DAVID CUFFY

A dis­ap­point­ing­ly poor pro­duc­tion cou­pled with the em­bar­rass­ing­ly small au­di­ence in at­ten­dance de­val­ued the laud­able con­cept of pay­ing homage to fe­male mem­bers of the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty at Pan­women Is Boss, an all-fe­male Pan Jazz con­cert, staged at the La Joya Au­di­to­ri­um in St Joseph, on Ju­ly 28.

It was pro­duced by Pan At­lanta Net­works, Inc, the most re­cent ini­tia­tive of Trinidad-born econ­o­mist, band­leader and pan ac­tivist, Dr Aja­mu Ny­om­ba (Carl Thomas). Cur­rent­ly an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at Clark At­lanta Uni­ver­si­ty in At­lanta Geor­gia, Aja­mu is a for­mer mem­ber of four-time Panora­ma cham­pi­on So­lo Har­monites Steel Or­ches­tra.

Sched­uled to be­gin at 6 pm, the pro­gramme got un­der­way one hour lat­er, be­fore an au­di­ence of just over fifty pa­trons, prompt­ing show host CG (Derek Sil­man) to ask, rhetor­i­cal­ly, "why is it every­thing to do with cul­ture al­ways have a lot of prob­lems?"

Fea­tured per­form­ers were: Ayana Gar­cia, Der­ri­anne Dyett, Jesse Mo­hammed, Moore's Mu­sic Pro­duc­tion, Natasha Joseph and MAW-B, and Har­monites Ju­niors Fe­male En­sem­ble.

Fol­low­ing the singing of the Na­tion­al An­them and li­ba­tions of­fered by Aina Iya Olukay­o­de and Ifasseei On­afowokan, Dr Rho­da Red­dock, Pro­fes­sor of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment and Deputy Prin­ci­pal at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), de­liv­ered open­ing re­marks in which she re­vealed she was a found­ing mem­ber of Bird­song Steel Or­ches­tra, in which she played a dou­ble sec­ond pan, and was a fan of all jazz pan­nists and pan jazz vir­tu­osos.

There­after, it be­came some­what chaot­ic. It seemed there was no stage man­ag­er to co­or­di­nate ac­tiv­i­ties back­stage and cue per­form­ers on their en­trances. On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions the show host in­tro­duced the artistes, and there would be un­du­ly long de­lays be­fore they ap­peared. In ad­di­tion, the stage was bare of a back­drop, any kind of adorn­ment, a bit un­tidy, and fea­tured artistes were, in­ex­plic­a­bly, po­si­tioned away from its cen­tre.

On the plus side, how­ev­er, the fe­male pan­nists per­formed ad­mirably.

First up was 20-year-old Ayana Gar­cia, show­ing a lot of re­solve in pre­sent­ing Just The Two Of Us, a 1981 R&B song writ­ten by Bill With­ers, William Salter and Ralph Mac­Don­ald, and record­ed by Grover Wash­ing­ton Jr and With­ers; and the late Kitch­en­er's (Ald­wyn Roberts) Pan In A Mi­nor.

Jesse Mo­hammed fol­lowed. A top class pan­nist with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, the mem­ber of Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra's stage side seemed in ex­u­ber­ant form when de­liv­er­ing a smooth and melo­di­ous ren­di­tion of David Rud­der's Ca­lyp­so Mu­sic.

Moore's Mu­sic Pro­duc­tion, a San Fer­nan­do-based fam­i­ly band com­pris­ing four sis­ters and one broth­er, and util­is­ing a tenor pan as the lead in­stru­ment, had lots of fun in a rather shaky show­case of its reper­toire that in­clud­ed An­to­nio Car­los Jobin's One Note Sam­ba and My Cherie Amor, the 1969 soul clas­sic writ­ten by Ste­vie Won­der. The group, how­ev­er, is just three years old, and ought to be re­ward­ed with an "A" for its ef­fort.

Af­ter the in­ter­val, De­ri­anne Dyett, cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing her ed­u­ca­tion in jazz mu­sic at Prince Claus Con­ser­va­to­ry in the Nether­lands, and a sea­soned jazz per­former, won loud plau­dits for her sassy ren­di­tion of Afro Blue, a jazz stan­dard com­posed by Mon­go San­ta­maria, but best known in its arrange­ment by John Coltrane.

Natasha Joseph and MAW-B was on stage next, and took the per­for­mances to a high­er lev­el. Com­pris­ing Joseph on dou­ble sec­ond, Andy Adams on bass, Mark Brew­ster on key­board, and Khalen Alexan­der on drums, the group's cus­tom-tai­lored in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mighty Spar­row's (Dr Slinger Fran­cis­co) 1992 com­po­si­tion Jane was awe­some, to say the least. Joseph has been one of the most sig­nif­i­cant so­lo pan­nists for over a decade, and is a reg­u­lar per­former at jazz fes­ti­vals through­out the world.

Clos­ing act, Har­monites Ju­niors Fe­male En­sem­ble, un­der the di­rec­tion of Cyl­lan Franklin, of­fered joy­ous treat­ment to Damien Mar­ley's Af­fairs of the Heart and the Glen Miller jazz clas­sic In The Mood.

Award­ed by the pro­duc­er for their con­tri­bu­tions to the steel­pan were fe­male pi­o­neers Mere Al­bi­no De Coteau, Ur­su­la Tu­dor, Lin­da Bap­tiste, and Michelle Hug­gins-Watts. Mak­ing a guest ap­pear­ance was the Wasa Foli Dance Com­pa­ny.

Pan­women is Boss was un­der the mu­si­cal di­rec­tion of Natasha Joseph, while MAW-B pro­vid­ed mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment for the soloists.