Pe­ter Ray Blood

Wey pan reach? This was the ques­tion asked in song many years ago by ca­lyp­son­ian Cro Cro. Well, the ques­tion was an­swered last week by Pan Trin­ba­go Inc and mu­si­cians from 42 steel­bands from T&T, three con­ti­nents and the Caribbean Basin.

Pan, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment of T&T, was cel­e­brat­ed in a big way this past week­end when Pan Trin­ba­go Inc, as­sist­ed by an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee drawn from five gov­ern­ment min­istries and the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, staged the first In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma.

On Sat­ur­day, bpTT, PT Inc, Dan­ny and Sandy Mo­hammed staged the Paving De Way sin­gle-pan pa­rade and com­pe­ti­tion for 18 lo­cal pan 'round-the-neck bands. De­spite tor­ren­tial rain, the con­test ran smooth­ly, staged in the street from out­side Pan Trin­ba­go head­quar­ters at Vic­to­ria Square, Park Street, to bp Rene­gades pan the­atre on Char­lotte Street where the ac­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion was held.

De­spite the in­clement weath­er, a large crowd braved the el­e­ments to wit­ness the per­for­mances, and peo­ple were not dis­ap­point­ed. The com­pe­ti­tion, opened by Point Fortin's Jah Roots, pro­duced some in­fec­tious per­for­mances, caus­ing many a pa­tron to dance in the rain. Bands turn­ing on the crowd in­clud­ed San Juan East Side, Mar­si­cans, T&T De­fence Force, Pan Jam­mers, City Sun­val­ley, La Fam­i­lie and T&T Fire Ser­vice.

At the end of it all, T&T Fire Ser­vice was judged the win­ner to walk away with the $4,000 first prize. Run­ners-up were Trinidad East Side Sym­pho­ny, Pan Jam­mers, T&T De­fence Force and Trinidad Nos­tal­gic (tied), and Mar­si­cans, re­spec­tive­ly.

On Sun­day, the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion was held at Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. It was sur­re­al hav­ing a steel­band com­pe­ti­tion of this na­ture and fea­tur­ing a dozen for­eign steel­bands chal­leng­ing 12 of T&T's top steel­bands from the 2015 Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion for a US$250,000 first prize.

Af­ter all, it is the month of Au­gust–six months af­ter our Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion and Car­ni­val. But a vis­i­tor could have eas­i­ly mis­tak­en it for Feb­ru­ary's am­bi­ence, sights and mood.

The au­di­ence in the Grand Stand was huge, and crowds thronged the Drag lead­ing to the stage. There were no North Stand or Greens but there was a huge North Black space op­po­site the Grand Stand, equipped with tents, food and liquor bars, and huge screens. The ac­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion was of­fi­cial­ly opened by a mem­ber of St Mar­tin's Gun­slingers Steel Or­ches­tra play­ing the T&T na­tion­al an­them.

As with all Pan Trin­ba­go events, an in­no­va­ca­tion was said, this time by PT pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az who lat­er con­fid­ed he al­ways says prayers to start all steel­band com­pe­ti­tions, per­haps the rea­son for the an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion be­ing in­ci­dent free.

Seat­ed front and cen­tre and hav­ing a com­mand view of the pro­ceed­ings was liv­ing steel­band icon An­tho­ny Williams who led Pan Am North Stars to vic­to­ry in the first na­tion­al Panora­ma, staged at this same venue in 1963. I didn't see many liv­ing pan leg­ends like Cur­tis Pierre, Earl Rod­ney, Bob­by Mo­hammed, Mil­ton "Wire" Austin and I learned that a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go pre­vent­ed 87-year-old pan stal­wart Arthur Bent­ley (just back from abroad hav­ing be­ing away for sev­er­al years) from at­tend­ing the his­toric event.

The for­eign bands did re­mark­ably well, es­pe­cial­ly when one takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the dis­ad­van­tage they were up against, lit­er­al­ly hav­ing mere days to learn and be­come aquat­int­ed with in­stru­ments not tuned as theirs in their re­spec­tive lands. Sun­day per­haps strikes the most sig­nif­i­cant ar­gu­ment in the con­tin­u­ing in­de­ci­sion and lethar­gy by Pan Trin­ba­go, our gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate T&T to ag­gres­sive­ly and with haste stan­dard­ise pan. Like it is for all con­ven­tion­al in­stru­ments, be it vi­o­lin, sax­o­phone, harp or gui­tar, there ought to be one patent­ed de­sign for pan as well.

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­pressed by the per­for­mances of Brook­lyn Steel Or­ches­tra (BSO) of New York, USA and Panora­ma Steel of Japan. BSO per­formed Lead Pipe & Sad­dis' Ah Feel­in' ah Feel­in', arranged by the trio of Odie Gon­za­les, Kendall Williams and Marc Brooks, while the Japan­ese band per­formed Yoshi­hi­ro Hara­da's Dance of the Phoenix, arranged by Hara­da.

All of the for­eign bands gave per­for­mances de­serv­ing of a place amongst the lo­cal steel­bands in our an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

I had been go­ing to Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove's Wood­brook pa­n­yard but the band's Sun­day evening per­for­mance of Scrunter's Woman on the Bass seemed some­what jad­ed to what I had been hear­ing re­hearsed. Arranged by Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, the piece was im­bued with some beau­ti­ful Woman on the Bass mo­tifs, with Sharpe taste­ful­ly em­pha­sis­ing the song's hook line mu­si­cal­ly, ex­e­cut­ed by strate­gi­cal­ly fe­male bassists.

Ap­pear­ing ear­ly in the pro­gramme at po­si­tion two, bp Rene­gades es­tab­lished an ear­ly stan­dard of pan­man­ship that those in its wake were man­dat­ed to fol­low to de­feat this Char­lotte Street steel or­ches­tra. Its mu­si­cians, at­tired in gold and wear­ing red berets a la Machel Mon­tano, the band per­formed Like ah Boss with au­thor­i­ty. Its arranger, Du­vonne Stew­art, cut­ting a com­mand­ing fig­ure in black and gold mil­i­tary dress at­tire, con­duct­ed his charges to a well-de­served third place.

This year's lo­cal Small Band cham­pi­on Su­per­novas showed that it had come of age and was well pre­pared by leader/arranger Am­rit Sama­roo to throw the gaunt­let down to its ri­vals from the big­ger cat­e­gories and from abroad. The band played a spir­it­ed arrange­ment of Dr Sama­roo and it came as no sur­prise that it up­staged 22 ri­vals to place sec­ond.

Not even the stoutest op­po­nents of Massy Trinidad All Stars could ar­gue that the band doesn't de­serve first place and the more than one mil­lion dol­lars T&T first prize. When the band ap­peared on stage, its mu­si­cians ap­pro­pri­ate­ly dressed in East In­di­an wear, one could ac­tu­al­ly cut the con­fi­dence ooz­ing out of the Duke Street or­ches­tra. For Sun­day, arranger Leon "Smooth" Ed­wards re­moved two min­utes from the band's 1987 arrange­ment of de Mighty Tri­ni's Cur­ry Ta­ban­ca to bring the piece with­in the re­quired eight min­utes play­ing time.

From the first note, All Stars sound­ed like a win­ner and the best steel or­ches­tra thus far on the day, with eight more still to per­form in the com­pe­ti­tion. Mu­si­cal­ly, All Stars was per­fect and vi­su­al­ly it was in­tox­i­cat­ing, its mu­sic em­bell­ished by a large troupe of East In­di­an dancers, per­fect­ly chore­o­graphed for some rhyth­mic and per­cus­sive in­ter­pre­ta­tions in the fi­nal third of the se­lec­tion.

All Stars' su­pe­ri­or­i­ty over all ri­vals could be ap­pre­ci­at­ed when one looks at the 78-point dis­par­i­ty be­tween its win­ning score of 476 and 24th placed Gun­slingers. The band scored 12 points more than sec­ond placed Su­per­novas.

My one dis­ap­point­ment on Sun­day was the plac­ing of South Trinidad's Pan El­ders. The ninth band to face the judges, the band played Du­vonne Stew­art's arrange­ment of Bal­ly Par­ty Time Again, but when the re­sults were an­nounced just be­fore 1 am on Mon­day, they showed that Pan El­ders was placed 12th, tied with T&TEC Trop­i­cal An­gel Harps and To­ba­go's NGC Pan Xplo­sion. I thought that Stew­art and his mu­si­cian per­formed ex­cel­lent­ly, meet­ing all cri­te­ria of ad­ju­di­ca­tion, and de­served a much high­er plac­ing.

The or­gan­is­ers of the world's first In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma ought to take a bow and de­serve a hearty thank you from all true pan lovers for their ef­forts. How­ev­er, there is still a lot of room for im­prove­ment for an event like this. It de­serves tremen­dous­ly more pro­mo­tion and mar­ket­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly over­seas, as well as wider cov­er­age from the elec­tron­ic and so­cial me­dia.

As I be­gan, I shall end by re­peat­ing and em­pha­sis­ing that the time is way over­due for pan, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment of T&T, to be stan­dard­ised.