Research Archives
The Steelbands of TT
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Data Base Research Archives The Steelbands of TT |
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| ARCHIVE COPY - 2016 |
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[x] Square brackets delineate and number the end of each page for reference purposes (as appropriate); or enclose [additions/corrections] - eEd. |
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>>SLIDE 2:
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| Introduction: The lyrics of the Mighty Sparrow's tune, “We Kinda Music,” address the powerful and festive spirit of calypso. In this tune, Sparrow identifies three important elements of the genre: its capacity to induce >>“RAMAJAY (slide 3),” its status as an internationally popular musical idiom, and its basis as a shared, or collective, form of Carnival expressivity. |
>>SLIDE 3:
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| In 2014, when the birdsong Steel Orchestra played Andy Narell’s competition arrangement bearing the same title, however, the band did not score well enough to even advance to the final round of the competition - an unequivocal message from the judges: “We Kinda Music” is not for Panorama. >>WHILE (slide 6a, blank slide) many pan people in Trinidad and beyond are outspoken about their love of Narell’s music, many Panorama fans in Trinidad have expressed vehement critiques about his recent tenure as a foreign arranger: This man is out of place trying to impose his experience, wherever it originates on MY cultural experience, this is what WE express, this was born out of our rejection of all things colonial. You must be aware of the political aspect of music because it exists. This thing goes beyond notes and silence. I demand musical independence[,] I refuse to be colonised […] What We have created puts food on his table so [he should] just remain silent and observe.What this blog post (and many like it) forcefully communicates is that: Narell’s kinda music is unequivocally NOT “We Ting.” While these slogans (“We Kinda Music” and “We Ting”) may on the surface appear to embody the same ideological orientation toward the shared expressivity, collective festivity, and ramajay characteristic of the Trinbagonian Carnival arts, in this presentation I suggest that “We Kinda Music” and “We Ting” represent mutually untranslatable truths about the centrality of Trini cultural ownership and authority relative to the Carnival arts, the ambiguous value for musical innovation within the history of Panorama, and the function of competition as a medium of both creativity and control. |
| Calypso, Pan, and Carnival share related histories and, in the mid-20th century, these expressive genres formed the basis for what became a uniquely Trinidadian national identity. Pan, in particular, saliently indexes the tenacious spirit of
creativity at the core of the Carnival arts. Prior to the inception of Panorama in 1963, >>THE BOMB (slide 6b, blank) had been a form of fierce competition between street bands featuring road-march style arrangements of European classical pieces and American popular tunes. These tunes were rehearsed clandestinely both to maximize the impact of the arrangement on the audience and to maintain a strategic advantage over rival bands - to simultaneously overwhelm and delight via the calypso-ization of foreign (yet familiar) musical idioms. But in the wake of independence in 1962, the “Bomb” had been strategically diffused as the new staged and adjudicated competition called Panorama rose in popularity and prestige throughout the 1960s. This was part of a broader strategic move by the post-colonial government to at once usher in a new non-European and distinctly Trini cultural profile via the integration and showcasing of the Carnival arts AND to “clean up” (or clean out) the socially objectionable aspects of Carnival. Panorama was designed to incentivize middle class participation in, and hence ownership of, “We Ting.” |
| First Decade of Panorama - Emergence of the Formula >>SLIDE 7:
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| The first Panorama, which was held during the 1963 Carnival, was organized by the National Association of Trinidad and Tobago Steelbandsmen and the Carnival Development Committee. In addition to the criteria that competition arrangements must utilize current popular calypsos, various additional - yet unofficial - conventions for what judges and audiences expected to hear on the Savannah stage emerged in the first decade of Panorama. The early champion arrangers provided the foundational models that have been closely emulated by subsequent generations of arrangers. The Panorama formula is a rubric that consolidates the compositional devices of many of the early champion arrangers: Tony Williams’s arpeggiated harmonies, contrapuntal passages, and modulations established the “classical” complexity convention, while Bobby Mohammed’s arrangements, which featured rhythm breaks, varying textures, and dramatic dynamic contrasts, cultivated the“excitement” criterion. Earl Rodney demonstrated the ideal “power” of a Panorama tune by exploiting extremely loud volumes, by using lightning fast tempos, syncopated bass lines, minor key variations, and montuno-based jam sections in his winning arrangements. Clive Bradley modeled “clarity” in his winning arrangements by deliberately separating each voice in the band based on range and function and by “elevating” groove through the use of repetitive and layered-interlocking rhythms. Innovators: Throughout the 53-year history of Panorama, the place of innovation, or originality, within the formula has been ambiguous, at best. There exists an unofficial-yet-clear set of expectations for arrangers relative to sounding “We Ting” via their tunes: the appropriate music should be exciting, fresh, clever, energetic, powerful, and overtly “Trini” in spirit, yet not completely or radically original. In a sense, a “winning” arrangement is a conservative and faithful Panorama-style reinterpretation of calypsos that are familiar to the Trini audience. When Ray Holman composed his own tunes “Pan on the Move” (1972) and “Pan on the Run” (1973), his band Starlift fared so poorly both years that he left the band after that season. In Holman’s case, his move toward original content for Panorama was interpreted by calypsonians (namely, Mighty Sparrow), and other arrangers (like Clive Bradley, who’d followed Beverly Griffith as the arranger for Desperadoes) to be a calculated act of selfishness on Holman’s part, a deliberate attack on “We Ting”. Yet, Holman’s own tune innovation has been characterized as a critical response to the virtual decade-long monopoly that calypsonians Sparrow and Kitchener had on producing tunes for Panorama. This calypso-cartel (of sorts) had effectively and drastically limited the repertoire, sound, and style of arrangements for more than the first 10 years of the competition. Holman’s own tune - his own original calypso - enabled him to create and arrange music “suited to his own vision of what a steel band could sound like.”
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| >>OTHER ARRANGERS (slide 9, Winning“Own Tunes”) took up the own tune legacy with greater competitive success than Holman, but it was not until Phase II Pan Groove won with Len “Boogsie” Sharpe’s “This Feelin’ Nice” in 1987 and “Woman is Boss” in 1988 that original music not composed by a calypsonian or soca artist won Panorama. After Boogsie’s success in the 1980s, own tunes were used by arrangers with mixed success (a few wins, some ties, and many 2nd and 3rd place results). Andy Narell is among the arrangers to take up the own tune legacy in recent years and he has done so deliberately and unapologetically, yet with the passion and compulsion of someone possessed by a spirit. As a solo jazz pan player, composer, and international band leader, he’s had significant professional and commercial success. Paradoxically however (or maybe not) his tenure as a Panorama arranger for the birdsong Steel Orchestra consistently resulted in marginal placings for that band during his tenure from 2013-2016. |
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| Pan Pedigree: Andrew “Andy” Narell was born March 18, 1954 in New York City. His father, Murray Narell, was a social worker in Manhattan’s Lower East Side who’d organized and maintained an after school music program for youth in the area that included a small steel band. Andy and his brother Jeff, who is also a prominent contemporary pan composer and performer in the United States and Caribbean, had wanted to play pan like the boys in their father’s program, so they started a family band called the Steel Bandits in 1962. Andy began traveling to and performing in Trinidad in 1966 (12 years old), when he first played at Queen’s Hall for the National Steelband Music Festival. In a 2013 interview, Narell recalls his early impressions of pan in Trinidad: “The steelbands here in Trinidad taught me about discipline, the old steel bands. I walked into the Pan Am North Stars pan yard as a kid in 1966, and 'Tony' Williams lightly tapped on a pan and there was silence in the yard. He spoke softly, and they rehearsed. I still remember that today.” 5A year after this trip, Narell’s father convinced pioneering Trinidadian tuner Elliot “Ellie” Mannette to move to the US to build instruments for his program, which marked the beginning of a life-long close friendship between Andy and Ellie. Mannette would go on to become a part of the “University Settlement” - a collective of “Trinidadian entrepreneurs” in New York City, which included panmen Kim Loy Wong, Vincent Taylor, Ansell Joseph, Rudy King [RIP 18Mar2004] (who is credited as the first to bring pan to US in 1949), and Rudolph Charles [RIP 29Mar1985], all of whom were centrally important to the dissemination of pan in the US via educational institutions in the late 20th century. 6 Narell moved from the east coast to the west in 1970 and studied Jazz Piano Performance and Composition at the University of California at Berkeley. After graduating in 1973, Narell played and recorded for various popular artists and film/television composers, he formed his own record company (Hip Pocket, in 1978), and released his first solo album (Hidden Treasure 1979). From 1981 to 1986 he released several solo albums on pan and he toured Europe and Japan with several other jazz musicians. He also played in Panorama with Jit Samaroo [RIP 07Jan2016] and the Renegades in the late-1980s, which was when he began to study the techniques of the early Panorama champs like Bradley [RIP 26Nov2005], Griffith, and Holman. Narell collaborated with the Our Boys Steel Orchestra in 1990 to produce a music video that was premiered at Panorama the same year 7. The video featured “We Kinda Music,” an original composition from Narell’s 1989 Little Secrets album that also subsequently appeared on the 1991 Pan Progress album released by Our Boys. In 1999, Narell became the first foreigner to arrange for Panorama when he composed the tune “Coffee Street” for Skiffle Bunch [name change 2013] (a champion large band from right here in South) and he followed up his premier by taking the same band to finals again the next year with an arrangement of another of his originals, “Appreciation.” During this Panorama stint, Narell and Skiffle Bunch advanced to Finals both years, placing 8th out of 12 for “Coffee Street” and 12th out of 12 for “Appreciation” in 2000. After this, he took a 10-year hiatus from arranging for Panorama, although he returned to Trinidad several times to perform, notably for another performance at Queen’s Hall with the Trinidad All Stars in 2007. He also worked with Calypso Monarch (1980) Willard “Relator” Harris on the University of Calypso album project in 2011 before resuming his arranging efforts for Panorama in 2013 with the birdsong Steel Orchestra. Although there was much chatter about Andy’s return, the band did not qualify for finals that year and has not since Narell began his relationship with the group more than three years ago.
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>>SLIDE 12:
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 11th-LgSF_20150201_John Schmidt_IMG_9475B_1600w_900h.jpg "birdsong at Panorama Semi Finals 2015, QPS, PoS, Trinidad, TT playing Pan Magic (arr Andy Narell). Placed 11th-LgSF (20150201) by John Schmidt [browser compressed - real size pix = 1600w x 900h]")
 11th-LgSF_20150201_John Schmidt_IMG_9467B_1600w_758h.jpg "birdsong at Panorama Semi Finals 2015, QPS, PoS, Trinidad, TT playing Pan Magic (arr Andy Narell). Placed 11th-LgSF (20150201) by John Schmidt [browser compressed - real size pix = 1600w x 758h]")
| Compositional features: The typical compositional features of Andy’s Panorama arranging style (and in general) include a tendency toward “sweet” sounding jazz-based harmonies and modal figures, cooler tempos, precisely orchestrated groove patterns derived from Caribbean and African dance genres, and pre-composed jazz forms. Another important aspect of Narell’s approach to composition is his tendency to reference or otherwise incorporate Trinidadian cultural elements and musical idioms in his works. A glimpse at his selected discography and Panorama arrangements reflects this. Apart from being played at a slightly downtempo 113 BPM, Narell’s 2014 Panorama arrangement of “We Kinda Music” contains a number of formulaic elements, including the presence of themes presented in standard Bradley-esque melody-harmony-bass textures [clarity element], multiple thematic variation sections, the use of chromaticism in the introduction, coda, and transitional passages [quality of classical complexity], low-pan melody voicings [excitement], and call-and-response figures between pan voices [power criterion]. Oh, AND it is an own tune. There are two elements of this arrangement that, although technically satisfy the Panorama paradigm, represent a drastic reinterpretation of formulaic criteria. As noted in an analysis by Aaron Ziegler (2014), the presence of rhythm breaks in cut-time (where the band drops out but the engine room continues to play, maintaining the consistent pulse structure of the groove) and modulations (of the chromatic and/or direct persuasion) are both important components of winning arrangements. “We Kinda Music” contains both rhythm breaks and modulations, however, Narell liberally reformulates how these are articulated in his arrangement by combining the two ideas. He achieves the “rhythm breaking” in the final two-and-a-half minutes of the nearly 8-minute piece after a metric modulation from cut-time to 6/8. By keeping the 8th-note subdivision constant during this transition, “We Kinda Music” breaks out of the cut-time metric framework of Panorama by shifting smoothly into the slightly displaced compound groove. After this, Narell further plays with the listeners’ sense of time by placing upper voice vamps and mid-voice strums on subordinate pulses before breaking triumphantly into common time … and then modulating imperceptibly back into cut-time for the final restatement of the original thematic content. |
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| The Paradox: “We Kinda Music” not equal to “We Ting” or “We Kinda Music” as [a] critique of “We Ting” Narell was interviewed about “We Kinda Music” a few weeks after Panorama 2014. The interview transcript was published on When Steel Talks (WST) - an online global forum and archive-ofsorts for pan people around the world. Narell’s comments in this interview generated a vigorous discussion that evolved into debates about his role as a foreign arranger, his jazz-based style, >>(slide 14, blog responses), his racial identity and privilege, his age, his credentials and integrity as a composer, the Panorama formula itself, and the “great” arrangers. In this way, the comments in this forum punctuate the dialectic between the “We Kinda Music” and “We Ting” ideologies. In one sense, Narell poses a threat to the stability of Trini proprietorship and authority when it comes to the Panorama tradition (and perhaps to the very idea of tradition itself), which is deeply rooted within Trinbagonian culture. To some, Narell’s style is a biting affront to the purity of the Panorama tradition, a strategic act of war. Not only are some of his critics averse to his musical style, but many find his opinions about current problems plaguing the competition to be irrelevant or otherwise entirely inappropriate, given his status as a cultural outsider. |
>>SLIDE 14:
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From another angle though, what Narell’s kind of music generates appears to be a profoundly musical critique of the “We Ting” ideology: that cultural ownership is a powerful illusion, which - in the case of the Panorama paradigm - might be working against the robust ramajay spirit at the very core of the Trinbagonian Carnival arts. What Narell’s music embodies is the beautifully subversive power of pan jumbie - a force that cannot be contained, controlled, or otherwise colonized. It blindly spreads, like a virus, to those who fully offer themselves over to it, regardless of in-group status or place of origin. “We Kinda Music” is an orientation toward Panorama, not one that values competition as a way to capture the spirit of Trini creativity, but one in which the arranger serves as a dedicated medium for the spirit of Carnival to articulate itself, paradoxically >>>>>sans humanité (slide 16). Thank you. |
>>SLIDE 16:
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Bibliography
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| _'We Kinda Music' is 'Not For Panorama' - The (Paradoxical) Marginalization of Andy Narell (Kayleen Justus, 2016).pdf _'We Kinda Music'_ (presentation slides).pdf Presented at The SEMSEC, UTT, NAPA (SAPA), San Fernando, Trinidad, TT, by Dr. K. Justus, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA; 4th March 2016. |
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© 2016: tobagojo@gmail.com - 20160401 Last Update: 17 March 2018 01:08:00 TT Processed by: Jeremy G de Barry |
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