Pe­ter Ray Blood

I agree with Len "Boogsie" Sharpe–"pan is dead." I al­so agree with the views ex­pressed by Pan Trin­ba­go sec­re­tary Richard Forteau and Sil­ver Stars cap­tain Ed­win Pouchet. Some progress has been made in pan over the past two decades, but much too lit­tle by the ac­tu­al um­brel­la body or­gan­i­sa­tion. Al­though, un­der the stew­ard­ship of in­cum­bent Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold and suc­ces­sive ex­ec­u­tives, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment has made some strides in pro­vid­ing en­ter­tain­ment to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, a lot more should have been achieved dur­ing the past cou­ple decades.

Like the WICB, Pan Trin­ba­go seems bereft of new and in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness, man­age­ment and op­er­a­tional ideas. Most the new, in­no­v­a­tive and at­trac­tive projects with­in the steel­band move­ment have been ini­ti­at­ed ei­ther by mem­ber bands or pri­vate en­ti­ties, ie Eight of Hearts, T&T Pan Jazz Fes­ti­val, Pan in the Hol­lows, Pan on de White Line, Com­PAN­ions Fam­i­ly Day, Parang & Steel, the var­i­ous events by Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus, Caribbean Air­lines In­vaders, An­gos­tu­ra Wood­brook Play­boyz and TCL Group Skif­fle Bunch, South­ern Marines' youth tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion, and the re­cent suc­cess­ful Laven­tille Shall Rise Again.

With its gen­er­al elec­tions com­ing up, Pan Trin­ba­go needs to re­alise that the busi­ness of pan and cre­at­ing sus­tained lu­cra­tive and prof­itable rev­enues for the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its mem­bers must be turned over to "pan peo­ple" with busi­ness, man­age­ment and fi­nance acu­men. Gone are the days when, be­cause you are a pop­u­lar steel­band cap­tain or arranger, you'd be the best ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber or fi­nan­cial and man­age­ment ex­pert.

On a num­ber of fronts, Pan Trin­ba­go would get "F" grades if ob­jec­tive­ly ap­praised, in­clud­ing for its fail­ure to se­cure and com­plete its head­quar­ters in Trinci­ty, the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for which took place al­most a decade ago un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion. Se­cu­ri­ty of tenure for lands in Ch­aguara­mas is an­oth­er long over­due is­sue.

The way for­ward

As far as ma­jor vis­tas for steel­band com­pe­ti­tion go, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­so failed, start­ing with its in­abil­i­ty to sus­tain the stag­ing of the bi­en­ni­al steel­band mu­sic for se­nior and ju­nior mu­si­cians and the World Steel Fes­ti­val. Panora­ma, the world's pre­mier steel­band com­pe­ti­tion, is in sham­bles and has been re­duced to a joke amongst se­ri­ous peo­ple of mu­sic and pro­mot­ers of ma­jor events. On this sub­ject, I re­al­ly wish the new Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive would con­sid­er the fol­low­ing sug­ges­tions:

(i) A re­ver­sal of all the com­pe­ti­tion rules in­sti­tut­ed in re­cent years. On­ly new­ly com­posed mu­sic should be per­formed in the com­pe­ti­tion. If Pan Trin­ba­go wants to have bands play gold­en oldies, stage a Retro Panora­ma con­test in Au­gust for In­de­pen­dence;

(ii) Re­move the lim­it on the num­ber of mu­si­cians that con­sti­tute a large con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tra;

(iii) Se­lect eight fi­nal­ists for a "Pre­mier­ship Cham­pi­onship" com­pe­ti­tion for or­ches­tras field­ing over 100 mu­si­cians, with bands giv­en ten min­utes of per­for­mance time, and 20 ad­di­tion­al min­utes al­lo­cat­ed to set­ting up and mak­ing ex­it;

(iv) Be­gin Na­tion­al Panora­ma Pre­mier­ship Cham­pi­onship at 7 pm, with a 15-minute in­ter­mis­sion for judges to re­fresh them­selves. Once prop­er­ly man­aged, this fi­nal ought to take five hours, fin­ish­ing with re­sults at mid­night;

(v) There should be ab­solute­ly no com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween judges and mem­bers of Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive for the du­ra­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion;

(vi) The ad­ju­di­ca­tion pan­el must have no few­er than two for­eign judges (mu­si­cians), who must be pro­vid­ed with orig­i­nal scores for Tunes of Choice not less than one week pri­or to fi­nal night com­pe­ti­tion;

(vii) Em­ploy a pro­duc­tion man­age­ment team for the en­tire pro­duc­tion.

Na­tion­al awards

I dis­agree with the se­lec­tion of some of the re­cip­i­ents of na­tion­al awards this year, as well as of the re­cent past years. I al­so agree with Jack Warn­er that there needs to be greater eth­nic par­i­ty of re­cip­i­ents, and that Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed should have been ho­n­oured many years ago. I al­so think it's long over­due that De Nu Pub (The Mas Camp), Ar­jeet Praim­s­ingh, Nir­mal "Mas­sive" Go­sein and the late Rudolph Charles should be giv­en na­tion­al awards for their con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture–ca­lyp­so, In­di­an arts and pan. Con­grat­u­la­tions to vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Kei­th Smith on his Hum­ming Bird (Sil­ver) Award.