All of three years ago, I proposed the development of a framework for identifying Panorama character typologies in order to better understand responses to the judging of steelpan competitions.
This includes an ability to attend a pan event, not listen to full presentations and yet brand the panel of judges shameless “bootlickers” and “mafia.”
There is even talk of judges meeting bands for free t-shirts and other “personal favours” in exchange for points at secret meetings late at night at the Peschier Cemetery in the Savannah.
A fella from San Juan said he once witnessed the entire thing and recorded it but concedes nobody will believe him, as these days it is possible to see something with your own two eyes … and it never happen.
Meanwhile, nobody is calling names, but talk has it one of the judges is related to an obeah woman in Les Coteaux and has a family tree traceable to Gang Gang Sara and her West African village that spread generations of genetically predisposed criminals globally.
“Hecky,” the Tobagonian journalist, swears that under the silk cotton tree at Golden Lane lies evidence of this. He once advocated for whitewashing of the trunk of the tree to ward off malignant spirits. Some people swear they have recently begun seeing the whitewash late at night when the moon stands at a particular angle but by early morning, it’s gone.
One member of the infamous “Hotspot Tourists” clan even claims to have recordings and witnesses with sworn testimonies. “Hotspot Tourists” include pan crawlers who hire maxi taxis to take them to panyards in areas they’d usually avoid. Sometimes they don’t recall where they’d been but become supreme authorities on “syncopation” and “polyharmonies.”
They only comprise one per cent of all pan competition attendees. But they pull all the strings. They are the ones who make the beer and the booze pass.
Meanwhile, “How? How? How?” goes the refrain when the results land after a lengthy North Stand experience covering six cases of beer, at least a dozen bottles of rum, curry mango, pineapple chow, peanut fudge, tooloom, pigfoot souse, barbeque chicken, and two pots of pelau.
“What’s that bothersome noise coming from that stage over there?”
So, yes, the “Hotspot Tourists” – the “eat-a-food elite” - were at it again at the medium and large band semifinals this year. Bellies full, and so they - noses browned or reddened by the booze - freely and openly bad-talk the judges.
Not to be denied, the “Grand Standists,” known for an ability to sit quietly and listen to every band, are full of their own, informed views. They are described by people such as Paul as the “first noters” – meaning that they are there to stand for the playing of the national anthem, stay there to the bitter end, have their fair share of educated opinion, and can tell the key in which any song is being played.
They generally stun the “Hotspot” bunch – ridiculing their preference for the backsides of performing bands on the other side of the stage.
Vanda, who possesses “Grand Standists” qualities, walks with a notebook and keeps score. And, yes, she too will be up bright and early the following morning with extensive comments on the performances of both the bands and the judges.
She would typically conclude that the winning band (once not her own) was only “so-so” in quality but that “the judges know best.”
“But so-so gets you very far in today’s world,” she opines.
She is actually a member of the “Panyardists United” bunch – that group that has a strong connection with a single band but makes an attempt to visit panyards and gather intelligence on the techniques being explored by others.
They are not the type to switch bands that easily, even if they cuss the one they support and call on them to adjust their arrangements. “Just fix it,” is typical advice.
And, if their band does not acquire the points they expected, they’re more likely than the others to simply say: “Oh well, wah we go do?”
There are also members of “Pan Music Nostalgia” – the group of old-time pan supporters who yearn for the good old days of “badjohns” and fractured skulls, stick fighters with crooked, broken fingers, drunk men capable of consuming large volumes of canal water without falling ill, and single-octave tenor pans.
They all declare that the old days were much better and while today is good, it’s no more than “so-so” and there should be an attempt to make Panorama great again.
Disclaimer: All characters and events in this column - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional. Santimanitay.
