DAL­TON NAR­INE

Hap­py Birth­day, Panora­ma! What with the line­up of fi­nal­ists in three cat­e­gories tonight, the vibes cyar done. Tru­ly gold­en, pan. This hap­pen­ing. Yet, as with most things pan, dis­agree­ments over the com­pe­ti­tion al­ways cut through the burn­ing of the drum. Down an al­le­gor­i­cal road, one sure­ly must have heard the term, "tem­per­ing the steel." But ton­ing down the in­stru­ment be­fore it is tuned sets it up for the tun­ing. Which is un­like tem­pers fly­ing over pan be­cause there have al­ways been mul­ti­ple gospels of its na­tiv­i­ty, just as there are dis­ci­ples will­ing to risk a heart at­tack over the art­form.

One can nev­er not have an ar­gu­ment over an in­stru­ment that pi­o­neers had beat­en in­to shape so it could be giv­en life. But a cou­ple have al­ready been float­ing around the com­pe­ti­tion of pan on its very birth­day. Nev­er ar­gue over pan, so they say. In­deed, Pan Trin­ba­go should be­gin a work­shop on why we should nev­er ar­gue over the in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ment of our times. Un­less it's to set the record straight. And there's the rub.

A case in point is the be­lief that on­ly 49 edi­tions of Panora­ma have been staged. Those who cite the 1979 Pan Boy­cott are wrong. De­spite on­ly a pre­lim­i­nary round be­ing con­duct­ed that year, there's ab­solute­ly no need to run a chord on the four pan in a pis­sy fit. It's 50 years of Panora­ma. Get with the pro­gramme al­ready. Giv­en deep­er im­por­tance is how Panora­ma got its name. Melvin Bryan, cur­rent­ly an ad­vi­sor to Kei­th Di­az, pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go, and who held a sim­i­lar po­si­tion un­der George God­dard, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Steel­band As­so­ci­a­tion, cit­ed his men­tor's book: "Ronald Williams said the CDC would give it a try to raise the $1,000 (for the 1963 first prize) and he was go­ing to change the name of the com­pe­ti­tion to Steel­bands' Panora­ma. I agreed with him."

But Desmond Chase, a re­tired banker from Sayre­ville, New Jer­sey, USA, said he was an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of an ad hoc com­mit­tee charged with chris­ten­ing the in­au­gur­al night of pan with a name. Chase said that as he rode his tick-tick from his Bel­mont home to the meet­ing at the old Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice on Wright­son Road, he lucked up­on a movie poster out­side Deluxe that trum­pet­ed its new screen per­sona: In Cin­e­mas­cope and Panora­ma (a wide-an­gle view or rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a phys­i­cal space). Chase said just be­fore the meet­ing was called he told com­mit­tee mem­ber Lloyd Pol­lon­ais of his dis­cov­ery. That evening, Chase re­called, Panora­ma was the unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

"Not many mem­bers had con­tributed ideas," Chase ac­knowl­edged, "so I don't know how Ronald Williams came up with Steel­bands' Panora­ma. The com­mit­tee can vouch for my in­tegri­ty." Don Clarke, a tuner for City Syn­co­pa­tors, re­mem­bers how un­usu­al bands pre­pared for the first Panora­ma in 1963. "They played their mu­sic like a Bomb," Clarke said. "You couldn't go to the pan yard to ma­co. They held back and sprang a sur­prise on the au­di­ence at the Sa­van­nah."

Treat­ment of the arrange­ments, notwith­stand­ing, An­tho­ny Williams, Pan Am North Stars band leader and arranger of the win­ning song, Spar­row's Dan is the Man, says his ex­pe­ri­ence in the com­pe­ti­tion was bit­ter­sweet. "We were pro­fes­sion­als," he said, "and we shouldn't have been judged like am­a­teurs. Why judge pro­fes­sion­al mu­si­cians?" North Stars' sec­ond win in a row, with Kitch­en­er's Ma­ma Dis Is Mas, was tes­ta­ment that Panora­ma had be­come a repos­i­to­ry for cre­ativ­i­ty. Di­az re­counts changes in tun­ing, ar­rang­ing, wheels, pan racks, canopies, new in­stru­ments such as the dou­ble tenor, four pan, rock­et pan, six pan, 12-bass and triple gui­tar.

Seat­ed with his back against a win­dow that looks out to Vic­to­ria Square, Di­az reels off a spate of stats.

* Eighty two per cent of youths play pan

* Forty sev­en per cent are women

* Thir­ty-five arrangers are un­der 30 years old

* 8,500 play­ers per­form in the Panora­ma

* 167 reg­is­tered steel bands in the coun­try

* 81 steel bands in the 2012 semi­fi­nals, in­clud­ing 49 large bands.

* 48 per­cent younger crowd at the event this year.

"We see growth from 2011-12 that young peo­ple are pay­ing to come. I want to thank all of them for car­ry­ing the flag of T&T cul­ture. They have a good time. I don't want to stop them. That's why I opened the gate dur­ing [the con­tretemps at] the semi­fi­nals. The at­trac­tion of young peo­ple is be­cause the mu­sic is done by young peo­ple, ba­si­cal­ly. So many young arrangers in the coun­try pen­e­trat­ing the mar­ket of Panora­ma. We've giv­en young com­posers a shot at chang­ing old men­tal­i­ty in­to new vi­sion.

"It's why we de­cid­ed in 2012 to be more busi­nesslike. In­crease the space and make more mon­ey." Hence the Greens. For ex­am­ple, the North Greens is ex­pect­ed to be­come self-suf­fi­cient, Di­az says, con­sid­er­ing that max­i­mum at­ten­dance at the Grand Stand is 12,000 and 9,800 in the North Stand. The Greens may en­hance the Panora­ma ex­pe­ri­ence of 11,000 pa­trons. But at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly sees the area as the crux of the Panora­ma prob­lem.

"Not enough pay­ing space is cre­at­ed to ac­com­mo­date all of the pa­trons who'd like to pay to be in the vicin­i­ty of the Panora­ma," Daly says. "Not every­body wants to sit and watch it live. Pan Trin­ba­go is mak­ing enough at­tempt to deal with the North Stand sub­cul­ture. It needs that rev­enue. You want this group to stay in­ter­est­ed in pan, even if there's mar­gin­al in­ter­est. If it were up to me, I'll let the Greens run as far as All Saints Church."

To ac­com­mo­date this sub­cul­ture, Daly says pa­trons need to ac­cept the sta­tus quo in the North Stand. "You work with what you have. Few tra­di­tions find the right bal­ance to ef­fect change." Daly has seen signs that the steel band body is think­ing for the bet­ter­ment of pan. "It start­ed with Patrick Arnold and con­tin­ues with Di­az-that the or­ga­ni­za­tion has been mak­ing pan avail­able more and more every year. They've re­moved the sea­son­al ceil­ing. Al­so, al­low­ing ad­ju­di­ca­tors in the pan yards is a pro­gres­sive step.

For his part, Di­az has sched­uled "right af­ter the Car­ni­val" an in-depth plan­ning ses­sion for 2013. A Yoru­ba who was made chief of Alara of Ila­ra in Nige­ria sev­er­al months ago, Di­az be­gan per­form­ing in Panora­ma in 1967. Bands that were ea­ger for his skills on the sec­ond pan in­clud­ed Sil­hou­ettes, San Juan All Stars, Trinidad All Stars, Mer­ry Mak­ers, Tripo­lians, Play­boy, Mod­er­naires, Star­lift and Des­per­a­does.

To "up­grade" him­self, Di­az stud­ied com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege for a year. "We send staff to train­ing cours­es at The Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COSTAATT). I my­self plan to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing stud­ies at COSTAATT. The world is chang­ing and you need to up­date your­self." Do you think the beast is still in pan, a vis­i­tor wants to know.

"The beast still in this thing? That's the na­ture of pan, the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the pan­man. That's how I be­came a steel band man who knows the bel­ly of the steel band move­ment. You need to be strong. Hard­core. Tough de­ci­sions. The de­mands placed on a steel band man...The steel band move­ment is not easy. "I knew George God­dard. I watched him walk up and down fight­ing for Panora­ma, and I said one day that I'd be in his shoes. I served un­der past pres­i­dents of Pan Trin­ba­go, such as Arn­im Smith, Owen Ser­rette, Patrick Arnold. You have to know the pan world. You have to know the bel­ly of the steel band man. Rudolph Charles was a steel band man."

Staff bring doc­u­ments for his au­tho­riza­tion. It moves him to ac­cen­tu­ate such reg­i­men with a sto­ry about cross-check­ing him­self while sign­ing checks. Three sil­ver bracelets jan­gle on his right hand as he sifts through piles of stuff on his desk. A huge gold ring with dis­tin­guish­ing marks that re­mind of an or­der or so­ci­ety, of­fers a glint of the metal­lic ac­tion fig­ure in him. But his black-rimmed glass­es and a Car­ni­val doc­u­men­tary play­ing on a TV throws off the cal­i­bra­tion.

"I learn that in the steel band," he pref­aces the sto­ry. "A man was giv­en $800 and sent to buy stuff so the band could make a cook in the pan yard. But he didn't buy chick­en and rice. We asked him for the bill. He said 'They don't give bill in the mar­ket.' So we forced him to write on a piece of pa­per how much he spent in the mar­ket, and that is a bill. He had to ac­count for the $800. That's why I'm care­ful what­ev­er I'm sign­ing."

The moral of the sto­ry segues in­to the Holy Grail of the Panora­ma-Des­per­a­does' semi­fi­nal score sheet. There's not a scratch, not a blem­ish, he says. "See, it's clean." That such a rev­e­la­tion au­gurs hope to steel band men who hold a grouse al­so has a fa­mil­iar ring about Pan Trin­ba­go's fi­nan­cial plan­ning, in­clud­ing the next decade for Panora­ma.

Daniel Lam­bert, ad­vi­sor to the pres­i­dent on fi­nance, re­vealed his in­ten­tion to brand Pan Trin­ba­go as a world steel band body to fa­cil­i­tate Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions any­where. Lam­bert spins it as the le­gal un­der­pin­nings in terms of a whole­sale recog­ni­tion of pan that orig­i­nat­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "The de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is pan and its clas­si­fi­ca­tion terms of the dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments leads to a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of pro­mo­tion," Lam­bert says. "The es­tab­lish­ment of Panora­ma as­so­ci­a­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, and guid­ing those as­so­ci­a­tions to set up pan in­dus­tries-in that per­spec­tive, you'll have the right to be seen as the pre­mier body."

Lam­bert plans to de­vel­op for­mal pro­grammes of train­ing, tun­ing and play­ing that could lead to ac­cred­i­ta­tion. "Who ac­cred­its those bod­ies in the US?" Pan Trin­ba­go al­so plans to "ad­dress" the cred­i­bil­i­ty of lo­cal ac­cred­i­ta­tion. "They do a de­gree in mu­sic that in­cludes pan," says Lam­bert. "It would help in the pro­fil­ing of Pan Trin­ba­go, and by ex­ten­sion Trinidad and To­ba­go. Once it's or­ga­nized, the move­ment will be able to deal with stake­hold­ers in terms of rec­og­niz­ing Pan Trin­ba­go as the body of au­thor­i­ty that your pro­gramme is good. Then, sanc­tion should be orig­i­nat­ed through Pan Trin­ba­go, and once we're fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent, Pan Trin­ba­go will get the re­spect it de­serves."

For now, what's on Bryan's mind is the prin­ci­pal achieve­ment of Panora­ma. "When I think about the 50th an­niver­sary of Panora­ma, I re­al­ize how in­ter­est­ing it was to trace the de­vel­op­ment of the in­stru­ment in tech­nique, play­ers and arrangers. The abil­i­ty to im­part, says Bryan. "One must rec­og­nize that de­vel­op­ment was born out of com­pe­ti­tion. And such de­vel­op­ment over the years gives the lie to those who say there should be no com­pe­ti­tion. Be­cause of com­pe­ti­tion, tuners have honed their skills, arrangers in their tech­niques, and the dex­ter­i­ty of the per­form­ers would have seen vast im­prove­ment."

Di­az, how­ev­er, has set his sights on the big­ger pic­ture loom­ing in the next decade. An elab­o­rate re­volv­ing stage that would bring pans up from a hold­ing bay, thus cut­ting in­to set-up time. "It'd cost a lot of mon­ey. But who'll foot the bill?" Chang­ing the con­cept of Panora­ma on stage sounds like a log line for a whal­ish movie like Mo­by Dick. But it's a steel band man's dream. To fu­tur­ize the Panora­ma. You bet arrangers and panists, and TV crews, too, are watch­ing which way the wind blows.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar tries her hand on the tenor pan dur­ing her vis­it to the Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars pan yard on Thurs­day night. Pho­to: Shirley Ba­hadur