Wes­ley Gib­bings

It's brunch on Ari­api­ta Av­enue six days be­fore Panora­ma Fi­nals. The elec­tric­i­ty is out and every­one's late. It's a warm but breezy morn­ing and To­ba­go surf is still in Emi­ly Lem­mer­man's shock of curly, red hair as she hur­ried­ly rounds the bend.

It's been a rel­a­tive­ly brief but in­tense pan sea­son for the 38-year-old Tex­an who runs Bar­racu­da Steel Drums–a pan-tun­ing and build­ing com­pa­ny in Austin–and who is al­so the first and, so far–on­ly fe­male pro­fes­sion­al pan tuner en­gaged in the an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

A week­end in Black Rock, To­ba­go, work­ing with medi­um-band fi­nal­ists Katzen­jam­mers must now give way to long, in­tense days with large band fi­nal­ists Skif­fle in San Fer­nan­do. There are blood­shot eyes across the ta­ble.

In be­tween, it's back to To­ba­go for a ses­sion with Katzen­jam­mers. "It's any­one's game on Sat­ur­day!" says Emi­ly "Bac­cha­nal" Lem­mer­man's Face­book sta­tus mid­week; fresh off the fer­ry in Port-of-Spain.

Though still con­flict­ed about the im­pact of com­pe­ti­tion on the de­vel­op­ment of pan mu­sic–to the point of choos­ing her words care­ful­ly and won­der­ing whether she should be quot­ed on this–she con­cedes that while judg­ing is "a tricky thing be­cause it's sub­jec­tive ... a com­pe­ti­tion does in­spire a lot of en­er­gy to­wards ex­cel­lence. It does el­e­vate the stan­dard for all the bands."

"But it's a shame there is on­ly one win­ner."

This sea­son Lem­mer­man has tuned for the two Panora­ma fi­nal­ists in the medi­um and large cat­e­gories to­geth­er with Tokyo and Har­vard Harps, who didn't make it, while trou­bleshoot­ing for a few oth­ers.

She speaks with rev­er­ence of the ini­tial doubts of pa­n­yard "el­ders" about a tuner who breaks the tra­di­tion­al mould. Here is a young, white, fe­male, for­eign ex­po­nent of one of the more dif­fi­cult arts as­so­ci­at­ed with pan mu­sic. "I un­der­stand why there was some doubt," she says.

US-based pan pi­o­neer, El­lie Man­nette, is re­spon­si­ble for all of this.

Lem­mer­man once had her eyes set on a ca­reer as a tim­panist in a sym­pho­ny or­ches­tra but dur­ing her mu­sic stud­ies was in­tro­duced to the steel­pan as a per­cus­sion in­stru­ment. It was love at first sound.

Lat­er en­coun­ters with Man­nette, the dec­o­rat­ed pan mu­si­cian and in­no­va­tor, helped set­tle the ques­tion be­tween an in­ter­est in the taut skin and cop­per shell of the tim­pani and a deep af­fec­tion for the fine­ly-tuned steel drums from two small is­lands some con­sid­er­able dis­tance away.

In 2000, it was off to Trinidad for the first time with her men­tor, Man­nette, and oth­er mu­sic stu­dents to wit­ness the mar­vel of the an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion among the ranks of the In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra. When the leg­endary Port-of-Spain band didn't make it to the fi­nals in 2009, she switched to Sil­ver Stars who won that year.

Lem­mer­man is con­fi­dent about the fu­ture of pan in T&T and be­lieves it is among the things that make the coun­try unique and dis­tin­guish­able in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. As a "young" in­stru­ment, and un­like oth­er long­stand­ing tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments, she be­lieves the pan will con­tin­ue to car­ry the coun­try's name with it for a long time to come.

"I think it's a long way away from los­ing its own cul­tur­al at­tach­ment to the Caribbean," she says.

Lem­mer­man al­so does not share the fear that young peo­ple might be los­ing in­ter­est in play­ing the in­stru­ment. "From a for­eign per­spec­tive, it seems like there are plen­ty won­der­ful plat­forms (for the pan)," she says, cit­ing the Pan in School pro­gramme and the hun­dreds of youth turn­ing out for the Ju­nior Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion and as mem­bers of the se­nior bands.

"It's hard for me to look around Trinidad and not see that pan is well sup­port­ed," Lem­mer­man says. "It's a sig­nif­i­cant part of the pop­u­la­tion that par­tic­i­pates."

She does not en­ter the "Greens" dis­cus­sion eas­i­ly, but when she does there is both be­muse­ment and be­wil­der­ment: "Every­body com­plains about it," she says of the Pan Trin­ba­go man­aged side-event to the Panora­ma Se­mi-Fi­nals, con­sid­ered by many to be a dis­rup­tive to the pro­ceed­ings on the com­pe­ti­tion stage.

"No one likes this," Lem­mer­man says. "I don't un­der­stand its re­la­tion­ship with Panora­ma. It does not ap­pear to sup­port the event."

For her part, though, she keeps her ears trained on the in­stru­ments as they make their way to the Sa­van­nah stage.

Though she has played and tuned for pan com­pe­ti­tions and con­certs through­out the Caribbean, Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Lon­don and Eu­rope, Panora­ma at the Sa­van­nah re­mains a unique and spe­cial jew­el in her pro­fes­sion­al trea­sure-chest.

"I think pan is a long way from be­ing sep­a­rat­ed from its own her­itage which is so very clear­ly right here."

She does not sound like she is giv­ing up on this any time soon.