An­drew Mar­tin

Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band of Toron­to, one of the many fine for­eign steel­bands that ven­tured to last sum­mer's In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma in Trinidad, are again the reign­ing Panora­ma champs of Cana­da. On Ju­ly 29, for the fifth year in a row they won Pan Alive–Cana­da's Panora­ma–in Toron­to, with Al "Al­los" Fos­ter's arrange­ment of Ker­win DuBois's Un­for­get­table.

This year the band al­so cel­e­brates 30 years of ex­is­tence with many events. The band had pre­vi­ous­ly won the Pan Alive steel­band com­pe­ti­tion at Carib­ana in 2005, and 2006 as well, and since its in­cep­tion, Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band has been one of the lead­ing steel­bands in Cana­da. In ad­di­tion to its strong pres­ence at the Pan Alive steel­band com­pe­ti­tion every year, the band per­forms at an ever-ex­pand­ing sched­ule of events through­out Cana­da and North Amer­i­ca, and makes reg­u­lar vis­its to the New York Steel­band Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion in Brook­lyn. This sum­mer they are plan­ning to re­turn to Brook­lyn Panora­ma for Labour Day week­end and al­so are plan­ning a spe­cial 30th an­niver­sary five-day Caribbean cruise to the Ba­hamas.

Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band formed in 1986 in the Jane and Finch neigh­bour­hood of North York, an area with a strong and vi­brant Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty. The band start­ed small, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten mem­bers who broke away from Afropan found­ed by Earl La Pierre Sr, which is it­self the old­est and longest ac­tive Toron­to-based steel­band.

Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band is part of a larg­er non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, the North York In­ter-Com­mu­ni­ty Youth Group, which has many oth­er youth ac­tiv­i­ties be­yond steel­band and gives area youth a sol­id base in the com­mu­ni­ty. The or­gan­i­sa­tion's goal was, and con­tin­ues to be, to en­gage youth to learn lead­er­ship skills through the per­form­ing arts. The pro­gramme was suc­cess­ful in­deed and af­ter well over three decades of ser­vice, Pan Fan­ta­sy con­tin­ues to be one of the stal­warts on the Toron­to steel­band scene.

Wendy Jones en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly leads Pan Fan­ta­sy. The Cana­di­an-based Black Busi­ness and Pro­fes­sion­al As­so­ci­a­tion re­cent­ly ho­n­oured her as a Har­ry Jerome award win­ner for her work in en­ter­tain­ment. The band's arranger for the past 15 years is Al "Al­los" Fos­ter who start­ed with Pan Fan­ta­sy as a teenag­er in a sum­mer camp pro­gramme and grew in­to teach­ing steel­pan full-time in the Toron­to area schools and ar­rang­ing for steel­bands through­out Cana­da. Ben Jack­son of Trinidad has been the drill­mas­ter for the band for sev­er­al years.

The band al­so fea­tures Lar­nell Lewis, one of the top jazz drum­mers in Cana­da, and he has been with the band for the last sev­er­al sum­mers.

"He is one of the best!" Wendy says, proud­ly not­ing the team of Fos­ter, Jack­son and Lewis has been a key to their suc­cess.

The Pan Fan­ta­sy has a core stage-side mem­ber­ship of 25 play­ers that grows to full strength Panora­ma size, nor­mal­ly around 80 to 100 play­ers, in the sum­mers for the Pan Alive! com­pe­ti­tion. Through­out the year, the band prac­tis­es on Thurs­days and Sun­days, though it, like oth­er steel­bands in Toron­to, ramps up ac­tiv­i­ty and prac­tise near­ly every night dur­ing the sum­mer months in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Carib­ana. Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band's ded­i­ca­tion and pre­ci­sion have paid off with its cur­rent dom­i­nance as the top steel­band in Toron­to.

Pan Fan­ta­sy prefers to re­hearse on the lawn area out­side its nor­mal pa­n­yard in a large ware­house, when the weath­er co-op­er­ates.

Frigid tem­per­a­tures aside, the band keeps its in­stru­ments in top shape and works with one of Trinidad's lead­ing tuners, Roland Har­ri­g­an. The pri­ma­ry tuner for the band, Har­ri­g­an has been com­ing to Toron­to to keep their steel­pans sound­ing great for sev­er­al years. Ed Pe­ters, a Trinida­di­an who re­lo­cat­ed to Cana­da near­ly three decades ago, built Pan Fan­ta­sy's first steel­pans. How­ev­er, over the years as in­stru­ments de­te­ri­o­rate and the band grew in size, Har­ri­g­an has built new re­place­ment steel­pans for Pan Fan­ta­sy that he ships up from Trinidad and tunes and blends on site in Cana­da.

In 1997, Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band leader Wendy Jones and Afropan man­ag­er Earl La Pierre formed the Pan Arts Net­work (PAN). The band de­cid­ed that the Cana­di­an steel­pan com­mu­ni­ty need­ed an or­gan­i­sa­tion to pro­mote steel­pan con­certs at var­i­ous times through­out the cal­en­dar year, not just Carib­ana in Ju­ly. The Pan Arts Net­work start­ed their ini­tial pro­mo­tion with a win­ter steel or­ches­tra show­case, Snowflakes on Steel, held in Jan­u­ary, and a Gospel Praise on Steel event in April, com­plete with steel­bands and vo­cal­ists and en­sem­bles. Both con­certs have grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty and now sell out each year.

More re­cent­ly, the Pan Arts Net­work has al­so start­ed Au­tumn Leaves on Steel, a soloist show­case which fea­tures guest artists the likes of Du­vone Stew­art, Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore and Dane Gul­ston. The Pan Arts Net­work's lat­est project is New Gen­er­a­tion, a sum­mer con­cert for steel­bands not par­tic­i­pat­ing in Carib­ana to get a chance for ex­po­sure.

Over the years, Pan Fan­ta­sy has record­ed two al­bums and now has a third in the works.

One of Pan Fan­ta­sy's most in­ter­est­ing projects was the Meet­ing of the Two Drums ven­ture with sup­port from the for­mer T&T con­sulate Michael Lash­ley. The project was an out­reach and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Wik­wemikong First Na­tion com­mu­ni­ty on the lo­cal re­serve out­side Toron­to for a cul­tur­al/mu­si­cal ex­change of work­shops and con­certs. The col­lab­o­ra­tion re­sult­ed in Pan Fan­ta­sy per­form­ing at the Wik­wemikong Pow-Wow, East­ern Cana­da's old­est Pow Wow, in 2010.

Since the 1990s, Pan Fan­ta­sy has made reg­u­lar trips to New York to per­form and com­pete in the Brook­lyn Panora­ma, in­clud­ing 2013 and 2014. The band has plen­ty of sup­port­ers in New York and gen­er­al­ly earns top places in the com­pe­ti­tion. In 2015, Pan Fan­ta­sy opt­ed to skip the Brook­lyn Panora­ma and in­stead fol­lowed the le­gions of for­eign steel­bands to Trinidad in or­der to com­pete in the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma this past Au­gust. Trav­el­ling to Trinidad was a dream come true for Pan Fan­ta­sy Steel­band, Jones es­pe­cial­ly. The band per­formed Al Fos­ter's arrange­ment of De­stra's Lucy for the com­pe­ti­tion.

While sev­er­al mem­bers of Pan Fan­ta­sy come down to Trinidad every year to play in dif­fer­ent steel­bands for Panora­ma, Jones notes that it was ex­cit­ing to plan to bring the whole com­ple­ment of Pan Fan­ta­sy down. "It was a good les­son in dif­fer­ent ways of do­ing things. For me, it was eye-open­ing. I came away with a dif­fer­ent mind­set and ideas on how we can im­prove things." The process was not easy and proved a ma­jor fi­nan­cial chal­lenge for the band, but in the end it proved a great ex­pe­ri­ence. Jones was, in par­tic­u­lar, thank­ful for the host band, Cou­va Joy­lan­ders, for all the help the mem­bers pro­vid­ed. Now it seems just an­oth­er step in the band's ever-evolv­ing jour­ney.

Now, though bare­ly re­cov­ered from cel­e­bra­tions over its lat­est win, Pan Fan­ta­sy is com­ing to take New York by storm. Watch out Brook­lyn bands!