D An­tho­ny Black­man

Point Fortin is a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty lit­er­al­ly burst­ing with en­er­gy. A rich sec­tor of Trinidad's south west­ern penin­su­la, blessed with oil and nat­ur­al gas in­dus­tries, port and beach fa­cil­i­ties, and a wealth of tal­ent in the ex­po­si­tion of our cul­tures, es­pe­cial­ly so for the ar­eas of arts and en­ter­tain­ment. The an­nu­al Point Fortin Bor­ough Day cel­e­bra­tion epit­o­mis­es their ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and so­lid­i­fies their con­tri­bu­tion to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of T&T's Car­ni­val, out­side of the tra­di­tion­al pre Lenten fes­tiv­i­ties in the coun­try's cap­i­tal. Their event plan­ning spells in­no­v­a­tive­ness, and risk tak­ing. Those re­spon­si­ble for stag­ing this gala event, have raised the bar from a one day steel­pan and ca­lyp­so jam­boree, to three weeks of ac­tiv­i­ties that in­clude a mix of mul­ti­cul­tur­al, glitz and glam, and fringe ex­pe­ri­ences such as, short street pa­rades, a pageant, arts and craft mar­ket, dance, drum­ming, tas­sa, jazz, and a To­ba­go Her­itage spe­cial.

The ac­tu­al Bor­ough Day-Pan on the Move-which ini­tial­ly was a late af­ter­noon in­to the night street pa­rade af­fair, now runs from late Fri­day night to mid­night on Sat­ur­day, no sleep, and car­ries a J'Ou­vert, and a seg­ment which show­cas­es tra­di­tion­al and Tues­day mas. This es­ca­la­tion, and the move­ment away from the typ­i­cal an­nu­al steel­band event, is a sure sign of progress. In­ter­est­ing­ly though, the size and scope of the fes­ti­val does not de­tract from the un­der­ly­ing theme and gen­e­sis of Bor­ough Day, which clear­ly is a fo­cus on the street tra­di­tions of steel­pan and ca­lyp­so, and for that, these plan­ners should be very high­ly re­spect­ed. The 2K11 edi­tion was built around trib­utes to the late Mighty Duke and Su­perBlue, both Point Fortin bred na­tion­al icons, dri­ven by a reaf­firm­ing and in­spi­ra­tional slo­gan-Pan Glo­ri­ous Pan.

The theme for the ju­nior pan ac­tiv­i­ty was Pan for Blue, and for the tra­di­tion­al steel bands, Pan on the Park­way. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the plan­ners re­ferred to above, con­tin­ue to, and from in­cep­tion have been, "do­ing some­thing for pan." As a mat­ter of fact, they may be sit­ting on the rock­et sci­ence for­mu­la re: propul­sion of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma to the next lev­el The Pan on the Move com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­ues to at­tract the top steel­bands in the land. This year, it fea­tured the na­tion­al Panora­ma win­ners, they were on the road, but as a guest ap­pear­ance, Star­lift, a wel­comed re­turn to Point af­ter a long ab­sence, strug­gling for form bpTT Rene­gades, all the big guns from the 2011 fi­nals, plus a spread of rep­utable bands from the south/cen­tral re­gion and be­yond. No­table ab­sen­tee, PCS Sil­ver Stars. Com­pet­ing bands were man­dat­ed to play a spec­i­fied se­lec­tion at each of the three judg­ing points-a bomb tune-be­ing one of Duke's many hits, your 2011 Panora­ma tune, and a test piece-the Point Fortin Bor­ough song from Ber­nice Ren­nie. Pan mu­sic fuh so.

The Pan on the Move for­mat de­mands the putting to­geth­er of a well thought out and ex­e­cut­ed reper­toire, and the bands did de­liv­er, es­pe­cial­ly RBTT Re­demp­tion Sound Set­ters, they played with zest, and had some scin­til­lat­ing rhythms go­ing. The J'Ou­vert stayed with­in its re­cent trend, which re­flects a tsuna­mi of scant­i­ly clad-sweet and sexy-Tri­ni women, gy­rat­ing to hot and groovy so­ca mu­sic, slight mud, but, way too many DJ trucks, and by ex­ten­sion, too much noise. The re­sult­ing ef­fect is in­tol­er­a­ble noise, no flow­ing rev­el­ry, a traf­fic jam of bands par­ty­ing at a stand­still, cos­tumed play­ers stray­ing about, or rest­ing in the shade, sim­i­lar to the oner­ous wait to cross a judg­ing point or the Sa­van­nah stage in Port-of-Spain on a Car­ni­val Tues­day. Hope­ful­ly the plan­ners are see­ing this, and would in­sist that the bands use small­er trucks, con­sis­tent with the amount of play­er, and/or, they can in­ject pan round d neck and rhythm sec­tions, which was a norm in the first 4 - 5 am J'Ou­vert pre­sen­ta­tions.

The all in­clu­sive band con­cept, and the pre­ferred choice of elec­tron­ic road mu­sic, has squeezed the pul­sat­ing sounds of iron and steel out of the J'Ou­vert. Notwith­stand­ing this and oth­er is­sues, in vary­ing ways, the fes­ti­val is boss.The se­cu­ri­ty is tight; there is a very high po­lice pres­ence...eye in the sky, he­li­copters, the works. The san­i­ta­tion is of a com­mend­able stan­dard, groups of clean­ers, wa­ter stor­age tanks, taps with run­ning wa­ter, bins and portable rest rooms. Ide­al­ly, and with­in easy reach, are sev­er­al lo­cal cui­sine food courts, and of course bars and ices. If be­cause of your af­fil­i­a­tions or as­so­ciates, and you are so in­clined, you can spend some qual­i­ty time at the many cor­po­rate soirees, host­ed by the en­er­gy com­pa­nies, the banks, and both sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide. These con­stant and pos­i­tive ad­di­tions and im­prove­ments to the fes­ti­val, have sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased the Point Fortin com­mu­ni­ty's lo­cal tourism, and have giv­en Tri­nis res­i­dent in the first world, UK, USA, Cana­da etc; the op­tion to choose be­tween the PoS Car­ni­val in the first quar­ter of the an­nu­al Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, and this fast grow­ing coun­try­side and the beach ver­sion. Oh by the way, this year- rain fell, but it did not wash out mas in May.