Sean Nero

Steel­band lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to de­cide to­day whether to ac­cept or re­ject a pack­age of pro­pos­als which calls for new vari­a­tions in the stag­ing of next year's Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion. Pan­men spent the Christ­mas hol­i­days pe­rus­ing an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment from Pan Trin­ba­go which seeks to ef­fect rad­i­cal changes in the pro­duc­tion of the pop­u­lar Car­ni­val show. Pan Trin­ba­go wants new arrange­ments for the fi­nals of the small and medi­um or­ches­tra cat­e­gories. The pan body is rec­om­mend­ing that the medi­um band fi­nal be de­tached from the large cat­e­go­ry and in­stead be merged with that of the small or­ches­tras.

Then, that event would re­vert to Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do.

Steel­band of­fi­cials are al­so be­ing asked to con­sid­er the gov­ern­ing pan body's re­quest to re­duce the ceil­ing for pan­nists across the four cat­e­gories of com­pe­ti­tion by as much as 20 pan­nists in al­most every band. Should this mea­sure be ap­proved, large or­ches­tras would de­liv­er their mu­si­cal wares in 2009 with a new max­i­mum of 100 pan­nists–down from 120–while medi­um or­ches­tras would ap­pear with 80 mu­si­cians–ten less from what they took the stage with this year.

Con­tenders in the small cat­e­go­ry would field ten play­ers less as that fig­ure drops to 45 and sin­gle pan bands move from 45 to a mere 35. But win­ning ap­proval for this and oth­er mea­sures up for dis­cus­sion and de­ci­sion is not ex­pect­ed to come easy, cit­ing that mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty are al­ready strong­ly op­posed to the new ideas. Mean­while, a rec­om­men­da­tion to in­crease the play­er re­mit­tance fee from $1,000 to $3,000 is ex­pect­ed to win easy and unan­i­mous pas­sage among steel­bands of­fi­cials and their mem­bers.

How­ev­er, Pan Trin­ba­go sources said a pro­pos­al spe­cif­ic to an in­crease in fi­nan­cial awards to in­di­vid­ual pan­nists was be­fore Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc Don­ald, but so far, with­out ac­knowl­edge­ment.

Some 7,000 pan­men per­form­ing in this year's Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion each re­ceived $1,000, cost­ing tax-pay­ers $7 mil­lion. A spokesman said if ef­forts to re­duce the present ceil­ing was suc­cess­ful, al­most 500 pan­nists would no longer be el­i­gi­ble for the grant.

And if the State ap­proved the $3,000 pro­pos­al–in this sea­son of belt-tight­en­ing–the new bill to the Trea­sury could reach a whop­ping $19.5 mil­lion. A vote on whether to ac­cept or re­ject these Panora­ma re­vi­sions is ex­pect­ed to take place to­day, when Pan Trin­ba­go con­venes an ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing at the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Hall, Hen­ry Street in Port-of-Spain from 5 pm.

Moves to stage the small and medi­um con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tra fi­nals come af­ter Pan Trin­ba­go an­nounced that the en­tire Panora­ma 2009 se­ries would take place at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. With the ex­cep­tion of the pre­lim­i­nary round of com­pe­ti­tion which takes place in the pa­n­yard of com­pet­ing bands or the im­me­di­ate catch­ment area; the "semis" at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah; and the small con­ven­tion­al fi­nals; both the medi­um and large con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tra fi­nals have been joint­ly staged at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do, for the past two years.

Now, it seems, Pan Trin­ba­go still wants to of­fer pan lovers in the south­land part of the Panora­ma ex­pe­ri­ence. If this as­pect of the pro­pos­al was ac­cept­ed, the pan mu­sic dou­ble-head­er would take place on Car­ni­val Fri­day (Fan­tas­tic Fri­day). But if the mo­tion is passed, it's not smooth sail­ing yet for Pan Trin­ba­go. The source said Pan Trin­ba­go need­ed to re­quest use of Skin­ner Park from the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion and if the re­quest was grant­ed, con­cerns about the readi­ness of the venue must be ad­dressed.