LOCAL T&T STEELBAND NEWS

FRONT   Page EVENTS 2000   Page

EIGHT conventional steel orchestras will face the judges at the Jean Pierre Complex from 8 pm tonight each vying to be one of eight qualifiers going through to Saturday's final.

Tonight's line-up includes the band that dominated the preliminary round, PANch 2000 of Switzerland.

Predictions from local experts, however, place either Exodus or Defence Force Steel Orchestra wresting the lead out of the hands of the Swiss.

Pan Trinbago has assured an early start to tonight's proceedings following a week of postponements and late starts.

Even before the orchestras begin to play, the Single Pan Bands will face the judges in the second preliminary round of that category of competition. Performing tonight are Marsicans, Scrunters Pan Groove, Laventille Serenaders [R1 - See Note 1] The order of appearance for tonight's Orchestral semi-final is as follows.

1 - Solo Pan Knights
2 - Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force
3 - TCL Group Skiffle Bunch
4 - Our Boys Steel Orchestra
5 - Parry's Pan School
6 - PANch 2000
7 - Northern Illinois University
8 - CASYM

Tonight, conventional bands are not required to perform Rudy Wells' Test Piece, Dawn of the Millennium.

WHEN THE second set of three Single Pan Bands perform at the World Steelband Music Festival (WSMF) tonight, at the Jean Pierre Complex, Port-of-Spain a winner will be declared.

Last night's semi-final round of competition in the conventional category at the same venue – the first of two with the other taking place tonight – has been merged with pan-round-neck final as only six local bands qualified for this class which attracted no foreign entrants.

Dem Boys of Tobago performed last night. They were followed by La Romain Super Vibes and Trinidad Nostalgic. Tonight's contest features defending champion Laventille Serenaders [R2 - See Note 1] which will perform in last position after by Marsicans and Scrunters Pan Groove.

Keith Byer, an events co-ordinator on the Cabinet appointed WSMF committee said
  "Without foreign entrants in this division only six local Single Pan Bands were listed to play."
  "Since these bands are only required to perform one song, we felt is would be in our best interest to merge that programme with the orchestra during the semi-final round. It will make for a better programme."

The test piece for conventional bands has been dropped from the competition.

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Photo: [Not shown here: Brent Holder, pan sticks in hand, stoops showing the inner notes of his tenor pan.]
Caption:
THE WORLD'S top steelpan soloist Brent Holder, who represented Solo Pan Knights at the 1998 Festival, will defend his title under the banner of the Ebony Steelband. Holder is now resident in the United Kingdom and also performed with Ebony at last night's semi-final.
PHOTO By GARY CARDINEZ

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Photo: [Not shown here: A front corner of the band Ebony, in their black T-shirts, performing.]
Caption:
LONDON-BASED Ebony Steelband which comprises mainly of Trinidadians made it to round two of the Festival.
PHOTO By SEAN NERO

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Note 1: In the planned Single Pan Bands competition:
Laventille Serenaders - 1998PB-IX, T&T, 1st, 542.0 - From NT zone in Trinidad were unable to attend the show.
[ Return to R1 - R2 ]

LOCAL pan fans remain nervous about the outcome of tonight's semi-final round (the second of two such events), as current leader, PANch 2000, makes its appearance and seeks to hold on to its massive lead at the end of the preliminaries.

PANch, a relatively new band out of Switzerland, who beat local joint-champion Exodus into second place and by a huge 18-point lead, will come up against the Defence Force Steelband.

The playing positions will stretch the excitement, as Defence Force plays in position two, while the other major attention-getter at preliminary level, Northern Illinois University steelband, plays in the penultimate position.

Apart from PANch and Northern Illinois, the other foreign band listed is the youthful CASYM out of New York.

Tonight's show promises to be shorter than the seven-hour marathons that took place last Thursday and Friday nights, after rain forced postponement of Wednesday night's event and the condensation of three night into two.

The controversial test-piece, originally programmed for performance at the semi-final stage, has since been eliminated from this round, reducing the number of tunes to be played by the eight bands to 16.

But there is the addition of two single pan bands, which could push closing time to midnight or beyond.

After the tally from the two nights of semi-finals come in, eight bands will be selected to advance to the orchestra final on Saturday night.

Showtime is 8 pm

“AYE, where allyuh come from, Switzerland? Ah hope allyuh could wine yuh know! If allyuh cyah wine go home one time!”

Maybe it was that most of them didn't understand what the heckler in the stands was shouting, but the Swiss didn't bat an eyelid at the comments.

Except Gary, who sounds too much like a Belmont boy to still be considered a foreigner, who smiled, took off his waist coat, pulled his T-shirt out of his pants and then launched into Boogsie Sharpe's Mind Yuh Business with the rest of the members of the PANch Steel Orchestra.

Minutes later, the heckler is their best fiend.

“Allyuh win!” he exclaims as if he had seen into the future that PANch, by the end of the preliminary, would be at the top of the pile amassing 798 points out of 900, 18 points more than their closest rival, Exodus of St Augustine.

Last weekend, PANch was just another side that had come "from foreign" to somehow compete against the overly confident Trinidadian bands. But, as I entered Starlift Pan Yard on the weekend to check out the competition, it was clear that the Trinidad steel-bands were not as safe as they thought.

There are no steel-band competitions in Switzerland, a fact that PANch captain Martin Grah feels is keeping pan at one level and preventing it achieving the level of respect it deserves.

There are, however, nearly 200 steelbands, most of whom have their own websites, a monthly steelband publication that keeps pan enthusiasts informed about pan events and innovations around the world and countless jazz and steelpan events around the country.

Grah also feels their achievements at the World Steelband Festival 2000 will go a long way to increasing the level of respect for their art.
  “When people hear pan music in Switzerland, they think palm trees, beaches, going on holiday. They do not take this as a serious music with a history and social significance.”

That's why PANch, which was formed last January, is planning to stage workshop sessions to show the Swiss that pan has a much wider scope than being hotel music.

Samuel Baur, PANch's drummer says that steelband is still considered an ‘uptown’ thing in Switzerland.

‘Uptown’ or not, steel-bands are becoming social institutions, nurturing enthusiasts like Baur and creating opportunities for them to pursue careers in music.

Baur, who has been playing drums since the age of ten, first came to Trinidad at age 16 to play with Casablanca, and has also performed at the 1992 and ‘96 editions of the T&T Pan Jazz Festival.

What makes this trip different, is that he is representing his country, as opposed to playing as part of a Trinidadian band.

  “We are so hyped about playing here...we are going to be trying very hard to prove ourselves, especially since we are in the birthplace of the steelpan.”

Captain Grah who shared Baur's excitement at playing in pan's homeland said the fact that the steel-pan is now played in so many parts of the world and people of so many different cultures claim it as their own, does not mean that Trinidad is no longer considered as ‘the Mecca of steelpan music.’
  “The fact that so many of us have spent so much money and invested so much time to come here means that we are all interested in taking pan a lot further.”

Yaira Yonne, one of the few female conductors at the Festival, comes from a completely classical background.
  “Before last year, I didn't even know that such an instrument existed!”

But, she confesses she now prefers the steel to a regular classical orchestra.
  “I didn't expect the sound, and the variations to be so rich, so profound", she says sweating from the unfamiliar humidity and the intense emotion with which she conducts the band.”
  “With pan, you are playing by heart as opposed to the music being in font of you and that completely changes the relationship between the conductor and the musicians.”
  “As conductor it is usually me against them. But pan is a much more personal experience.”
  “Music is supposed to be about communication, pan is real music.”

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Photo: [Not shown here: Performing their calypso and displaying the smile on their T-shirts; a close view of two members. The lady in expressive emphasis to a phrase, the young man hard at play... in the next 1000 words…]
Caption:
MEMBERS OF the PANch Steel Orchestra enjoying their music.
PHOTO By DAVID WEARS

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MEMBERS of the CASYM Steel Orchestra of Brooklyn, New York, heads into tonight's second semi-final round of competition at the World Steel-band Music Festival with what they believe is a disadvantage.

The band, which is staying at the Cascadia Hotel, St Ann's, was informed by the hotel's management on Monday that they could not rehearse beyond 9 pm on any night. They also were told by security officers any attempt to play or tune their pans would result in them being reported to and possibly arrested by the police.

Bernice Moses, executive secretary of CASYM, told the Guardian, hotel manager Barry Bidassie told band members other guests at the hotel had complained of the noise and therefore he had no choice but to limit their rehearsal time.
  "This is totally ridiculous that CariCom people will say pan music is ‘noise'. We understand the hotel had no alternative, because there are other guests whose comfort they must ensure, but people of the Caribbean rejecting the pan in its birthplace is beyond ridiculous," Moses said.

She added the band members, most of whom are aged between 16 and 19, felt intimidated by the way in which the security officers were treating them.
  "The members of the French band ( Calypsociation ) who also are at the hotel, asked if they could at least tune their instruments and were told ‘no'."
  "In New York, the Quality of Life law allows us to play until 2 am and that is not even the birthplace of the pan," Moses said.

Managing director of Cascadia, Peter Pena, said the hotel was doing all it could to be as accommodating to the pannists, but the other guests had to be given the same consideration.
  "I am very comfortable with what we have done. We want to be accommodating to all bands, but we must seek the interest of all of our guests," Pena said.

TWO visiting steel orchestras, in Trinidad for the current World Steelband Music Festival, say a breakdown in arrangements made by the festival committee has put them at a serious disadvantage, which could affect the rest of their performances.

At the source of their problems are rehearsal spaces at the Cascadia Hotel - the official festival hotel - and the collapse of other arrangements that have left players completely frustrated.

An official of a visiting band has had a tumbler full of water thrown at her from an upper floor of the hotel by an irate guest.

On Monday night, while the French band, Calypsociation, was in the middle of a rehearsal in the Cascadia ballroom, security officials switched off their electrical power.

And yesterday, the band's players and officials were asked to walk down to St Ann's Hospital to pick up their bus, after drivers complained of the perilous road to the hotel.

A kind driver eventually drove up the narrow and winding St Ann's Road to meet them.

However, the players were left without lunch and forced to resort to fast food.

William Jones, co-director of the Caribbean American Sports and Cultural Youth Movement, CASYM, reported similar difficulties.

Jones said the hotel's security guards also stopped his band's rehearsals on Monday night, after earlier assurances that such a thing would not happen.

The guards, Jones said, were threatened with dismissal, if they failed to get the band, which largely comprises children, to stop playing.

  "When we came here we were told we would be allowed to use the facility for rehearsals," Jones said. "Suddenly, after being shifted from one location to another, they have now imposed a 9 pm curfew."

But Cascadia officials yesterday argued it was CASYM that was being unreasonable.

Speaking to the Daily Express, Cascadia general manager Peter Pena said: "I'm sure you will appreciate that we can't offer unlimited rehearsal time if other guests are complaining. It is because of the guest complaints we have had to put a limit of 9 pm There is no restriction on daylight rehearsals. They can practise from 8 am I don't think we're being unreasonable."
  "We have a case in point, a letter from a guest who was here from St Maarten, for the Lupus Conference," Pena said. "The lady wrote us a letter saying she did not enjoy her stay because of six consecutive nights of noise into the late hours, so I could not get my required rest. As much as we love having the bands here, we also have our guests' interests to protect. We did not stop them from playing all night, until we began to receive complaints."

PANNISTS, lovers of the music and successive governments must either have been hearing impaired since the 1950's, or sleeping so soundly over the same period, that the extraordinary events which occurred in the steelband world over the past week could be so easily defined as a mere ‘wake up call’.

It might also be that Trinis had deluded themselves for so long with homespun romanticism about global pan superiority, that the shock of being beaten at their own game has resulted in sudden but severe mental disorientation.

But just how much of a racket did the world really have to kick up, to rouse the pan giant from this super-slumber? Why did a whole nation spend so much time developing childish conspiracies about who was trying to steal pan from the land of its birth?

Well, the Japanese, historically our number one suspect, were not even here in threatening numbers. Had they come and brought the likes of super-pannist Yan Tomita, there might have been even greater cause for alarm.

In fact, the only 'operative' from The Land of the Rising Sun that I met, Su Su Mu, had flown here at personal expense and paid more of his own money to attend the International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan.

Trini pannists were, meanwhile, saying that the cost of the conference was prohibitive, some even suggesting that it should have been held at a less expensive venue, perhaps a place commensurate with their view of the value of the instrument and its music.

Among those who condescended to hear what the scientists had to say about their precious instrument, several concluded that the presenters were "talking above the heads of the average pannist", as though the conference, a deliberately intellectual forum, should have limited its language parameters to panyard slang.

The World Steelband Festival results at the end of the preliminary round triggered equally peevish and puerile comments. PANch 2000, an unknown band of predominantly white pan musicians had come from Switzerland and whipped our tails fair and square.

Not for want of repeated warning from this column, the first of which appeared in late May, it must have been difficult to take a trouncing from that particular quarter.

Nor was it the only signal to this country that it should do something to secure and then capitalise on early gains scored by the invention of the instrument and the reverence in which the world held home-grown players.

Instead of decoding the semaphore of steelband flags, those in a position to do something about the plight of pan, responded by patting the flag-woman's bottom instead.

Now, desperately looking for a loophole, Trinis said that PANch's interpretation of Len Boogsie Sharpe's calypso Mind Yuh Business was not really calypso at all, presumably because it was not driven by the clichéd conga and cowbell combination to which we had all become addicted over the years.

 

ALL that has happened, of course, is that these twin-developments, are being seen as a reversal of fortunes, causing pan to finally take a peek in its rear-view mirror; after decades of tunnel-vision.

But long before this month Trini pannists should have looked out from the driver's window instead, because the advancing threat it perceived from that rare over-the-shoulder view, did not even embrace the competition that had already drawn alongside, or those international players who had earlier streaked past in the fast-lane.

All this occurred against a commonality of Central Government inertia. In 1963, the government led by Dr Eric Williams invented the dinosaur that is our annual Panorama competition, without the foresight to identify problems that would inevitably result when its primary motive was no longer relevant.

The government of ANR Robinson in 1990 promised millions for pan research and development, but never came up with the cash.

The Patrick Manning administration accorded pan the title of National Musical Instrument in 1993 but did nothing else and the current administration actually opened a pan factory with much pomp, then left the drums to rot.

Nor did it begin there. Have you ever noticed how in a country of such diversity of culture, we have always had a Ministry of 'Something' and Culture? Could it be that the major consideration was never the development of indigenous art?

Did you know that in 1996, we sat idly at home, declining a proper invitation, when some [of] the biggest steel manufacturers in North America met in Pittsburgh to discuss pan metallurgy?

Let's go on. Did you know that the Japanese held a Panorama competition earlier this year in Ito City? Or that there was an online contest for computer-generated musical arrangements?

Or that there were well-attended pan festivals in Sweden and Switzerland last summer. Or, for that matter, that the national Dutch Police Steel Orchestra is a fully amplified eight-member band, its electronics having been supplied by the prestigious Bose sound company?

Instead, we are spending time squabbling over who invented pan, a product of social circumstances, not unlike small-goal football. These are the things that continue to engage our priority considerations.

Instead of attempting to shoot the messengers, let us be grateful for the opportunity to look in the mirror and thank God that even that was supplied by foreigners.

"GET OFF drugs and get on pan." Those were the words of pan-lover and tenor player, Michael Toussaint, of the BWIA Ebony Steelband, one of the foreign bands competing in the World Steelband 2000.

In an era when pan has been adopted by many countries all over the world, what makes Toussaint exceptional? He's blind.

At age five, while his friends were playing football, he was "getting in the way" of the panmen of Starland Panyard, of Techier Village Point Fortin. Toussaint's father, a Shell employee, took on the task of supplying the band with the empty steel drums.

Toussaint not only made himself known, but heard. The band members soon realised that he had natural talent.

Toussaint as he practises with the BWIA Ebony Steel Band. To his left is co-member, Anne Rogers of London.

PHOTO By: [Un-attributed] Page 23 © EXPRESS

He attended the Point Fortin Intermediate RC School for ten years. The school housed both primary and secondary school students. Toussaint recalls rushing home from school so he could practise. While others had a cat or dog he had his "beloved pet" – a pan.

On leaving school he began playing full-time with the Dunlop Tornadoes Steel Orchestra. During the time he played with them, they won both 1985 and 2000 South Zone Championship. Toussaint also plays the trumpet, drums and the trombone.

“I still think that tomorrow I'll wake up and be able to see”

As a First Lieutenant with the Saint Anthony's Catholic Church Brigade, he played trumpet for the Church's march past. He eventually decided to teaching, not pan, but marching, at Primary schools all over South East Trinidad.

"With much success," he added "My team always won."

At age 25 he was diagnosed with a mild cataract infection. Doctors were baffled that he had developed cataract at such an early age. Cataract is the clouding or opacity of the crystalline lens or capsules at the back of the eye. Cataracts occur in diabetics; people who have suffered a blow (traumatic cataract); with the ageing process; or from birth (congenital cataract).

None of these provided an explanation for Toussaint's case. He had been asthmatic as a child. But, he had been told by a doctor that his "asthma had no relevance to their discovery of the cataracts". At that time, the medical professionals believed that a cataract had to "ripen" before it could be removed.

Two years later he was totally blind. He had been operated on by doctors of the San Fernando General Hospital. Toussaint still believes that he was done an injustice and was never given an explanation as to what had gone wrong.

At the time, he was living with his then girlfriend and his two sons, Brendan and Bevon. After the operation, he moved back to his mother's home at Fanny Village, where he said he spent five years grieving. His brothers and sisters were very supportive and understanding about both his predicament and his need to be alone.
  "And during that period," he said. "I had felt alone, despite the love and nurturing of my mother, Mavis, and my faith in God.
  "What bothered me most was the thought of the world as now just a big black hole. But being from a religious family, I tried to hold on to my faith," he said, "I still think that tomorrow I'll wake up and be able to see."

In 1988 he travelled to London to get a second opinion. The optometrist there told him there was nothing that could be done. Toussaint remembers the doctor saying, "The butchers in Trinidad have messed up your eyes. Go back home and do what you do best. Don't waste your life."

Toussaint came back home.

"I decided then that I was going to be the first blind pannist in the world. It was a challenge," he said. Up to now, he says he only knows of one other blind pannist.

He eventually took up residence in London, got married and began playing for the BWIA Ebony Steel Band. He has been playing with them for 11 years.

This however, has not stopped him from coming to Trinidad every year to compete in Panorama.

He is treated with love and respect by the other Ebony members. The most typical reaction he has received from people and other pan players was astonishment, never negativity.

His wife, Sheila, who he met in London, was excited about his joining the London based band. There was a natural camaraderie between he and his pannist friends as he sat at the bar of The Cove (where the band is based during their stay in Trinidad) while being interviewed.

Despite his traumatic experience he said that he has and always will, love Trinidad. "We gave the world the musical instrument of the new millennium," he said.

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Photo: [Not shown here: A speaking Toussaint wearing dark sun-shades.]
Caption:
A TOTALLY relaxed Toussaint as he talks about his love for pan and Trinidad.
PHOTO By: ANDREA De SILVA

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CULTURE MINISTER Dr Daphne Phillips on Sunday described the staging of the first International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan - ICSTS - as testimony to the fact that "our national instrument is no longer a novelty."
  She added: "It is certainly recognised universally and accepted and valued in several countries and on each continent of the world."
  "To the pan pioneers who are alive today, and who undertook that early struggle that has culminated in this universal recognition, this day must be one of extreme pride."
  "The steelpan has transcended many barriers to its ascendancy to the status of being our national instrument. It has overcome the barrier of gender, for it is no longer male dominated. It has also transcended the barriers of religion, of class, of ethnicity and the barrier of the stigma associated with the underprivileged birth."

Speaking at the launch of the Conference at the Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Minister Phillips said it was a wonderful day for pan.

She reflected on the World Steelband Music Festival currently in progress which began on October 9th and continues, until October 21st, overlapping the conference "in a planned coincidence of exposition of both the practical musical dexterity of the pan as an instrument, as well as the theoretical and scientific constructs which underlie its magnanimity."
  "Trinidad and Tobago is currently a beehive of activity," she said as pan takes centre stage in its homeland in activities which have brought the world together here to marvel at the capabilities and possibilities of this simple instrument. It is an instrument created out of the despair and frustration of urban disenfranchised youth struggling, against the colonialism of that day. "The steelpan can be seen as an instrument of cultural creativity in the construction of identities. In a sense, it is an instrument that represents transition, where cultural expressions of ancient civilisations can find new breath in this 20th century instrument where the old, the classical, the oriental, the European, can all be transformed through our metallic percussive steelpan."

FELIX ROHNER of Panart pan company in Bern, Switzerland, shipped an entire range of steelpan instruments which he has branded the Ping and Pang for [demonstration at] the International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan.

 
Image courtesay Panart: http://www.panart.ch/images/pang.gif - 96k
Reprocessed by www.seetobago.org to: pang1.jpg - 30k
Panart web: http://www.panart.ch

 Sticks in focus  at pan talks

© EXPRESS - Wednesday 18th October, 2000 - Page 12
International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan
By TERRY JOSEPH

DAY TWO of the First International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan - ICSTS, addressed some of the ancillary components of the orchestra, paid tribute to master-tuner Bertie Marshall, and saw the work of Switzerland's Felix Rohner.

The conference, which enters its third and final day today, is being held at Crowne Plaza in Port of Spain and was convened by Dr Anthony Achong and a team of professional colleagues from the University of the West Indies, including Dr Derek Gay. It is co-sponsored by the National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology - NIHERST, and Pan Trinbago.

Apart from Achong, Dr Derek Gay, Fasil Muddeen and Dr Brian Copeland of UWI [University of the West Indies]; yesterday's list of presenters included Professor Thomas Rossing, Head of the Physics Department of Northern Illinois University; Uwe J Hansen, Dept of Physics, Indiana State University; and Felix Rohner of Panart in Switzerland who, during his presentation, complained about media coverage.

Yesterday's session opened with Achong's presentation on the pan stick, its properties and impact. His investigation included explanations of the static and dynamic properties of the rubber material used at the point of contact, the effects of arm action during impact and effects of temperature on the stick.

Achong also narrated a special paper on a lifetime of work by Marshall, hailed as one of the greatest pan tuners in the instrument's history.

Later, he looked at a band's rhythm section, also called The Engine Room, as part of an interactive talk session.

Gay dealt with steel drum specifications, detailing some of the progress made by investigators into the metallurgy and manufacture. He also looked at the various drum types that are currently available to the steel-pan industry and shared specifications and regulations concerning that aspect of the steelpan science.

Panart's Rohner, assisted by Sabina Scharer of Panart in Switzerland, held workshops to demonstrate his Ping, Pang and Peng range of pans, inviting participants to join in the demonstrations. Rohner spoke of new materials being experimented with by Panart's engineers and tuners.
  Scharer explained the process of hardening steel by nitriding, a process known for more than 80 years, but only just being used in pan manufacture.
  Panart also showed their new raw-form, which seeks to replace the traditional 55-gallon drum as feed-stock for pan tuners and a systematical tuning process for steelpans.

The conference ends today, but not before discussion on note dynamics, note geometry's and spectra, and the steelpan orchestra in the morning session.

The post-lunch period will see a number of workshops; and a panel discussion will close the evening at 4 pm

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Photo: [Not shown here: Remy, baton wide, displays crouched spring-board vitality in conducting an apparently youthful front section of Invaders.]
Caption:
CONDUCTOR Jeannie Remy takes BWIA Invaders through their performance during the preliminary of the World Steelband Festival at the Jean Pierre Complex last week.
PHOTO By: ROBERTO CODALLO

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YESTERDAY, I read my friend Terry Joseph's report on the steelband conference headlined Steelpan scholars stun local tuners with decidedly mixed feelings. The first day of the First International Conference on the Science and Technology of the Steelpan provided further evidence, if any was needed, that the instrument had gripped the interest of people outside of Trinidad and that it was not blind jingoism that has led people like Terry and myself to insist on both its validity and its value.

If I seem to be harping on this point, it is because I keep thinking that the instrument and the people in it are undervalued here, not simply in the way that children who have a Julie mango tree in their yard come to either disdain or take the fruit for granted, but in the way that this country, or more accurately the tribe that invented it, has of somehow always trivialising and, indeed, negating its own genius.

It is an attitude, I make bold to submit, that has profoundly influenced the national condition as reflected in the way that we so readily give approbation to all things outside to the point of mimicry, even as we downgrade our own efforts as if God, in whatever the religious incarnation, has not given us our own share of what Lloyd Best has called "native wit and imagination".

It is a troubling truth, in that if this seminal insecurity, for this is what it is, is not arrested, it seems to me that our prospects are limited, if not doomed, to appropriating technologies and concepts which, while appropriate for the countries and the cultures for which they were conceived may not be appropriate for us, leading generation after generation tilting at windmills or, perhaps more appropriately, spinning top in the thickest of mang muds.

In his report, Joseph went on at some length about the body of research work on the pan presented by a number of engineering scholars, who had come here for precisely that purpose, their work leaving "veteran tuners in awe" and leading Fazal Moosh Mohammed vowing to go "back to his El Dorado Senior Comprehensive School to press for a closer alliance between the music teachers and his physics lab", Moosh making the point that "this is what should have been taking place all the while and at least from the high school level".

Joseph writes further:

"The brunt of local research has been going on at UWI, thanks to the determination of Dr Andrew Achong, Dr Derek Gay and others attached to the engineering and natural sciences departments; many of whom pursue their experiments at their personal expense."

Now, in the 30 years or so that I have been around pan, so to speak, I have been aware of the efforts by UWI personnel to come to scientific grip with this instrument which, precisely because it has been fashioned through trial and error by remarkable artists/artisans, continues, after more than 60 years, to be still a work in progress. Indeed, I have been privy to some of the discussions and experimentation between UWI scientists and Bertie Marshall and his associate tuners when he lived in Laventille, the band Hilanders being the hub around which much of the community life revolved.

So in the same way that I am grateful to Dr Achong, his UWI colleagues, NIHERST [The National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology] and Pan Trinbago for making the present conference possible, I am also grateful to these men who gave of their brains and their time to the development of the instrument. But I am painfully aware that "pan" was not their real work, if you know what I mean, and that funding would have been necessary to really spur the development to the point where, today, we would be passing on the thinking on pan to our foreign friends or, at least, meeting them as equals rather than having them come here and "wining" over us with what after all was, originally, our thing.

I want to enter a word of caution here: It is not that I believe we have any patent on long-term pan development. It is not that I am not aware that science advances through the exchange of ideas across countries and across cultures. It is not, also, that I have ever entertained the ludicrous idea that you have to be a Trinidadian either to beat pan or to be the best at it. What beats me is the blindness, or perhaps deafness of the people whom we have chosen to lead us, beginning with Dr Williams, the father of the nation, who never saw the need in his development plans to put pan as a priority; who, British Oxonian that he was, never believed enough in the creative ability of the black poor whose cause he set out to champion, certainly not enough in the cause in question, to invest either through UWI, John D, a combination of the two, or otherwise, enough of the people's millions to develop the theory, the technology, the sociology, the whatever, to advance not only the instrument but the communities from which they came.

Look, I am not blaming Dr Williams. Anti-Colonial though he assuredly was, he was, most assuredly, a product and, as such, a prisoner of the colonial times.

What I am here suggesting is that all of the leadership that followed him remain as much a prisoner and that the truth of this lies not only in the short shrift given to the marvel of native wit and imagination that is pan (how come the seeking out of the complexities of the steelpan is not at the heart of the scientific culture at the St Augustine campus?) but in the way that both the public and the private sectors have not had the foresight to latch on to the creative impulses that have come from below (why the importing and upgrading of the pizza idea and not the upgrading and exporting of the "doubles"?)

Who do they think, I ask you, were at the base of the Industrial Revolution that changed for all time the history that was Britain's and, for some time, ours?

© 2000: tobagojo@trinidad.net - 20001103 Last Update: 07 November 2000 00:00:00 Processed by: Jeremy G de Barry

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