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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Cyril Khamai, global pan pioneer

by

20130205

As the un­mis­tak­able sound of pan con­tin­ues to spread across the far­thest reach­es of the globe, it is per­haps worth paus­ing to take stock of these ear­ly pan pi­o­neers.Be­yond the mem­bers of Taspo and the var­i­ous na­tion­al steel­bands, the sto­ries of many ear­ly pan pi­o­neers have not been told. Iron­i­cal­ly, these less­er-known pan pi­o­neers are re­spon­si­ble for tak­ing pan world­wide.

Every year at Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val, you'll see one such ear­ly pan pi­o­neer. A small man with a big smile, a pan­man, the scratcher­man for Nos­tal­gia, that's Cyril Khamai, a qui­et man with a gen­tle pres­ence.Pan has played an in­te­gral part of Khamai's life since he was a child in Trinidad. Chas­ing a dream, Khamai went to the UK in 1957 and has been play­ing, build­ing, tun­ing, and teach­ing pan in his new home ever since. Be­yond the UK, he has trav­elled the globe from Rus­sia to Hong Kong and all over Eu­rope, play­ing pan with a num­ber of dif­fer­ent bands.

Khamai start­ed play­ing pan with the Free French Steel­band in San Fer­nan­do, whose leader at the time was Theo Stephens, who had been a mem­ber of Taspo. From the Free French Steel­band, Khamai moved on to an­oth­er San Fer­nan­do steel­band called Melody Mak­ers. Here, in ad­di­tion to hon­ing his play­ing skills, he be­came a self-taught builder/ tuner of pan. He al­so played with oth­er south bands the likes of Rogues in the Irv­ing Park neigh­bour­hood and the Rhythm Stars with Near­lin Taitt; how­ev­er, he was a young man ea­ger for ad­ven­ture and set off for the UK.

In Cardiff, Wales in 1957, a home­sick batch of Trinida­di­an box­ers want­ed to have a steel­band and Khamai was just the man for the job. He built the in­stru­ments and played with the band, stay­ing about nine months, then de­cid­ed to move to Lon­don, where he be­came part of one of the ear­li­est steel­bands there. In 1959, he joined a band known at the time as the Trop­i­cana Steel­band, which sport­ed a mem­ber­ship con­sist­ing of sev­er­al Trinida­di­an ex­pa­tri­ates who had pre­vi­ous­ly been part of the Rogues band in San Fer­nan­do. The Trop­i­cana Steel­band fea­tured broth­ers Carl and Win­ston Jones, Tony Charles, Karl Boyd, Kay Sam­mie, Son­ny Hart, and Lynn Kenkaran.

The group re­hearsed in a base­ment near the Chelsea Art School and stu­dents from the school of­ten in­vit­ed the Trop­i­cana Steel­band to play for par­ties and events. Build­ing on this ear­ly suc­cess, the band moved on to var­i­ous ex­tend­ed night club res­i­den­cies in Lon­don, and was pop­u­lar at the Latin Quar­ter as well as uni­ver­si­ty and hos­pi­tal events and so­ci­ety balls all over the coun­try. The band al­so held pop­u­lar shows at the Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall in 1960 and Roy­al Al­bert Hall in 1961.

In 1961, the band trimmed down to five mem­bers and em­barked on an im­por­tant month-long book­ing in Spain, where it played at clubs and restau­rants all over the coun­try. The Trop­i­cana Steel­band thrived on the road and from Spain the band con­tin­ued to trav­el and per­form through­out Eu­rope. One of the most ex­cit­ing tours of this ear­ly pe­ri­od came in 1968 when the band went to Ger­many. In West Berlin, the band record­ed an al­bum un­der the name The Orig­i­nal Trinidad Steel Band be­fore cross­ing the wall and play­ing night­clubs and do­ing a film in East Berlin.

From Ger­many, Khamai and the band launched a tour of Rus­sia. Ground­break­ing on many lev­els, Khamai and the Trop­i­cana Steel­band have the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the first steel­band to tour the So­vi­et Union. The tour was part of a va­ri­ety pack­age of Latin Amer­i­can per­form­ing groups led by the Paraguayan band Los Paraguayos. The tour was based in Moscow and over the course of ten weeks the band per­formed all over Rus­sia and the East­ern Bloc coun­tries of Geor­gia, Ukraine, and Es­to­nia.

Khamai has fond mem­o­ries of this tour, es­pe­cial­ly the five pan play­ers and two lim­bo dancers who com­prised his por­tion of the show. Up­on re­turn­ing from the Russ­ian tour, a four-per­son ver­sion of Trop­i­cana Steel­band went on a nine-month non-stop tour of Eng­land, Scot­land and Wales.Through­out the ear­ly to mid-1970s, Khamai per­formed in sev­er­al steel­bands all over Eng­land and Eu­rope. No­table among these steel­bands are the Caribbean Trio, with the late leg­endary pan­man Sel­wyn Bap­tiste, as well as con­tin­ued work with the larg­er Trop­i­cana Steel­band. The Caribbean Trio went to Switzer­land in 1964 play­ing moun­tain ski re­sorts, US bases in Ger­many, and Na­to bases in France and Hol­land.

In 1975, Khamai spent the sum­mer per­form­ing with a steel­band in St Tropez, France and in 1979, he was booked as a sin­gle pan play­er to ac­com­pa­ny the Ger­man-based Trinidad-born ca­lyp­son­ian Lord Am­bas­sador for a three-month tour of Hong Kong.As the years went by, Khamai con­tin­ued to play pan with count­less steel­bands. In ad­di­tion to fronting his own bands, he was a reg­u­lar with bands led by Rus­sell Hen­der­son and Tony Charles. Every sum­mer, he and Russ Hen­der­son had a reg­u­lar gig en­ter­tain­ing au­di­ences at the Good­wood horse rac­ing track in Sur­rey. With Tony Charles, he played the open­ing of the Dubai In­ter­na­tion­al Ho­tel and for a cou­ple years in the late 70s he led a steel­band for the Bud­dhist As­so­ci­a­tion of Eng­land.

Recog­ni­tion has fi­nal­ly caught up with this pan pi­o­neer in re­cent years. In 2006, he won the UK Black His­to­ry Month award. In 2011, he was one of the pan leg­ends ho­n­oured by the Com­mon­wealth Arts and Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion. These days, Khamai still plays pan on oc­ca­sion, but he tends to favour play­ing var­i­ous per­cus­sion in­stru­ments, most­ly scratch­er. For Lon­don Panora­ma, he has ap­peared with Ebony, Lon­don All Stars and Metro on scratch­er and on the road at times with Nos­tal­gia and Pan Nec­tar.But once a pan­man, al­ways a pan­man, as Khamai has been known to jump up and play with al­most any pan side when the spir­it takes him! Yet, most do not re­alise that this gen­tle man with the big smile is an un­der­stat­ed pi­o­neer of pan and that for the past half-cen­tu­ry he has tak­en the in­stru­ment all over the world.


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