SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

“Steel­pan Month (Au­gust 1 to 31) is a pre­cious, ho­n­ourable and sa­cred time for the pan com­mu­ni­ty,” ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go, the world gov­ern­ing body for pan, Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore.

“The in­stru­ment is cel­e­brat­ed in var­i­ous ways. We want every­one to know the true full­ness and re­silience of pan. COVID-19 has taught us the ad­van­tage of stay­ing op­ti­mistic and fo­cused. We must give praise for mer­cies de­spite how small.”

Work­ing with her mantra: “Youth is the fu­ture, and they must be em­pow­ered and giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to gain ex­pe­ri­ence,” much like last year, this year’s Steel­pan Month is or­gan­ised by a full youth arm un­der the purview of the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive’s young ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer, Mar­cus Ash, and led by Shiv­onne Mitchell.

Ash said it’s the first time he’s ever worked so hard for such lit­tle pay, but the ex­pe­ri­ence is a good one. “How do we ac­count for the mil­lions we re­ceived pri­or to 2018?

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has no mon­ey, but there are lots of things to be done, and two high pri­or­i­ties are keep­ing pan alive and tak­ing care of its com­mu­ni­ty.

As young peo­ple now learn­ing, we will make mis­takes. I con­tin­ue to learn a lot, no mat­ter how daunt­ing the task.

“The pan com­mu­ni­ty is one of the rich­est com­mu­ni­ties. We just have to look close­ly at what we have with­in, and use the same en­er­gy suc­cess­ful con­glom­er­ates use.”

The first week of the ful­ly vir­tu­al, month of free par­tic­i­pa­tion was Ed­u­ca­tion that end­ed on Au­gust 7. The oth­er weeks are sched­uled to cov­er Evo­lu­tion, Eco­nom­i­cal, En­ter­tain­ment, clos­ing with Ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

Steelpan Verzuz challengers Emmanuel and Aquila Perreira

Pan Trinbago

Ed­u­ca­tion in­clud­ed: Kli­max—The Pin­na­cle of Steel­pan, Episode 1; Tune for Tune; a We­bi­nar on In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty, Brand­ing, Trade­mark­ing and Con­tracts; His­tor­i­cal Steel­pan; two Pan Verzuz (friend­ly) Chal­lenges; and Con­ver­sa­tions in Pan.

Kli­max ed­u­cat­ed on who the longest-play­ing fe­male mem­ber of any steel or­ches­tra was, to which band, and who was the na­tion’s el­dest ac­tive, fe­male pan­nist.

A taped in­ter­view with Ram­sey-Moore some weeks be­fore her pass­ing saw Ur­su­la Tu­dor re­veal­ing her psy­che­del­ic life with pan.

She al­so had some knowl­edge to pass on­to young fe­male pan­nists: “No mat­ter what your sit­u­a­tion may be, or what’s hap­pen­ing around you, al­ways re­spect your­self and en­cour­age oth­ers to re­spect you.”

Heed­ing the calls of Pan Chron­i­cles’ di­rec­tor, pro­lif­ic pan­nist and arranger Du­vone Stew­art, “to give stal­warts/long-stand­ing artistes their flow­ers be­fore they go in­stead of posthu­mous­ly, Tu­dor re­ceived hers from Pan Trin­ba­go dur­ing that in­ter­view.”

Tune for Tune show­cased: Caribbean Air­lines Skif­fle, we­bi­nar em­braced En­ri­co Came­jo and Di­anne Mc­Ni­chol-Stephen­son, His­tor­i­cal Steel­pan fea­tured pos­i­tive steel­band ac­tiv­i­ties, Pan Verzuz, in trib­ute to Dr Pel­ham God­dard and Ray Hol­man, re­spec­tive­ly, pre­sent­ed Aquila Per­reira and Em­manuel Joseph, and Ty­ee­sha Alexan­der and Tia­jua­na Her­nan­dez, and guests on Con­ver­sa­tions in Pan—Youth Fo­rum, were Ash and Obadele Al­ick. The re­gion­al of­fices are al­so mak­ing their per­son­al con­tri­bu­tions to the month.

Pan Trin­ba­go said it is hum­bled by the view­er­ship and re­sponse to do­na­tions ben­e­fit­ing its So­cial Pros­per­i­ty Fund and is eter­nal­ly grate­ful for every type of con­tri­bu­tion to­wards and sup­port for Steel­pan Month.