Mark Lyn­der­say

In­vit­ed, at quite short no­tice, to of­fer a talk to steel­band lead­ers on No­vem­ber 20, the chal­lenge proved not to be what to say to these pan­nists, but what to tell them that stuck to the top­ic.

There have been sev­er­al in­stal­ments of Bit­Depth that ex­plored pan and Car­ni­val in the 21st cen­tu­ry, and few of them have been cel­e­bra­to­ry of the state of af­fairs that pre­vails to­day. Here's some­thing you can do. Fire up Google and run a search for "steel­band�" and "steel­band news," but pre­pare to be as sur­prised as I was. On the holy grail of on­line search, the first page that's re­turned when a gen­er­al search is ex­e­cut­ed, there are no ref­er­ences at all to any steel­band op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The search on steel­band news be­gins, de­served­ly, with the Web site When Steel Talks (panon­thenet.com), a key re­source for steel­band re­port­ing on the web. The oth­er search re­sults for both terms do turn up steel­bands, it's just that none of them are from the coun­try of the in­stru­ment's birth. While this is dis­turb­ing, there are some up­sides. For one, steel­bands in T&T have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate the kind of fo­cused, planned strat­e­gy that can change the per­cep­tion of the move­ment on the web in short or­der. In­stead of a smat­ter­ing of hap­haz­ard, un­even­ly pro­duced Web sites and a scat­ter­shot ef­fort at up­load­ing a few al­bums, it's now pos­si­ble to skip the whole process of 1990's and ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry Web de­vel­op­ment, and as­set de­ploy­ment to lever­age to­day's re­mark­able so­lu­tions.

One ques­tion that arose at the talk was the chal­lenge of find­ing steel­band mu­sic on on­line mu­sic down­load Web sites, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the al­bums that are avail­able get lumped in­to the world mu­sic cat­e­go­ry.

At least part of the rea­son is that there are so few al­bums avail­able at all. On the ma­jor le­gal mu­sic down­load sites, most of the steel­band mu­sic is avail­able as the kind of col­lec­tions that are great for the cu­ri­ous, but of­fer lit­tle for col­lec­tors. Even Trinidad­Tunes.com, the lo­cal on­line mu­sic down­loads store has just sev­en al­bums that show up in a search for "steel­band." If lo­cal steel­bands got to­geth­er to of­fer le­gal mu­sic down­load Web sites a strong col­lec­tion of record­ed mu­sic, get­ting the word steel­band in­clud­ed in their genre lists would prob­a­bly be a much eas­i­er sell, but that's not the im­me­di­ate prob­lem.

What's stalling lo­cal steel­band mar­ket­ing on the Web is not just a lack of pres­ence and pa­thet­ic search en­gine op­ti­mi­sa­tion for what's there right now, it's the lack of in­ter­est in win­ning at­ten­tion for the mu­sic on­line. On the Web, at­ten­tion is the pri­ma­ry cur­ren­cy. With­out it, there are no mu­sic sales, no book­ings and no in­come. For too long, steel­band has trun­dled along on pow­ered by a pow­er­ful and rich lega­cy, but the ev­i­dence of a sim­ple In­ter­net search sug­gests that his­to­ry and res­o­nance re­main parochial. This is trea­sure that is not just buried, all the maps on the web lead else­where.So what's to be done? Steel­bands need to de­fine clear iden­ti­ties, rich sell­ing propo­si­tions for their brands, and share those sto­ries in­di­vid­u­al­ly on the web.

It's quite sim­ple. Be­ing good in this coun­try isn't the same thing as be­ing good in the world. Col­lec­tive­ly, there needs to be a rev­o­lu­tion in pro­mot­ing the mu­sic. Bands like Ra­dio­head and NIN have proven that free dis­tri­b­u­tions of mu­sic can gen­er­ate at­ten­tion cur­ren­cy, and Phish has made a ca­reer out of sell­ing af­ford­ably priced board record­ings of its con­certs along­side its for­mal stu­dio out­put. There's a rich mar­ket for the kind of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty that's lu­bri­cat­ed prod­uct sam­pling and streamed per­for­mance among the au­di­ences for mu­sic to­day. It's time that the steel­bands of T&T stop be­ing a no­ble, hard­work­ing se­cret kept from the rest of the world.