SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

It’s Steel­pan (pan) Month from Au­gust 1 to 31, and it’s no se­cret that pan had its share of licks, but it has ma­tured and pu­ri­fied to great ex­tents.

His­to­ry re­veals that the de­vel­oped, so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­stru­ment came from deep strug­gles yet played its way in­to Carnegie and Roy­al Al­bert Halls; drew British Roy­al­ty to lo­cal pa­n­yards; be­came a part of Pres­i­dents, Prime Min­is­ters and many oth­er dis­tin­guished in­di­vid­u­als’ life.

In 2012 pan was adopt­ed in Is­rael as a peace-pro­mot­ing tool via the cur­rent­ly-run Peace Drums Project; some high-pro­file in­ter­na­tion­al uni­ver­si­ties’ Mas­ter’s mu­sic pro­grams em­brace pan. Pan cre­ates uni­ty and har­mo­ny. For decades, re­li­gious bod­ies have adopt­ed pan.

Two uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents from In­dia who were do­ing their the­sis on pan in 2006 at a Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra pan work­shop--A Dream Come True, Pan--said “Pan is a mes­meris­ing gift to the world that ei­ther puts you in a trance or in a fren­zy, and what bet­ter place to com­plete it than in its birth­place, T&T.”

On Ju­ly 5 of this year (2022), for the very-first time any an­them was played on pan dur­ing an Olympic medal cer­e­mo­ny. It was T&T’s Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra (NSSO) that did his­toric jus­tice at the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee’s (IOC) Medal Re­al­lo­ca­tion Cer­e­mo­ny, at the Olympic Mu­se­um in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, with their record­ed ver­sion of Forged for the Love of Lib­er­ty.

Mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Akua Lei­th said he ho­n­oured the re­quest of the for­mer pres­i­dent of the TTOC, Bri­an Lewis, and fol­lowed every re­quire­ment laid out by the IOC.

The gold medal was re­al­lo­cat­ed to T&T’s 2008 Bei­jing Olympic men’s 4x100 me­ter re­lay team that ad­vanced from sil­ver ow­ing to the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the for­mer gold medal­lists for an in­frac­tion.

His­to­ry states that pan was in­vent­ed in 1939; T&T first com­pet­ed at Olympics un­der the then-new na­tion­al colours, red, black and white in 1964, two years af­ter gain­ing In­de­pen­dence but de­spite hav­ing won gold in 1976 and 2012, an­thems were played by the tra­di­tion­al wind and string or­ches­tras.

In 1992, T&T’s then Prime Min­is­ter, the late Patrick Man­ning, de­clared pan T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

The nov­el pan-play­ing an­them at Olympics was the brain­child, pro­pos­al and fol­low through of Lewis who said it was an up­hill bat­tle to the ap­proval which hap­pened Jan­u­ary of this year.

The body of the TTOC trade­mark reg­is­tered in 2016 is that of a pan, and the IOC said they “en­cour­age cul­tur­al ex­change and pro­mote the di­ver­si­ty of cul­tures.”

To­day, T&T’s ath­letes are ready­ing them­selves to ful­fill the TTOC’s medal man­date of 10 golds 24 cham­pi­oned by Lewis from 2015. Once T&T achieves gold, the na­tion­al an­them will be heard on pure-bred T&T pan – NSSO-record­ed – and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mar­ket­ed to over “three bil­lion” lis­ten­ing au­di­ence.

Lei­th has played and con­duct­ed tours through­out Eu­rope, Asia, North Amer­i­ca, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. He is a Ful­bright Fel­low and grad­u­at­ed from North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty with a Mas­ters of Mu­sic in Con­duct­ing with em­pha­sis on Steel­pan Per­for­mance. He is al­so a teacher of the steel­pan and di­rec­tor of the steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, MITTCO.

TTOC’s pres­i­dent, Di­ane Hen­der­son, said of her hear­ing the na­tion­al an­them played on pan at the cer­e­mo­ny, “It was sur­re­al…to be a part of this his­toric mo­ment.”