San­dra L Blood

The names Hugh Bor­de, Tripoli Steel­band and Wladz­iu "Lib­er­ace" Valenti­no may not be fa­mil­iar to many young pan mu­si­cians, mu­si­cians in gen­er­al or ran­dom adults, but to the his­to­ry of pan, hope­ful­ly, they are.

Back in the 1960-80s, then steel­band man­ag­er Hugh Bor­de–con­sid­ered a "mad man to leave his 'gov­ern­ment' job to go away with a steel­band"–and his pan en­sem­ble, Tripoli, were spe­cial in the eyes of the First World when we in Trinidad (The Mec­ca of Pan) couldn't recog­nise the beam of light.

Of course in those days, while we knew the par­tial­ly wood-made pi­ano, or gui­tar, was an in­stru­ment and were nev­er daunt­ed by them be­ing a by-prod­uct of trees, we were un­fail­ing­ly daunt­ed by the pan, an in­stru­ment, be­ing an oil drum, worst yet, pop­u­lar­ly con­sid­ered a dust­bin.

Bor­de would en­light­en the world on pan be­ing "the on­ly mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry that could du­pli­cate a sym­pho­ny or­ches­tra" but that, back in the day, any­one play­ing (beat­ing) pan was la­belled a "vagabond," so much so that the "po­lice ar­rest­ed any­one when found play­ing a pan...even in a yard; you are tak­en to court the next morn­ing and 'jailed' for six months."

Time pro­gressed, and when all Bor­de's ef­forts at Tripoli be­com­ing pan en­tre­pre­neurs in the' mec­ca' could not be re­alised, his at­tempts dur­ing their tour to Cana­da ac­tu­al­ly land­ed them in the hands of then stranger-to-pan, world-renowned, leg­endary pi­anist and vo­cal­ist, Lib­er­ace, who said he "dis­cov­ered" them per­form­ing at the 1967 Ex­po in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da. While in the 'mec­ca' pan was a dis­grace to so­ci­ety, its res­o­nance con­sid­ered noise, and the play­er viewed as the scum of the earth, in the 'first' world the leg­endary Lib­er­ace stat­ed that Tripoli per­formed "fab­u­lous," fur­ther stat­ing his in­vi­ta­tion to have them tour with him arose out of them hav­ing pre­sent­ed "the most ex­cit­ing mu­si­cal per­for­mances of its kind in the world of show-busi­ness ..." back then.

Bor­de and his en­sem­ble ap­peared on many high-pro­filed Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion talk-shows host­ed by Ed Sul­li­van, John­ny Car­son, Mike Dou­glas, Merve Grif­fin and David Frost re­spec­tive­ly and per­formed with Bob Hope, Frank Sina­tra and Dean Mar­tin apart from many oth­er celebri­ties.

As guests on his tele­vi­sion talk show in 1973, hav­ing lis­tened to Tripoli's reper­toire on their record be­fore in­tro­duc­ing them, host Mike Dou­glas pro­found­ly de­scribed the 'noise' he heard: "... one of the most un­usu­al and ex­cit­ing sounds in the world of mu­sic is the sound of the steel drums."

Soon, the group be­came the talk of an in­ter­na­tion­al world, drum­ming-up fame, not on­ly from a world-class reper­toire but tour­ing for "three years" with the world's great­est ... Lib­er­ace, who mar­velled at Bor­de's twin-like ap­pear­ance in ap­par­el.

In a video ex­pose named Pan Sto­ry pro­duced by Bor­de and his son, Emile (LA, USA), on the Tripoli-Bor­de-Lib­er­ace ex­pe­ri­ence, a par­tic­u­lar post-per­for­mance footage shows Lib­er­ace in­tro­duc­ing a sim­i­lar­ly-at­tired Hugh Bor­de to the au­di­ence when he jok­ing­ly tells him, "I have a con­cern ... where do you get your idea from for your 'cos­tume'?"

Bor­de, with a huge grin, replies, "as every­body can see ... from Lib­er­ace!" This spe­cial pan icon–Trinidad's Lib­er­ace, Hugh Bor­de–re­cent­ly turned 81-years-old.

Not on­ly has he left a mu­si­cal lega­cy, but he al­so main­tains a wardrobe–that even though much played-down on the glitz–holds fast to glam­our. Still well-groomed and charm­ing, his big '81' was cel­e­brat­ed in sim­ple fash­ion at the home of one of his long-stand­ing and gen­uine friends, Dr Hol­lis "Chalk­dust" Liv­er­pool. The lo­cal Lib­er­ace out­shone all guests.

Thank you Chalk­dust!

But, the ques­tion re­mains, how did the pan fra­ter­ni­ty cel­e­brate this icon?

This icon's mu­si­cal in­tel­li­gence was ques­tioned by Lib­er­ace, yes­ter­year, un­ceas­ing­ly baf­fled as to the sphere of mu­sic this 'dust­bin' play­er had un­der his belt by in­quir­ing in­to how many of his tunes he was fa­mil­iar with, com­pound­ed by chal­leng­ing him to play one.

The chal­lenge of play­ing Al­ley Cat–the in­stru­men­tal com­posed by Dan­ish pi­anist and com­pos­er Brent Fab­ric–was put to the test, and so, the es­teemed pi­anist and 'vagabond' pan­nists matched tal­ents, all to the end of a more mes­merised Lib­er­ace.

In ho­n­our­ing this most pow­er­ful yet hum­ble soul in the ear­ly 2000s, Chalk­dust de­scribed Bor­de in an awards func­tion as a "pan pi­o­neer" who sur­vived many pan strug­gles, claim­ing that it's through his ef­forts, "pan has reached the ears of a greater mul­ti­tude of mu­sic-lov­ing pa­trons."

The pan world salutes you 'Sir Bor­de'. You fought a great fight, and con­tin­ue to, through shar­ing your ex­pe­ri­ence and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to­day, five decades down, but your work will not be in vain. Many, many more birth­days in con­tin­ued health, wis­dom, strength and fash­ion is wished. Con­grat­u­la­tions!