Wes­ley Gib­bings

At one point dur­ing pan his­to­ri­an Kim John­son's 2014 TedX talk in Port-of-Spain, he ex­plained that "be­fore pan is en­coun­tered as mu­sic, it is ex­pe­ri­enced as a form of be­long­ing."

"Learn­ing (pan)," ar­gued John­son, "is through plea­sure and love."

Some ex­perts are wont to con­tend that such a view of the unique na­ture of pan and its mu­sic un­der­pins both its strengths and weak­ness­es � par­tic­u­lar­ly the no­tion that, in the past and even to­day, rote learn­ing of the in­stru­ment in a pa­n­yard con­text brings with it, what John­son de­scribes as a high lev­el of in­for­mal­i­ty and a sense of "fam­i­ly" and not nec­es­sar­i­ly the ster­ile en­vi­ron­ment of a class­room.

Artis­tic di­rec­tor/con­duc­tor of the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra, Akua Lei­th, hints at such a dy­nam­ic in the craft­ing of mu­si­cal arrange­ments for Panora­ma in par­tic­u­lar.

"What is most in­ter­est­ing to me is be­yond all the mu­si­cal el­e­ments an arranger could use, it seems to come down to what moves our peo­ple," he told T&T Guardian. "One could ar­gue it is more of a cul­tur­al thing than a mu­si­cal thing."

"I have seen this un­fold in the pa­n­yards. Sim­ple mu­si­cal el­e­ments can bring forth a great deal of ex­cite­ment, while so­phis­ti­cat­ed mu­si­cal el­e­ments are bare­ly recog­nised," Lei­th added.

"The tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments are eas­i­ly dis­cernible, and usu­al­ly bring about a cer­tain re­sponse from the lis­ten­ers and play­ers alike; hence our job as arrangers is to con­tin­ue to in­tro­duce new ma­te­r­i­al that will even­tu­al­ly be­come ap­pre­ci­at­ed by all."

Yet, the de­vel­op­ment of the in­stru­ment, mu­sic com­posed for it and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing mu­si­cian­ship have un­der­gone an un­even meta­mor­pho­sis, claims for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent and dec­o­rat­ed pan leader, Owen Ser­rette.

"There is a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion now," he said in an in­ter­view, "what we have more of now are mu­si­cians and not just pan­men."

He how­ev­er said while this was a move in the right di­rec­tion–and he has been a staunch sup­port­er of mu­sic lit­er­a­cy among pan play­ers –"we are not see­ing the progress (in terms of youth par­tic­i­pa­tion)."

"Let's face it," he said, "we (my gen­er­a­tion) didn't have that kind of tal­ent. Be­ing mu­si­cal­ly qual­i­fied is good for the pan but we do not seem to be get­ting the young peo­ple to come on board." He es­ti­mates that no more than 20 per cent of young pan play­ers progress from school and ju­nior bands to the se­nior lev­el.

How­ev­er, pan mu­si­cal lead­er­ship is wit­ness­ing the un­furl­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion. Lei­th, a mu­sic grad­u­ate, is him­self 34; the same age as high­ly-suc­cess­ful Su­per­novas arranger, Am­rit Sama­roo. In 2012, Shenelle Abra­ham took over Panora­ma arrange­ment for Skif­fle at 24, Mia Gor­mandy now of Bird­song is 29 and young pan phe­nom, Aviel Scant­er­bury, is this year ar­rang­ing for Ari­ma An­gel Harps at the age of 22.

Scant­er­bury, a re­cent UWI mu­sic grad­u­ate, said the an­nu­al line-up of Panora­ma arrangers has un­der­gone "some­thing of a facelift with younger arrangers com­ing in­to the bat­tle zone and prov­ing them­selves quite bril­liant­ly."

This change, he said, "has been some­thing that the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty has on­ly re­cent­ly come to terms with–not that it hasn't been tried in the past."

"I would like to think that the qual­i­ty of steel­pan play­ers has im­proved with­in the last decade as more and more play­ers are mu­si­cal­ly lit­er­ate and more tech­ni­cal­ly ad­vanced," Scant­er­bury said. "I think ... this could be thanks to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pan in schools, steel­bands form­ing youth steel or­ches­tras and an in­crease in ter­tiary lev­el pro­grammes around the world for play­ers to hone their craft."

"This is a step in the right di­rec­tion," he added. "How­ev­er there is still more to be done."

Sama­roo, who led Su­per­novas to sec­ond place in the large band cat­e­go­ry of Panora­ma 2016, straight from a win­ning po­si­tion as a small band with a big sound, is just as en­thu­si­as­tic about what he sees in the pa­n­yard among the youth.

He is how­ev­er con­cerned that the gap be­tween ter­tiary lev­el train­ing and ca­reers in the mu­sic in­dus­try. "I have no­ticed there has been more youth in­volve­ment in the last five years," he told T&T Guardian. "That has dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creased be­cause of the pan in schools pro­gramme and the in­stru­ment be­ing in­tro­duced a lot soon­er in the school sys­tem.

"How­ev­er, the wor­ry­ing part is what they are go­ing to do af­ter?"

"It is good for the in­dus­try that they are study­ing mu­sic, but they will have to look out­side to spread and prop­a­gate the mar­ket," he added. "And that will help take the in­stru­ment out­side (of T&T)."

He laments the ab­sence of more record­ed pan mu­sic and the dis­ap­pear­ance of a steel­band fes­ti­val which once brought a mix of gen­res in­clud­ing clas­si­cal mu­sic. "We're re­al­ly miss­ing the fes­ti­val," Sama­roo said.

"The clas­si­cal com­po­nent of the art form is dif­fer­ent from a Panora­ma per­for­mance, since what the fes­ti­val did was to bring out the best in ex­e­cu­tion and skill."

Lei­th makes the ob­ser­va­tion a dif­fer­ent way. "First­ly, ar­rang­ing for the steel­pan could take the same ap­proach­es a mu­si­cian will use for any oth­er mu­si­cal in­stru­ment while tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in­stru­ment range, or­ches­tra­tion, blend and bal­ance, as well as, tim­bres," he said.

"How­ev­er, to speak specif­i­cal­ly about Panora­ma arrange­ments, there is a com­mon struc­ture with some vari­a­tions," Lei­th added.

"Panora­ma in its present state has a blue­print," he con­tend­ed. "When a mu­si­cian looks at the en­tire struc­ture of a Panora­ma arrange­ment, it im­i­tates the Eu­ro­pean mu­si­cal form of a sonata."

The mu­si­col­o­gists can dis­cuss this in­ter­minably, but what Lei­th es­sen­tial­ly ar­gues is that Panora­ma mu­sic has ap­plied a ba­sic for­mat or for­mu­la since 1963 up­on the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion.

Sama­roo sug­gests that the re­turn of a mul­ti­ple genre fes­ti­val can help in­spire a wider va­ri­ety of ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. In­no­va­tion is noth­ing new and Andy Nar­rell's Panora­ma re­cent ven­tures with Bird­song, have tin­kered with long-held views on tem­po and ho­n­oured more dili­gent ad­her­ence to orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions.

Lei­th is of the view that "some steel­band arrangers are go­ing be­yond the tra­di­tion­al melod­ic, har­mon­ic and rhyth­mic lan­guage with­in their Panora­ma arrange­ments and are do­ing very well."

Peo­ple like Scant­er­bury, who have ex­ten­sive for­mal ex­po­sure to clas­si­cal mu­sic, jazz and blues are more like­ly than not to be among the new gen­er­a­tion in­ter­est­ed in equal­ly bold ex­cur­sions.

"For a long time," the for­mer Trin­i­ty-Bish­ops Anstey East stu­dent/arranger ar­gued, "the cre­ativ­i­ty has been lost at Panora­ma and bands that dare to push the en­ve­lope of cre­ativ­i­ty and re­al­ly try to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of the crowd and judges are al­most in­stan­ta­neous­ly re­ject­ed."

Lei­th recog­nis­es the chal­lenge say­ing more mu­si­cal­ly lit­er­ate play­ers are in turn mo­ti­vat­ing pan arrangers to try new things.

"This shift (to more mu­sic lit­er­a­cy) can be chal­leng­ing for the arrangers, as they are be­ing pushed to be­come more cre­ative to present new ex­pe­ri­ences," he said. "In places where this does not hap­pen, it could be­come very frus­trat­ing for the lit­er­ate play­er."

"There are so many more pos­si­bil­i­ties for the steel pan," Lei­th said. "We as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans need to show the world that we are the lead­ers in steel­pan re­search, in­no­va­tion, de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion."

He be­lieves he has the mak­ings of a for­mu­la for greater suc­cess and has gen­er­at­ed his list of re­quire­ments.

It in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of more ped­a­gog­i­cal ma­te­r­i­al for steel­pan ed­u­ca­tors; the cre­ation of op­por­tu­ni­ties for young steel­pan mu­si­cians to hone their tal­ents and the es­tab­lish­ment of a foun­da­tion of­fer­ing schol­ar­ships to per­form­ing arts stu­dents.

Lei­th's list al­so in­cludes the cre­ation of jobs and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for steel­pan grad­u­ates of ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions; the pub­lish­ing of lo­cal steel pan arrange­ments; es­tab­lish­ment of T&T as the sup­pli­ers of all steel­pan busi­ness to the world and the cre­ation of more per­form­ing, tour­ing, and ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­mu­ni­ty steel bands.

Sama­roo would add to that his de­sire to see more record­ings, greater recog­ni­tion of the role of pan tuners, "the un­sung he­roes of pan", and more re­spect for the play­ers, with­out whom "none of this would be pos­si­ble."

For now, the fo­cus is on Panora­ma 2017, but emerg­ing steel­pan lead­ers have their eyes set on hori­zons way be­yond this im­me­di­ate mis­sion.

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