To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The em­bar­rass­ment that Pan Trin­ba­go's ex­ec­u­tive suf­fered when the Sun­day evening in­stal­ment of Pan in the Com­mu­ni­ties col­lapsed at Williams Bay, Ch­aguara­mas, is on­ly the lat­est in­di­ca­tor of the fail­ings that the steel­band's lead­er­ship has vis­it­ed on the move­ment.

When the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­gan to pre­pare for the event at the venue, on lands grant­ed to it by Dr Er­ic Williams, it ran afoul of the CDA's se­cu­ri­ty forces who or­dered Pan Trin­ba­go to stop the prepa­ra­tions for the pro­duc­tion. "That's the re­spect for pan!" de­clared Pan Trin­ba­go's pres­i­dent, Patrick Arnold. "We have been fight­ing that is­sue for years." Pan Trin­ba­go claims to have a deed for the land and has been pay­ing wa­ter rates for the pre­mi­um prop­er­ty for decades, but is still to make use of the land in any de­ci­sive way.

On its own, this could be dis­missed as an un­for­tu­nate mix-up oc­ca­sioned by a lack of shared in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but this sort of thing has con­sis­tent­ly plagued pan's lead­er­ship and its plans for build­ing some­thing con­crete to house its am­bi­tions. In Feb­ru­ary, Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals in To­ba­go came to an abrupt halt when fire of­fi­cers de­clared the stage un­safe for use. In De­cem­ber 2008, Pan Trin­ba­go staged the T&T Na­tion­al Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, Pan is Beau­ti­ful XI at the Jean Pierre Com­plex and opened the show in dark­ness. No lights were ap­par­ent­ly avail­able for the event. It wasn't un­til the sec­ond band per­formed that tele­vi­sion crews moved their light­ing gear in so that the au­di­ence could ac­tu­al­ly see the per­form­ers.

Apol­o­gis­ing for the sit­u­a­tion, Mr Arnold said that "af­ter all these years, we are still at the Jean Pierre Com­plex and this place is not suit­ed for a steel­band fes­ti­val." Lat­er that month, Mr Arnold re­ceived a let­ter from the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs ques­tion­ing the pan body's use of the word "na­tion­al" to de­scribe its new youth steel or­ches­tra. The let­ter point­ed out the sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween the new pan group­ing and the Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ed Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra, ques­tion­ing both the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness and le­gal­i­ty of the use of the de­scrip­tor in the new band's name, as if the Gov­ern­ment alone held the right to con­fer the use of the word na­tion­al on such an ini­tia­tive.

Such is Pan Trin­ba­go's se­nior­i­ty in the pan-nam­ing game that it might well have coun­tered that it was the Gov­ern­ment which was in­trud­ing on its na­tion­al­is­tic turf. Patrick Arnold left well enough alone and pro­ceed­ed to launch his band, but the con­tin­ued dis­re­spect paid to the prime body rep­re­sent­ing pan­men must be ir­ri­tat­ing. Part of the prob­lem fac­ing Pan Trin­ba­go is that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has con­sti­tut­ed it­self more as a man­ag­er of gov­ern­ment con­tri­bu­tions to the move­ment than as an agent of en­tre­pre­neur­ial mo­ti­va­tion for steel­band's man­agers and mu­si­cians. It's a lin­ger­ing hu­mil­i­a­tion that in the na­tion that cre­at­ed the in­stru­ment, steel­bands still lurch along year af­ter year, cap in hand, hop­ing for cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment hand­outs to keep their bands go­ing.

It's not as if there isn't a plan for chang­ing this sit­u­a­tion. In 2002, at Pan Trin­ba­go's awards cer­e­mo­ny, the late Lloyd Best turned his keen econ­o­mist's mind to the prob­lem and de­liv­ered a speech that out­lined in clear de­tail strate­gies for chang­ing the fun­da­men­tal as­sump­tions that con­sti­tute the move­ment's busi­ness mod­el. Best saw such changes be­gin­ning in the pa­n­yard. "From a lo­ca­tion for art and en­ter­tain­ment and a site of grat­i­fi­ca­tion and ed­i­fi­ca­tion, thanks to mu­si­cal cre­ation and cre­ations, must arise a cen­tre of in­dus­try and busi­ness, of school­ing and train­ing, as well as of de­lib­er­ate rather than in­ci­den­tal com­mu­ni­ty. This im­plies a pa­n­yard thor­ough­ly re­con­fig­ured. The site can­not but de­vel­op ca­pac­i­ty for heat and weld­ing, sound, lo­co­mo­tion, met­al­lur­gy, light­ing, scaf­fold­ing and props, con­struc­tion and main­te­nance, in­te­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, and what else not?"

What else in­deed? There is no short­age of pan lovers in di­verse pro­fes­sion­al fields who would love to turn their pas­sion for the mu­sic and in­stru­ment in­to re­al levers for change. All that re­mains is for Pan Trin­ba­go to ac­knowl­edge the myr­i­ad cuts of these con­tin­u­ing slights and choose in­stead to em­brace and en­gage spe­cial­ists and tech­nocrats ca­pa­ble of tak­ing pan in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.