David Cuffy

"With the in­flux of the new gen­er­a­tion and its cul­ture, the time has come for lead­ers and man­agers of steel­bands to re­vis­it their ap­proach to man­age­ment in or­der to progress in the new mil­len­ni­um," said Michael Din­chong, man­ag­er of Caribbean Air­lines Ltd In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra.

Din­chong was speak­ing dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled Steel­band Man­age­ment in the 21st Cen­tu­ry: Man­ag­ing The App Gen­er­a­tion de­liv­ered at a sym­po­sium at the Cen­tu­ry ball­room, Queen's Park Oval, Wood­brook, on Mon­day.

Ti­tled T&T Steel­bands: The Way For­ward, the event formed part of the week-long cel­e­bra­tions in ob­ser­vance of the Wood­brook-based steel or­ches­tra's 75th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions.

The gen­er­a­tions of pan, he opined, were: first (1930s�1950s), sec­ond (1960s�1980s), and third (1990s�2010) (the app gen­er­a­tion).

"Not many or­gan­i­sa­tions com­prise mem­bers whose ages span three gen­er­a­tions," he said.

"This, in it­self, adds to the al­ready com­plex chal­lenge of group man­age­ment. The dy­nam­ics that take place in an av­er­age group be­come more in­tri­cate where there ex­ists sub-groups as in the case of most steel­bands in T&T. These sub-groups bring with them sub-cul­tures that could cause a dishar­mo­ny in bands if not man­aged ap­pro­pri­ate­ly."

He said, ac­cord­ing to Howard Gard­ner and Katie Davis (2014), mem­bers of the app gen­er­a­tion have been sur­round­ed and im­mersed to an un­prece­dent­ed de­gree by tech­nol­o­gy – lap­tops, tablets, smart phones and ex­pects that every as­pect of life would be quick, ef­fi­cient, stream­lined and avail­able im­me­di­ate­ly on de­mand. He added: "They will tell you what to do, how to do it and, at least im­plic­it­ly, how you should feel about it and how you should feel about your­self.

"Whilst it might be de­bat­able whether the mem­bers of the third gen­er­a­tion of pan con­sti­tute a large por­tion of the pan play­ers in the coun­try or not, it def­i­nite­ly can­not be de­nied, how­ev­er, that the fu­ture of the steel­bands de­pends on this gen­er­a­tion."

What then, he asked, was in place to en­sure the smooth tran­si­tion of pow­er?

"First we have to en­sure that what we have to of­fer would be en­tic­ing enough to re­tain these play­ers," he con­tend­ed.

"Man­age­ment of the day has to con­sid­er what we have to of­fer in or­der to re­cruit and re­tain these mem­bers. The ques­tion, there­fore, is whether the cul­ture of the app gen­er­a­tion is com­pat­i­ble with that of the ex­ist­ing cul­ture of steel­bands."

He added: "A cul­ture that in­cludes week­ly prac­tice ses­sions with no guar­an­teed reg­u­lar per­for­mances, long nights of prac­tice to learn one eight-minute tune that may on­ly be played once be­fore a lim­it­ed au­di­ence, pan shows that go on for hours and pay­ments for per­for­mances that are not guar­an­teed to be paid on time.

"If one ex­am­ines these com­mon oc­cur­rences in the sys­tem in re­la­tion to the ex­pec­ta­tions of the app gen­er­a­tion, you would see that there is an ob­vi­ous mis­align­ment.

"This cul­ture, there­fore, can hard­ly ex­pect to at­tract and re­tain play­ers.

"Man­age­ment, there­fore, needs to re­think how they op­er­ate at present to de­ter­mine if the poli­cies and ethos of their or­gan­i­sa­tions lend them­selves to re­cruit­ment and re­ten­tion of play­ers or if they in­deed do the op­po­site," he added.