DAVID CUFFY

De­spite re­ports of its suc­cess as a fi­nan­cial ven­ture, opin­ions re­main di­vid­ed on whether the Panora­ma Par­ty on the Greens for the semi­fi­nal of the Na­tion­al Steel­band Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain is "cre­ative ge­nius at work" or some­thing that has "ze­ro pos­i­tive val­ue to the main event–Panora­ma and its per­form­ers."

Pop­u­lar Web site When Steel Talks had this to say about last year's event: "It's hard to be­lieve that the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T could ever look at the di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­pos­ing forces of the Panora­ma and Par­ty on the Greens and say–'Now that's what I'm talk­ing about.' It is hard to imag­ine the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, or CEOs of the com­pa­nies that spon­sor the tox­ic mix of the Greens and Panora­ma say­ing 'I don't mind if my grand­child–af­ter hard work and study for a mu­sic per­for­mance in a Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship–plays his/her heart out, but is noth­ing more than back­ground mu­sic to a dis­in­ter­est­ed gath­er­ing.' But that is what tran­spired at the event."

It asked, rhetor­i­cal­ly, "Is this what 50 years of Panora­ma has brought?", al­lud­ing to the fact that last year Pan Trin­ba­go, the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for the an­nu­al event, cel­e­brat­ed 50 years of stag­ing the com­pe­ti­tion.

Panora­ma, it opined, is about ded­i­ca­tion, se­ri­ous­ness, art and cul­ture, com­mit­ment, hard work, fo­cus, ex­cel­lence, re­spect–and mu­sic. The Greens is about par­ty­ing to the max, com­bined with a to­tal and ut­ter dis­re­gard for Panora­ma and the steel or­ches­tras. And for some in­di­vid­u­als–a li­cence to be as dis­rup­tive as you want to be.

In on-cam­era in­ter­views, sev­er­al pa­trons on the Greens, in­clud­ing lo­cal show­biz per­son­al­i­ties, said they were there to "par­ty," have fun, etc; oth­ers point­ed­ly said they were not there for the Panora­ma. So the ul­ti­mate ques­tion is: why does the or­gan­is­er of the Panora­ma con­tin­ue to pro­mote a sep­a­rate and un­equal event which di­rect­ly com­petes and at times im­pedes the very show that is sup­posed to be the mar­quis, and on­ly event–Panora­ma?

Vice pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go Bry­on Ser­rette is the per­son with di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for or­gan­is­ing the Greens. Asked to ex­plain the ra­tio­nale be­hind the de­ci­sion, he con­tend­ed:

"Just as every­thing un­der­goes change, Panora­ma is al­so un­der­go­ing change. Any­one who has been fol­low­ing the com­pe­ti­tion over the years will re­alise that while a lot of the younger gen­er­a­tion mem­bers are play­ing with the steel­bands, their peers have not been sup­port­ing the event. My in­ves­ti­ga­tions have re­vealed that these young peo­ple like Car­ni­val, and wish to be part of all the ac­tiv­i­ties that take place dur­ing the sea­son. Panora­ma is a ma­jor event on the Car­ni­val sched­ule, and they would like to be part of the scene.

"How­ev­er, they would pre­fer not to sit in one spot for hours lis­ten­ing to the bands. They would like to mix and min­gle with their friends and have fun while still be­ing 'at Panora­ma.' Pan Trin­ba­go, there­fore, took the de­ci­sion to ac­com­mo­date these pa­trons by giv­ing them a space in which they would be com­fort­able, and at the same time con­tribute to the rev­enues we are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate from the event."

In terms of rev­enue for 2012, the fig­ure was dou­bled from Panora­ma 2011. Then CEO of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) Clarence Moe, speak­ing at a joint se­lect com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment in April 2012, said the fig­ure­had moved from about $2.5 mil­lion to $5 mil­lion, and de­scribed it as a "phe­nom­e­nal in­crease."

He ac­knowl­edged that there were those who were op­posed to the par­ty, say­ing it was a dis­trac­tion from Panora­ma.

"This is a jus­ti­fi­able claim," he said. "How­ev­er, there is a need to raise rev­enue and there is a po­ten­tial for rev­enue." He not­ed that young peo­ple were "re­turn­ing to pan sim­ply be­cause they could lis­ten to the big bands and still have a good time. That's an at­trac­tion, so where­as we would have 7,000, we would now have 15,000."

Ser­rette said he es­ti­mat­ed last year's crowd would go down as the largest in the his­to­ry of a Panora­ma semi­fi­nal, but re­frained from di­vulging how much rev­enue it gen­er­at­ed. A change from the pre­vi­ous year saw the Greens ex­tend­ed fur­ther north in the Sa­van­nah, and bleach­ers placed at the front, al­low­ing pa­trons a place to go and lis­ten to their favourite bands per­form. There were al­so strate­gi­cal­ly placed large screens dis­play­ing the ac­tion tak­ing place on the big stage.

Ser­rette said pa­trons of the Greens were very sup­port­ive of the space, and for Car­ni­val 2014, a fur­ther ex­ten­sion is planned, and oth­er nec­es­sary changes will take place to make the area more ac­com­mo­dat­ing to users.

How­ev­er, the Greens will still be sep­a­rat­ed from the North Stand.

"The Fire Ser­vices will not al­low the 'co-min­gling' of pa­trons, as it rais­es a ques­tion of safe­ty," he said. "So pa­trons of the 2014 Panora­ma semi­fi­nal will again have a choice of three ar­eas from which to en­joy the event–Grand Stand, North Stand, and Greens."

�2 Read more about the plans for the Greens in to­mor­row's Pulse by Pe­ter Ray Blood.

STAKE­HOLD­ER VIEWS

The T&T Guardian sought the views from some stake­hold­ers in the Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion con­cern­ing the Greens. Here are their com­ments.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) Ro­ry Ros­tant: "We see the Greens as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for staff en­gage­ment and to be part of an event that has be­come an in­te­gral part of the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar. Not on­ly do we cel­e­brate our na­tion­al in­stru­ment, but the Greens al­lows the Unit Trust to show­case our brand in a fes­tive at­mos­phere. UTC is as much a part of the fi­nan­cial land­scape as Panora­ma is to Car­ni­val."

Tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Alvin Daniell has been do­ing com­men­tary on Panora­ma for many years. "As far as I know there has nev­er been any neg­a­tive feed­back about the Greens in­ter­rupt­ing the broad­cast. From a per­son­al point of view, it has nev­er af­fect­ed my com­men­tary, and I have nev­er heard any oth­er com­men­ta­tor com­plain­ing. In my view, Pan Trin­ba­go has many more im­por­tant is­sues to deal with than the Greens."

Founder/man­ag­er of pop­u­lar south steel or­ches­tra NL­CB Fon­claire Mil­ton "Wire" Austin: "As a steel­bands­man, I see the Greens as a good fi­nan­cial ven­ture for Pan Trin­ba­go, and I hope the or­gan­i­sa­tion does every­thing to make it bet­ter every year. There was some con­cern about the noise com­ing from there in the first year. But that was con­tained suc­cess­ful­ly in the fol­low­ing year.

"As a mat­ter of fact, this year the sound sys­tem is de­signed to be cut every time a band be­gins its per­for­mance on stage. I am glad the idea was start­ed. The Greens will al­ways be there, al­low­ing Panora­ma to pro­vide en­ter­tain­ment for every­body. In any event, it is the steel­bands that will ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly from the ven­ture."