Eighty–year-old Daisy James-Mc­Clean, leader of the Harlem Syn­co­pa­tors Steel Or­ches­tra, sac­ri­ficed and saved over the years us­ing her pen­sion mon­ey to buy the land where the band is on at Quar­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

The sub­ven­tion for sin­gle bands from the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts helps im­mense­ly as her band is un­spon­sored.

James-Mc­Clean said, how­ev­er, arrangers, tuners and trans­port were ex­pen­sive.

It is this lack of spon­sor­ship that is af­fect­ing her band and its mem­bers who are in need of in­stru­ments, the fa­cil­i­ty lacks a wa­ter tank, bench­es, the roof needs ex­tend­ing to pro­tect play­ers and spec­ta­tors when it rains, and the walls need paint­ing.

Hers is not the on­ly band ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

Even fa­mous large band Phase II Pan Groove was not spared as Petrotrin’s 15-year spon­sor­ship end­ed in 2015 and was adopt­ed un­der a new deal as Had­co Phase II Pan Groove.

Petrotrin, which shut down its op­er­a­tions last year, pre­vi­ous­ly spon­sored medi­um band Hat­ters Steel Or­ches­tra, from San Fer­nan­do, large band Siparia Del­tones, and oth­ers in­clud­ing four from To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to Kei­th Simp­son, man­ag­er of St James Tripo­lians Steel Or­ches­tra, most of the 163 bands go­ing up for Panora­ma are un­spon­sored, and just about 20 of them have cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.

With cuts in Pan Trin­ba­go’s bud­get, bands will now have to raise their own funds af­ter the or­gan­i­sa­tion an­nounced that it could not promise stipends to play­ers for 2019, who do not qual­i­fy for the se­mi-fi­nals. This may im­pact on play­ers’ per­for­mances.

For the 2017 Car­ni­val sea­son, pan play­ers were promised a stipend of $1,000 but on­ly re­ceived $500. In 2018, they were promised $500, but it nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. Bands will have to come up with cre­ative ways to cov­er trav­el and meal ex­pens­es, as Pan Trin­ba­go will not be able to fund them.

Simp­son said, “Bands need help. We will nor­mal­ly get as­sis­tance from Pan Trin­ba­go. We un­der­stand that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny hasn’t re­ceived their al­lo­ca­tions from Gov­ern­ment.”

He de­tailed the kind of sup­port. “We nor­mal­ly would get $10,000 as­sis­tance, then when you play you get an ap­pear­ance fee of $3,000. So we have to find mon­ey to pay play­ers, the arranger, at this stage we don’t know if we will even get jer­seys.”

He hoped that the band would make the fi­nals like in 2017, play­ing Pan by Storm by Ken “Pro­fes­sor” Philmore.

Simp­son, Pan Trin­ba­go’s trustee, said the band’s arranger, Derek Bou­caud was do­ing a very good job. He said things were “a lit­tle hard”, but mem­bers were tak­ing up the chal­lenges giv­en the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.

Simp­son, a for­mer arranger for the band, said some bands had fall­en by the way­side and will not be per­form­ing at Panora­ma be­cause play­ers were not get­ting their “lit­tle” $500 re­mit­tance.

He said that was “big mon­ey” for some as there were a lot of poor peo­ple play­ing pan.

Simp­son said a moth­er might have three chil­dren play­ing pan when she re­ceived that mon­ey it went to the house­hold needs.

A par­ent from San­gre Grande who had 12 chil­dren in a band told him once he got the mon­ey, he put it aside for his chil­dren’s school­books and ne­ces­si­ties.

Simp­son said the band had been in ex­is­tence for al­most 50 years, hav­ing been formed in 1972. Its first cap­tain was Em­manuel “Manuel” Camps.

To de­fray run­ning costs, he said mem­bers would from time-to-time hold a fund-rais­er and he would try to mar­ket the band.

Simp­son said the band played in small en­gage­ments, wed­dings, func­tions and had about five jobs booked up for the Car­ni­val.

Simp­son said in 1997, BWIA paid play­ers’ re­mit­tances when they placed in the top three, by 1998 un­der for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold, pan­men re­ceived $400, it grad­u­al­ly in­creased to $1,000, came down to $800 and stood at $500 and this could have an im­pact on the qual­i­ty of bands’ per­for­mances at Panora­ma.

He said al­though there may be some crit­i­cism about the State spon­sor­ing steel­bands, it was the norm in in­ter­na­tion­al sports to have cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship.

Simp­son said the band was at one time spon­sored by An­gos­tu­ra in the 70s and was then known as the Vat 19 Tripo­lians.

He said be­sides mon­ey for an arranger, tuner, the Fort George Link Road St James pa­n­yard’s util­i­ties, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, ca­ble, and ameni­ties had to be paid as well as ban­ners and flags.

Simp­son said sec­re­tary of the band, Gale Franklin made sand­wich­es for the chil­dren every night and was like the moth­er of the group.

He said it cost mon­ey to trans­port the band, re­place and main­tain the in­stru­ments, bust­ed skins on the trap set, re­pair dam­aged pans from falls and all that paid from fund-rais­ing bar­be­ques.

Simp­son said pan play­ers need­ed help from the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sec­tor to meet their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

“Pan is the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, but it was be­ing treat­ed like a bas­tard child of cul­ture,” he said.