Kevon Felmine

While the na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions con­tin­ue to flour­ish in Port-of-Spain, steel­bands in San Fer­nan­do are strug­gling to find play­ers to launch a big chal­lenge. The present sit­u­a­tion is not overnight de­vel­op­ment, said David Bal­bosa, co-leader of Hat­ter's Steel Or­ches­tra, who urged stake­hold­ers to come to­geth­er to solve the prob­lem since he fears the art form is dy­ing in south Trinidad.

"There has been a de­cline in play­ers be­cause a trend has tak­en over the whole move­ment na­tion­al­ly where peo­ple don't want to play pan with­out get­ting mon­ey for it. They are de­mand­ing big sums of mon­ey and some band can't af­ford it. As a re­sult, it is af­fect­ing the num­bers in the band," Bal­bosa said.

Bal­bosa rem­i­nisced that "old school" pan­nists played the in­stru­ment for the love of it and were sat­is­fied with what amount of mon­ey they got. "If play­ers make de­mands and the band can­not af­ford to pay, the play­ers leave," he said.

"We have been af­fect­ed by it, not as bad as oth­er bands but this trend oc­curs with the younger play­ers." He said it ap­pears that the love for steel­pan is dy­ing and he sug­gest­ed that the mind­set of play­ers need to change in or­der to save the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Bal­bosa not­ed that de­spite the small size of his con­tin­gent, they are cop­ing well and they are al­most com­plet­ed with their choice of tune for the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

The band will be play­ing a song en­ti­tled Su­per­man by Su­perBlue.

It has been over three decades since a steel­band from south Trinidad won the na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion. The on­ly large band to rep­re­sent the South/Cen­tral re­gion­al in large band cat­e­go­ry of the com­pe­ti­tion is Ju­nior Sam­my Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra.

The band is due to play in front of the judges in the pre­lim­i­nary round of the large band cat­e­go­ry on Mon­day from 7 pm at their head­quar­ters on Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do. Skif­fle's arranger is Ray Hol­man and this year they are play­ing The Dream.

Kallamo King Steel Band cap­tain Matthew Roach shared Bal­bosa's sen­ti­ment say­ing his band man­aged to on­ly muster 48 mem­bers. Roach, who an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of Pan Trin­ba­go, said his band is filled with young play­ers with the youngest be­ing 12 years.

"This year we had to team with a band from Siparia (Di­a­ton­ics) and that is why we have so many mem­bers. I keep telling mem­bers that af­ter Car­ni­val we have to sit down and deal with this as it is a se­ri­ous prob­lem. For some rea­son peo­ple are not play­ing pan in San Fer­nan­do, but they are in Port-of-Spain."

Roach not­ed he does not know whether or not mon­ey is the is­sue but be­lieves peo­ple from Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons ap­pear to be more con­scious of pan. He was of the view peo­ple in south have a greater in­ter­est in dance­hall mu­sic. He sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment and busi­ness peo­ple start look­ing to cre­ate pro­grammes to en­cour­age young peo­ple to play pan es­pe­cial­ly in south Trinidad.