Can the steel­pan be used as a tool to fight racism that still ex­ists in the world?

That was the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion posed by award-win­ning nov­el­ist Earl Lovelace in de­liv­er­ing the keynote ad­dress on open­ing day of the first ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on pan at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day.

Lovelace's ad­dress was ti­tled "Re­sis­tance and Re­bel­lion: The So­cio-His­tor­i­cal De­vel­op­ment of the Steel­pan Move­ment."

It ex­plored how the cul­ture of re­bel­lion be­came a peo­ple's re­sponse to bru­tal­i­ty from the slave-mas­ters and one that gave an af­fir­ma­tive ex­pres­sion of them­selves.

The steel­pan move­ment, he con­tend­ed, record­ed that the his­to­ry of pan in­volved a se­ries of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween dif­fer­ent eth­nic groups, so­cioe­co­nom­ic class­es and so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions, all of which have at­tempt­ed to de­fine and use the mu­sic ac­cord­ing to their own val­ues and in­ter­ests.

Speak­ing to a large au­di­ence of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al steel­band rep­re­sen­ta­tives and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers gath­ered in the ho­tel's main ball­room, Lovelace said:

"I note, with pride, that the steel­pan has giv­en our youths a chance to ex­press them­selves, mu­si­cal­ly and oth­er­wise and al­so al­lows them to make full use of to­day's tech­nol­o­gy in fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the in­stru­ment.

"In ad­di­tion, it has served to strength­en fam­i­ly life in many of our com­mu­ni­ties. We ob­serve, how­ev­er, that the scourge of racism still ex­ists in the world to­day.

"Per­haps, this will change on­ly when the world em­ploys what we, in this coun­try, have brought in cre­at­ing the steel­pan - imag­i­na­tion, ded­i­ca­tion, and the ca­pac­i­ty for prob­lem-solv­ing."

Pre­sent­ed by Pan Trin­ba­go and the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma (ICP) Sec­re­tari­at, the three-day con­fer­ence brings to­geth­er pan schol­ars and re­searchers and prac­ti­tion­ers from all over the world, and is a lead-up to the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion to be held on Sun­day from 3 p.m. at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

The ex­er­cise is struc­tured to ex­plore sev­en ma­jor pan-re­lat­ed themes rang­ing from his­to­ry and de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, so­cial di­men­sion, ed­u­ca­tion, per­for­mance, eco­nom­ic and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment and steel­pan or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Fur­ther ex­plor­ing the first theme � His­to­ry and De­vel­op­ment of the Steel­band - for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Melville Bryan pre­sent­ed re­search on the His­to­ry of Pan.

Pro­fes­sor Louis Reg­is from UWI gave ca­lyp­so ac­counts of the art and ori­gins of the steel­pan. Dr An­drew Mar­tin pre­sent­ed re­search on the his­to­ry of the US Navy Steel Band which had a ma­jor im­pact on pan in the Unit­ed States, and Ja­nine Tiffe of Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty, USA, spoke about El­lie Man­nette and his Im­pact on Pan in the Unit­ed States.

The spread of pan in Eu­rope is an­oth­er ma­jor fo­cus of the con­fer­ence. To­day Matthias Kauer, the cur­rent trea­sur­er of Steel­pan Eu­ro­pean who start­ed play­ing pan in Switzer­land in 1977, and has since gone on to ed­it the Swiss Pan News (a newslet­ter for the over one hun­dred steel­bands in the re­gion), and op­er­ates Panora­ma Steel Drums, the first Eu­ro­pean busi­ness spe­cial­is­ing in pan mu­sic and in­stru­ments, will dis­cuss the evo­lu­tion and pro­lif­er­a­tion of the pan move­ment in Eu­rope, and lead a dis­cus­sion of in­stru­ment lay­outs and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion.