Peg­gy Jugma­hans­ingh

Vis­it­ing pa­n­yards for Car­ni­val 2025 was eu­phor­ic for me, and it all start­ed with the Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra.

I had been back home just a few days in ear­ly Jan­u­ary from the US—to be ex­act, Al­bu­querque, New Mex­i­co (a south­west­ern state)—when a pan en­thu­si­ast friend in­vit­ed me to go to Pam­beri’s pa­n­yard. A friend of his from France, Olivi­er Wiren, was on his eighth vis­it to the land of steel­pan and played in Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra for the first time. My friend want­ed to see his French bud­dy prac­tice while tak­ing in the sounds of Pam­beri.

And so it be­gan that evening in the sec­ond week of Jan­u­ary, as I got picked up around 8 pm from the “back road” that runs par­al­lel to the East­ern Main Road in Laven­tille and head­ed east to San Juan. From the Croisee (quay zay) in San Juan, we turned on­to the San­ta Cruz Old Road, and af­ter some twists and turns, we got to Pam­beri’s pa­n­yard.

Walk­ing in, I heard the scin­til­lat­ing sounds of a live steel­band and I was thrilled to be there in per­son. I’ve since learnt that Pam­beri is a Por­tuguese word mean­ing for­ward—as in progress, at­tain­ment, and growth.

Sev­er­al vis­its lat­er, I no­ticed the steel­band’s lo­go of three stand­ing fig­ures, hold­ing hands stretched up­right. I re­mem­bered the mean­ing of the word “pam­beri” and thought it goes well with the mes­sage con­veyed by the band’s lo­go—striv­ing for ex­cel­lence and uni­ty.

From the nat­ur­al light­ing from the open air, cou­pled with the bright street­lights, I could see the fo­cused faces of the pan play­ers, drum­sticks in hand, “beat­ing pan” with the pre­ci­sion and ex­per­tise of pro­fes­sion­al mu­si­cians. Their bod­ies, re­laxed and lim­ber, swayed rhyth­mi­cal­ly, then, at times, erupt­ed ex­u­ber­ant­ly in dance with­in the con­fines of their space to the sweet per­cus­sion mu­sic they were pro­duc­ing.

These were not er­rat­ic move­ments, but rather what ap­peared to be chore­o­graphed move­ments at cer­tain parts of the tune (those parts be­ing cues). I got a kick when, again in uni­son, and by cue, they bent over their pans as though they were hug­ging them, and this was while they were play­ing! What co­or­di­na­tion, I thought!

I had no idea what tune was be­ing played, but I soon got a feel for what could be the cho­rus, and I liked it. I lat­er learnt it was Too Own Way, Pam­beri’s tune of choice for Panora­ma 2025, by Voice (Aaron St Louis). It was the first time I heard the tune and im­me­di­ate­ly thought it sound­ed like a present-day ver­sion of Mighty Spar­row’s Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly from 1972.

I went to Pam­beri’s pa­n­yard at least twice a week and en­joyed every minute of our steel­pan, a na­tion­al trea­sure and the on­ly acoustic in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry. I was amazed at how well the French­man Wiren was “beat­ing’ pan–the ver­sa­tile dou­ble sec­onds, al­so known as the al­to pan. Its wider spread of chords than the tenor makes it re­al­ly good for har­mon­is­ing. Olivi­er’s wife and daugh­ter would look on in ad­mi­ra­tion.

I got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to some pan­nists dur­ing breaks and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised when I ar­rived at the pa­n­yard and got a nod of fa­mil­iar­i­ty from a num­ber of them.

I looked for­ward to these trips and my fledg­ling ac­quain­tance with Pam­beri. I met arranger An­dre White and drill mas­ter Akua Lei­th, both of whom sport long, beau­ti­ful dread­locks. Each has an im­pres­sive mu­si­cal back­ground and train­ing.

An ac­com­plished jazz soloist, White stud­ied mu­sic at the Berklee School of Mu­sic in Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts. At age 22, he was able to add steel­band ar­rang­ing to his re­sume. Born in New York of Ja­maican her­itage, White, at age six, start­ed play­ing the steel­pan with the fam­i­ly-based band, Adlibs Steel Or­ches­tra of Long Is­land, New York, and grew up with the band. Since 2006, he has arranged for Adlibs, win­ning the Brook­lyn Panora­ma in 2008, 2011, and 2012.

The judg­ing for the medi­um band pre­lim­i­nar­ies (East) on Feb­ru­ary 5 took place at a bas­ket­ball court­yard with­in dis­tance from Pam­beri’s pa­n­yard in San Juan. Dur­ing their ren­di­tions of Voice’s Too Own Way, while wait­ing for the judges to ar­rive, I won­dered … “Did I just hear the cho­rus of Spar­row’s Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly spliced in?”

Arranger White was stand­ing by him­self for what would be just a few sec­onds as he was very busy, and I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dash over and ask him. I had not mis­heard. White had spliced in a piece of Spar­row’s ca­lyp­so. I thought how cre­ative and al­so fit­ting – Drunk and Dis­or­der­ly/Too Own Way. White smiled non­cha­lant­ly at my amaze­ment. For him, it was part of be­ing an arranger and all in a day’s work.

The judges ar­rived min­utes past mid­night (Feb­ru­ary 6), a tes­ti­mo­ny to the many pa­n­yards of medi­um-size steel­bands they had to vis­it, and Pam­beri may not have been their last stop. It was amaz­ing how fans were not both­ered by the long wait, and hard­ly any­one left.

Spir­its re­mained high as Pam­beri prac­tised their tune in its en­tire­ty many times as if per­form­ing for the judges, with Lei­th and White in­struct­ing and giv­ing feed­back. We were en­ter­tained right through.

As they prac­tised, await­ing the ar­rival of the judges, I was cap­ti­vat­ed by the pan­nist in the front row play­ing a red pan. He was per­form­ing some amus­ing an­tics with the pan­nist to his left, much to the de­light of the crowd, with­out ei­ther of them miss­ing a beat on theirs pans. That, I thought, as oth­ers per­haps did, called for re­mark­able eye/hand co­or­di­na­tion and tim­ing. I learnt af­ter that he is An­dre’s broth­er, Je­lani Ciel­to.

Pam­beri placed third in the pre­lim­i­nar­ies on Feb­ru­ary 5; fourth in the semi­fi­nals on Feb­ru­ary 16 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah; and tied for third in the fi­nals with NGC Cou­va Joy­lan­ders on Feb­ru­ary 23 at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in To­ba­go.

Full of en­er­gy, dri­ve and de­ter­mi­na­tion to get that per­fect sound from Pam­beri’s pan­nists was drill mas­ter Lei­th. A Ful­bright Fel­low, he pur­sued an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in Mu­si­cal Arts from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, lat­er earn­ing a grad­u­ate de­gree–Mas­ter of Mu­sic in Con­duct­ing with a fo­cus on Steel­pan Per­for­mance–from North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty in Dekalb, Illi­nois.

In 2022, Lei­th re­turned to T&T and co-found­ed the Mu­si­cal In­stru­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MITTCO) lo­cat­ed in Diego Mar­tin. An ar­ti­cle in the Dai­ly Ex­press in Au­gust 2024, ti­tled “Forged from the Love of Steel,” was a mov­ing piece on how MITTCO was born out of his un­shake­able and un­fal­ter­ing love for the steel­pan. He is cur­rent­ly the com­pa­ny’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor. He has been a mu­si­cal di­rec­tor and com­pos­er for a num­ber of steel­bands.

In true pa­n­yard ‘junkie’ style, I was at the semi­fi­nals for medi­um and large steel­bands on Feb­ru­ary 16 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, in which Pam­beri placed fourth. The night be­fore, my friend and I took in the start of the semi­fi­nals ex­cite­ment by vis­it­ing the Sa­van­nah.

The en­er­gy and en­thu­si­asm were pal­pa­ble as steel­bands ar­rived and set up, and those that had al­ready set up start­ed prac­tis­ing. Peo­ple gath­ered around them, clap­ping and show­ing their sup­port in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion the next day. The aro­ma from the ar­ray of foods on sale filled the air and made me hun­gry.

My pa­n­yard hop­ping in Port-of-Spain and its en­vi­rons in­clud­ed Shell In­vaders on Tragerete Road; High­landers on East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille; Phoenix in Bel­mont; Rene­gades on up­per Char­lotte Street; Phase II Pan Grove in Wood­brook; and Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars, al­so on Tra­garete Road. While not all these vis­its had a full con­tin­gent of pan­nists prac­tis­ing, what I saw im­pressed me–the ver­sa­til­i­ty and pride of the steel­band play­ers and how in sync they were with their re­spec­tive arranger and drill mas­ter.

I ad­mired the well-main­tained and spa­cious pa­n­yards and the at­trac­tive sig­nage.

I was not aware un­til I read a Feb­ru­ary 16/25 news­pa­per ar­ti­cle that a fast-grow­ing seg­ment of for­eign­ers were com­ing to T&T specif­i­cal­ly to play the steel­pan and, of course, to take in Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

Pam­beri has two such for­eign­ers that I know of, and for whom this year’s vis­it was one of many to the is­land. One was French­man Olivi­er, ref­er­enced at the be­gin­ning of this writ­ing; the oth­er was a love­ly Japan­ese la­dy with whom I got a pho­to. For a num­ber of years, she has been com­ing from Japan to play with Pam­beri.

By the way, I al­so got a pho­to with Voice (Aaron St Louis) at the pre­lim­i­nar­ies. He gave a short and touch­ing speech about how ho­n­oured he was that Pam­beri had cho­sen his song, Too Own Way, for this year’s Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion. Three large steel­bands - Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, Nu­trien Sil­ver Stars, and NL­CB Fon­claire played Too Own Way. Ex­o­dus even­tu­al­ly won the large band ti­tle.

As we chat­ted, Voice told me his stage name has bib­li­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

I can eas­i­ly say that Pan Trin­ba­go’s theme for 2025, Steel­pan Fuh So! Un­leash D’ Pow­er, res­onat­ed with me. I had my fill of steel­pan fuh so! Our pan­men and women do not hold back! They are un­leash­ing d’ pow­er! And I’m ever so proud to be a Tri­ni!