does the State still pump mon­ey in the mil­lions in­to Car­ni­val and its events such as Panora­ma.

A sim­ple an­swer could be that Panora­ma rep­re­sents the apoth­e­o­sis of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. That rea­son­ing was sup­plied by steel­pan re­searcher Dr Kim John­son, who spoke to the T&T Guardian about the idea of the con­tin­u­a­tion of the state-fund­ed event with­in the con­text of mori­bund stan­dards for the in­dus­try of steel­pan through­out the year.

John­son not­ed the his­to­ry of Panora­ma: "Panora­ma was the PNM gov­ern­ment of the 1960s tak­ing con­trol of the steel­band move­ment, what they saw as na­tion­al cul­ture. The strat­e­gy in­clud­ed mak­ing it more lu­cra­tive to play in Panora­ma be­cause of prize mon­ey and ap­pear­ance fees than to play in par­ties and f�tes."

The in­trigue con­tin­ues with the as­ser­tion that the ear­ly Panora­ma be­came the an­tithe­sis of the ex­ist­ing Bomb com­pe­ti­tion with op­pos­ing class and racial groups chal­leng­ing for con­trol and in­flu­ence–the new gov­ern­ing elite in­sist­ing that ca­lyp­so be played ver­sus the work­ing class play­ing clas­si­cal mu­sic–and crit­i­cal­ly vot­er sup­port.

"PNM had no or­gan­ised mass­es like a union, so pan­men rep­re­sent­ed a struc­tured link to the vot­ing mass­es," said John­son.

The link be­tween po­lit­i­cal fate and cul­ture con­trol is ob­served in coun­tries in the re­gion like Cu­ba, and even here when ca­lyp­so lyrics were sub­ject to cen­sors speaks of a kind of con­tin­ued con­trol. Nowa­days, the State spends mil­lions on the con­tin­u­a­tion of Car­ni­val both as cathar­sis and eco­nom­ic in­put via tourism and the eco­nom­ic mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect of trade at that time. In 2016, $270 mil­lion is al­lo­cat­ed to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), which ef­fec­tive­ly runs Car­ni­val, of which Pan Trin­ba­go got $30 mil­lion. Pan Trin­ba­go head Kei­th Di­az says his or­gan­i­sa­tion re­quest­ed $45 mil­lion from the gov­ern­ment, but Cul­ture min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said, "The cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions have forced the Gov­ern­ment to cut back." Ef­forts to get a state­ment from the min­is­ter in re­la­tion to the ques­tion of the ra­tio­nale and pol­i­cy for state fund­ing of steel­pan proved fu­tile.

The peo­ple's rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Par­lia­ment, dur­ing Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) hear­ings in 2012, look­ing in­to the man­age­ment of the NCC, re­port­ed their find­ings in a re­port that spoke about fi­nan­cial and man­age­ment mat­ters at the or­gan­i­sa­tion, and con­clu­sions from this re­port pro­vide some an­swers to ques­tions of the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the Panora­ma event and the spin-off projects like the dis­put­ed Greens, a sep­a­rate area in the Sa­van­nah that was de­vel­oped for pa­trons who want to be in the Sa­van­nah for a par­ty but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the pan. The re­port specif­i­cal­ly not­ed con­ges­tion of the mas­quer­ade on Car­ni­val Tues­day, and on­ly touched on the stalled con­struc­tion of the Pan Trin­ba­go head­quar­ters–at least $5.8 mil­lion spent and un­fin­ished since 2002–and the move­ment away from T&T of the steel­pan in­dus­try. Any no­tions of a long Panora­ma event–an as­ser­tion made by some to rec­om­mend fix­ing–were not con­clud­ed as a prob­lem.

When chal­lenged by for­mer sen­a­tor Em­manuel George to jus­ti­fy the Greens space as a si­mul­ta­ne­ous "fete" when the fo­cus should be on pan at Panora­ma, Clarence Moe, then NCC CEO re­spond­ed that, "There is a push at present to tell the in­ter­est groups (Pan Trin­ba­go in this case), your events and ac­tiv­i­ties must be vi­able. That you must be able to at least in­crease the lev­els of rev­enue, be­cause the shows and the events that you put on have the po­ten­tial for rais­ing high­er rev­enues...this year has gen­er­at­ed the great­est lev­el of rev­enue that we have ever seen, in­deed it was al­most dou­bled."

Eco­nom­ics trumped all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. De­spite some pull-out from par­ty or­gan­is­ers and pro­mo­tions com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies are or­gan­is­ing their crews for the Sa­van­nah Par­ty on Sun­day.

Pan Trin­ba­go vice pres­i­dent Bry­on Ser­rette, in 2014, jus­ti­fied the ex­is­tence of the Greens by not­ing that "while a lot of the younger gen­er­a­tion mem­bers are play­ing with the steel­bands, their peers have not been sup­port­ing the event...they would pre­fer not to sit in one spot for hours lis­ten­ing to the bands....Pan Trin­ba­go, there­fore, took the de­ci­sion to ac­com­mo­date these pa­trons by giv­ing them a space in which they would be com­fort­able, and at the same time con­tribute to the rev­enues we are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate from the event."

Kei­th Di­az, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent re­it­er­ates, "Pan Trin­ba­go is not the Pan Trin­ba­go of yes­ter­year. We are now a busi­ness-dri­ven en­ter­prise."

It must be not­ed that near­ly 90 per cent of the NCC's bud­get comes via gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion. Pan Trin­ba­go's mon­ey is a mix of pub­lic and pri­vate fund­ing with a very small por­tion of rev­enue com­ing from gate re­ceipts and rentals. But Panora­ma is not on­ly about mon­ey, it is about per­for­mance and in­creas­ing­ly about broad­cast and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty ex­ploita­tion.

The re­cent ex­am­ple of the marathon In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch se­mi-fi­nals has shone a new spot­light on the idea of broad­cast­ing and live stream­ing of Car­ni­val events and the pro­duc­tion val­ues ex­pect­ed of those broad­casts. The idea of broad­cast­ing fes­ti­val type events has prece­dence in the BBC broad­casts of Glas­ton­bury and state tele­vi­sion sta­tions in Eu­rope broad­cast­ing jazz fes­ti­vals like Es­ti­val in Lugano, Switzer­land, and Jaz­zal­dia in San Se­basti�n, Spain, as in­ter­na­tion­al ex­am­ples. Snap­shots or even sets by acts sup­port a tele­vi­sion broad­cast that is dis­trib­uted world­wide.

The lo­cal pref­er­ence to po­si­tion a cam­era or a bank of cam­eras on un­pre­pared singers or eight minute bursts of steel­pan per­for­mance sand­wiched be­tween 20 min­utes of tran­si­tion time be­tween bands cre­ates a bad tele­vi­sion ex­pe­ri­ence and a prod­uct that isn't vi­able for live pay per view au­di­ences.

At the 2012 JSC hear­ings, the NCC ad­mit­ted fail­ure to fur­ther ex­ploit broad­cast rights cit­ing "the lack of prop­er tech­nol­o­gy" and al­so spoke about their in­abil­i­ty to col­lect ac­cred­i­ta­tion fees from in­ter­na­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phers.

It's clear that T&T is be­hind the learn­ing curve of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and trends, and the slow buy-in to the no­tion that lo­cal au­di­ences' ex­pec­ta­tions have in­creased and they ex­pect the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards seen in for­eign pro­duc­tions.

Panora­ma sat­is­fies an age­ing de­mo­graph­ic, which can not sus­tain it as a pop­u­lar mu­sic and it con­tin­ues be­cause the state seeks to main­tain sup­port, fi­nan­cial­ly and oth­er­wise for a "na­tion­al" cul­ture. Panora­ma con­tin­ues be­cause its own­er, Pan Trin­ba­go, has made it the acme of the in­stru­ment and the in­dus­try.

Nestor Sul­li­van, who has been in­volved in pan for many years, sug­gests, "Panora­ma seems to be the 'de­f­i­n­i­tion of steel­pan' but as a cat­a­lyst for an­nu­al mu­sic prac­tis­ing and de­vel­op­ment, it is not do­ing that."

John­son mean­while be­lieves that, "steel­band is mod­ern in­stru­ment that pre­serves the an­cient idea that mu­sic is par­tic­i­pa­tion."

These two ideas sug­gest that the an­nu­al rite of pas­sage that is Panora­ma may be in need of fix­ing, but it can on­ly be fixed when the steel­band move­ment and the so­ci­ety at large recog­nis­es that this re­quires a dras­tic par­a­digm change.