AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

RE­PORTER

As melod­ic and rhyth­mic as the heart­beat of the steel­pan is, the in­stru­ment was not al­ways fa­mil­iar to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences. Sev­en­ty-five years lat­er, a new the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion is pay­ing homage to the gru­elling jour­ney that first took the steel­pan be­yond T&T’s shores.

On Ju­ly 4, pa­trons gath­ered at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain to wit­ness the sto­ry of a his­toric voy­age by mem­bers of the Trinidad All Steel Per­cus­sion Or­ches­tra (TASPO) to Britain. The mu­si­cal dra­ma, en­ti­tled The Day The Pan Sailed, served as both a trib­ute to these pi­o­neers and an ori­gin sto­ry for the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra (NSSO), which proud­ly fol­lows in their foot­steps to­day.

Writ­ten by Dr Josephine Tor­rel-Brown and Joshua Phillips, the pro­duc­tion was set on Ju­ly 6, 1951, the ex­act day the "steel men" em­barked on their jour­ney to Britain via a ba­nana boat. In the late 1940s and ear­ly 1950s, in­tense ri­val­ry ex­ist­ed be­tween lo­cal steel­bands. To unite the mu­si­cians and prop­er­ly rep­re­sent the is­land, the de­ci­sion was made to form one uni­fied band from across T&T: TASPO.

Util­is­ing tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters for sto­ry­telling, ca­lyp­so (mas­ter­ful­ly per­formed by Kris­son Joseph) for his­tor­i­cal con­text and set de­signs de­pict­ing old Trinidad for vi­su­al tex­ture, the play did jus­tice to the events lead­ing up to that his­toric voy­age. The stag­ing was a grand col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort, show­cas­ing the im­mense tal­ent of stu­dents from UTT's Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts along­side the NSSO.

The play re­count­ed the dra­mat­ic shift in pub­lic opin­ion sur­round­ing the steel­pan. An in­stru­ment once frowned up­on and as­so­ci­at­ed with so­cial un­rest was sud­den­ly cel­e­brat­ed just be­fore it re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim. It earned a new lev­el of re­spect from the very so­ci­ety that had pre­vi­ous­ly looked down on it and dis­missed pan­nists as "vagabonds."

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Dr Tor­rel-Brown re­flect­ed on the heavy stig­ma TASPO's pi­o­neers faced with­in lo­cal steel­band cul­ture.

“As you would have heard in the pro­duc­tion, pan­nists were called vagabonds, they were called hooli­gans, no good, no life–and the pan was con­sid­ered to be noise.

Trinidad was a British colony at the time and the British colonis­ers would have banned the steel­pan. And be­cause even the lo­cals thought that pan was such a bad thing, it was an evil thing, they did not al­low their chil­dren to get in­volved. Worse yet, their girl chil­dren,” she said.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the Hell's Gate Steel Or­ches­tra from An­tigua was cho­sen to rep­re­sent the re­gion at the Fes­ti­val of Britain. This was the cat­a­lyst that sparked an ur­gent push by Trinidad's lo­cal steel­band as­so­ci­a­tion (known to­day as Pan Trin­ba­go), which in­sist­ed that T&T should be rep­re­sent­ed, ar­gu­ing that the steel­pan was born here.

"When the lo­cals heard that, then they start­ed to ac­cept the steel­pan, think­ing, 'Oh, then this has got to be a good thing,'" Dr Tor­rel-Brown said.

"In the pro­duc­tion, you would have re­alised some of the ac­tors took out um­brel­las. It was a very rainy day on the 6th of Ju­ly, 1951. But in spite of the rain, a large crowd came out to see the men off and sup­port them."

The cast and crew, com­pris­ing stu­dents from UTT's Mas­ter's in Car­ni­val Stud­ies pro­gramme, trans­formed decades-old his­to­ry in­to a vi­brant the­atri­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, bring­ing the sto­ry of TASPO vivid­ly to life.

For the play's di­rec­tor, Mar­vin Ish­mael, the pro­duc­tion goes be­yond mere­ly retelling his­to­ry. It in­vites the au­di­ence to ex­pe­ri­ence the raw emo­tion of TASPO's jour­ney through com­pelling sto­ry­telling and vi­brant the­atri­cal per­for­mances. He added that it al­lows a new gen­er­a­tion to con­nect with the pride, ex­cite­ment and glob­al sig­nif­i­cance of the steel­pan's rise.

"I think steel­pan has end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties. There is no end of the pos­si­bil­i­ties to the use of steel­pan in terms of telling a sto­ry, in terms of in­stru­men­ta­tion for film, sound­tracks, etc.,” Ish­mael said.

“When I hear the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra play clas­si­cal pieces, for ex­am­ple, play some clas­si­cal pieces, I'm blown away by the mu­sic."

De­spite a num­ber of tech­ni­cal sound is­sues dur­ing por­tions of the evening, the stag­ing re­mained deeply en­gag­ing. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the pro­duc­tion suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­scored the im­por­tance of re­mem­ber­ing the trail­blaz­ers who so­lid­i­fied the lega­cy of T&T's na­tion­al in­stru­ment for gen­er­a­tions to come. That jour­ney, which be­gan in 1951, prompt­ed a lega­cy that now sails for­ev­er.