Clevon Raphael

While the cor­po­rate sec­tor has been giv­ing fi­nan­cial and oth­er sup­port to the steel­band move­ment more could be done in this di­rec­tion. Kei­th Di­az, pres­i­dent of the na­tion­al steel­band um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion, Pan Trin­ba­go, in mak­ing this case, re­veals that for the first time a T&T Steel Fes­ti­val will be held this year and par­tic­i­pants are ex­pect­ed from four oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing In­dia. On the re­cent in­ci­dent at the 2012 Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, Di­az is not say­ing much on that but ar­gues his or­gan­i­sa­tion could not be held re­spon­si­ble for what tran­spired.

Q: Mr Di­az, don't find I am be­ing too farse, but there is a scar to the front of your head, was that per­haps a re­sult of a steel­band in­ci­dent years ago?

A: (Touch­ing the area with his right hand and laugh­ing aloud) You do­ing an in­ter­view, oh God, all that is com­mu­ni­cat­ing, you just go ahead. Yes, that came from ri­val­ry when I was a very young man, and when you came from a pan en­vi­ron­ment there used to be mi­nor ri­ots.

Would you con­sid­er that your bap­tism of fire in the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty?

(Chuck­ling) Well, yes. We used to live in Pe­tit Bourg and we had lit­tle dif­fer­ences with the guys from Champs Fleurs and Tu­na­puna, and in those days when you came from cer­tain ar­eas you had to run plen­ty. When those guys am­bushed you and you couldn't run you get licks like peas. So you had to learn to run be­cause if you have 15 peo­ple run­ning you down, you go stop and take all dat licks? (Laughs while smooth­ing over the same spot with his left hand). But those were the days...a part of life.

Hav­ing come through the ranks of the move­ment to head Pan Trin­ba­go, do you be­lieve that pan­men to­day are more re­spect­ed than they were in your youth­ful days?

Well, more or less we are more re­spect­ed to­day. I re­mem­ber when I first went in­to a pa­n­yard as a teenag­er at Bush Street, a woman named Doris com­plained to my grand­moth­er, telling her: "Look he beat­ing pan with dem bad boys in San Juan." And that was bad news for my great aunt, my grand­moth­er and oth­er rel­a­tives who start­ed to cry, it was a big thing. Af­ter all, my grand­moth­er used to play the or­gan in the church and my grand­fa­ther used to open the Catholic church in town. But I was de­ter­mined, I did not care whether they liked it or not. But to­day we have come a long way from then to now.

The move­ment has come a long way, but isn't there still the per­cep­tion that pan mu­sic is not be­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed to the ex­tent it ought to be in the land of its birth? Steel­bands still beg­ging for spon­sor­ship and the like?

That is a dif­fer­ent thing...I know you bring­ing me out, but I have to be very care­ful how I re­spond to ques­tions in terms of spon­sor­ship, be­cause if you an­swer in the neg­a­tive they put you down and give no fi­nan­cial or oth­er as­sis­tance. But by and large, com­pa­nies have been do­ing their part to as­sist the move­ment, and on­ly last week state-owned Petrotrin and KC Con­fec­tionery do­nat­ed mon­ey to steel or­ches­tras.

Doesn't that in­di­cate a quan­tum turn­around in the at­ti­tude of com­pa­nies to­wards spon­sor­ing steel or­ches­tras?

Not yet, but I hope this will gen­er­ate in the minds of the cor­po­rate sec­tor the need to show more love and com­pas­sion for our in­dige­nous art form.

Mov­ing on. With re­spect to the in­ci­dent at last Sun­day's se­mi-fi­nal of the 2012 panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, Pan Trin­ba­go has been stag­ing this com­pe­ti­tion for a very long time. Why can't you get it right by this time?

(Protest­ing with out­stretched hands and with a half smile) Oh God, don't put it so nah? I like your ques­tion be­cause I know you want to know what I have to say. (Di­az gave a lengthy ex­pla­na­tion on the ad­vent of the "Greens" lead­ing up to last week's chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in which some ac­cuse the po­lice of us­ing ex­ces­sive force. Di­az drew a pen­cilled sketch of the "Greens" in re­la­tion to the North Stand).

Very well. Mr Di­az, were the po­lice aware of all the phys­i­cal arrange­ments for the stag­ing of the com­pe­ti­tion?

All stake­hold­ers in the rel­e­vant Gov­ern­ment sec­tor such as the po­lice and fire have to be aware of what we are do­ing.

Were the po­lice act­ing ir­re­spon­si­bly in tak­ing the kind of ac­tion they did?

You want to car­ry me down a road and I don't want to go down that road. All my an­swer to that is the po­lice have a sa­cred du­ty to deal with law and or­der. That is my an­swer to that.

You are aware, Mr Di­az, that Pan Trin­ba­go is be­ing blamed in some quar­ters for last week's fi­as­co?

Yes. And that is be­cause they do not pos­sess all the facts and that is why I am speak­ing to you. Peo­ple on­ly say­ing Pan Trin­ba­go, Pan Trin­ba­go, Pan Trin­ba­go! Pan Trin­ba­go is not a mad or­gan­i­sa­tion! We had a sys­tem where we put hand band on you be­cause the fire de­part­ment said they were not al­low­ing any­body to open up the bar­ri­er as one sec­tion could hold 18,000, and the North Stand 9,000 pa­trons. And if you al­lowed any more to en­ter the North Stand it would be bro­ken down! That is what I am try­ing to get you to un­der­stand! (Pound­ing his desk). You could have al­lowed peo­ple from the North Stand to go to oth­er ar­eas which were nev­er filled to ca­pac­i­ty. We gave the peo­ple the au­thor­i­ty to go to the "Greens" but some fire of­fi­cial said he was lock­ing the gate, pre­vent­ing them go­ing over from the North Stand. That is when the bac­cha­nal start­ed. The fire and the po­lice came and locked the gate. That is when the bac­cha­nal start­ed.

Ear­li­er, you spoke about ef­forts to make your or­gan­i­sa­tion self-suf­fi­cient. what is ex­act­ly be­ing done in this re­gard?

Ex­tend­ing the "Greens" for the se­mi-fi­nals was one of our ideas for fund-rais­ing, and out­side of Panora­ma we have oth­er projects such as the Panazz in To­ba­go. Af­ter that, we are stag­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Steel Fes­ti­val to be held for the first time this year. We are invit­ing four coun­tries-In­dia, Chi­na, Brazil and Cu­ba-to come to this coun­try.

Steel or­ches­tras from these coun­tries?

No. They are bring­ing their na­tion­al in­stru­ments and will be play­ing along with our steel­bands. This is a to­tal­ly new con­cept and it is the brand­ing of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

By the way, what has be­come of Pan­vesco?

Oh, that is go­ing very well with the for­mer CEO of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Clar­ry Benn, at the helm. Pan­vesco is where pan­men can bor­row funds to un­der­take cer­tain projects.

Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have spo­ken about the need for the three car­ni­val stake­hold­ers-Mas, pan and ca­lyp­so-be­com­ing self-sus­tain­ing. In the case of the steel­band, how soon do you think you will achieve that sta­tus?

Re­mem­ber every­thing we do we are not get­ting the kind of fi­nan­cial sup­port from the cor­po­rate sec­tor. Now mind you, I am not en­tire­ly knock­ing that sec­tor be­cause sev­er­al com­pa­nies have been play­ing their part in sup­port­ing the move­ment over the years, but we think that more can be done in this di­rec­tion. We have a pan fac­to­ry, Pan­vesco and...

What about that eye­sore on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way which is sup­posed to be the con­struc­tion site of Pan Trin­ba­go's head­quar­ters?

We have some chal­lenges with that eye­sore as you have de­scribed it. There are some dis­crep­an­cies with the con­struc­tion it­self, which we are work­ing on right now.

When do you ex­pect it would be com­plet­ed?

Well, (play­ing with his chin for a brief mo­ment) by mid-year we should have some­thing on that be­cause right now I have some ex­perts work­ing on that. But I don't want to speak about that par­tic­u­lar is­sue at this time.

I don't see why you can­not elab­o­rate on that project, in that Pan Trin­ba­go is not in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment where trade se­crets like in a com­mer­cial en­ter­prise are ex­pect­ed?

(A sud­den mood change and rais­ing his voice) Yes! But why you want to know that so fast? I don't want to let out my sched­ule. When Dr Sab­ga and Ansa McAl plan­ning their busi­ness you think they let you know? Do you go and in­ter­view them? You can­not do that! And you could print that! (Push­ing back on his leather swiv­el chair and calm­ing down) Any­way, we have oth­er plans we are work­ing on right now and I will let the pub­lic know as soon as we get through. And, as I said, you will not ask Ansa McAl what they plan­ning; all those peo­ple who are build­ing su­per­mar­kets all over the place, no­body don't ask them. So why I must come up and re­veal my plans just so?

Mr Di­az, you don't think be­ing a pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tion in charge of prop­a­gat­ing and push­ing our na­tion­al in­stru­ment you have a du­ty to...

(An­i­mat­ed­ly with hands thrown in the air) Why? Next thing you will hear, "He did promise so and so and he did not do it." And they will block me here and block me so. But we are do­ing busi­ness. What, how­ev­er, I would like to say is that we tak­ing se­ri­ous those in the cor­po­rate sec­tor who are help­ing us and I would sin­cere­ly like to thank all of them who in­vest­ed and are in­vest­ing in the steel­band move­ment. I am al­so call­ing on pan­men and pan­women to rec­i­p­ro­cate that gen­eros­i­ty and sup­port those com­pa­nies which give us their fi­nan­cial and oth­er forms of as­sis­tance. In hard times they came out and sup­port­ed us.

I want you to print that, too. You want to know about our de­vel­op­ment plans? Okay, let me give you an­oth­er project on the draw­ing board. I have sourced in the Unit­ed States, three ma­chines at a cost of US$67,800 each to make steel­drums and we have to get the place to put it as we don't want to rent and lat­er have to move out. So you see, I want to talk busi­ness this year? (laughs)

Fi­nal­ly, Mr Di­az, what kind of fu­ture are you pro­ject­ing for the steel­band move­ment?

I see a very bright fu­ture. We are thank­ful for the as­sis­tance that peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing cor­po­rate en­ti­ties, sup­port­ers, the young pan­nists who are dai­ly com­ing out to keep the move­ment alive. And we al­so hope that the Gov­ern­ment lis­ten to the projects we have and that they will of­fer their as­sis­tance as they have been do­ing in the past.