QUESTION (asked by Anthony Joseph): Do you all think Andy Narell will be successful if he used a full steel orchestra instead of all the top class musicians that he features in his recordings and live performances?

And since GLOBAL PAN MUSIC has been my cry since the first day I came on this forum, it is exciting to see another poster put the key in the vast stairway to getting TRINIDAD PAN PLAYERS and MUSICIANS to GET THE MUSIC OUT THERE.

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  • Deja vu. It seems to me we have this discussion every year. You think perhaps if Helon Francis (what a voice) manages to get a contract or work with a top brass singer/performer, he could help squeeze pan in the recording?  Doh share blows eh fellas, I just saying. How long, how long must we wait for that day? I don't have an answer but when that day reaches, I pushing pan from Toco to Lopinot.

    • I go help yuh push, ah get enough blows already

       ! Hope you all enjoy forum

  • I don't know how the Codrington Pan Family is today,[because of Cary's illness] but they were ready to take Pan to the next level but no one saw their potential.

  • The Panorama blinders block the progress of steelpan music in T&T. Indigisounds has the technology, y'all use it. your goal should be to put a song on BILLBOARD. 4-5 panist with vocals.

  • Anthony Joseph. With all due respect you asked an important question using the name Andy Narell. An already successful pan musician composer, arranger, producer with a slight edge of being white. Now I am no racists. But that is the reality. You are asking if Andy were to use full steel orchestra instead of all top musicians, would he be successful. He is already successful doing both those things. He uses full steel orchestra and he uses top class musicians including top class musicians in T&T like Etiene Charles, Lord Relator (who plays a wicked jazz guitar chords by the way). Plus Andy combines full brass orchestra with full steel orchestra at times as well. Andy is successful at doing these things. Andy once told me in a conversation with him over lunch some years ago, that pan has sent his children to school and right up to college (university) education. He also said that he spends more time, many hours  travelling just to do a 45 minute gig.  The point is he has done it all and continues to do it successfully. 

    The steel pan is a full fledged musical instrument just like any other professional musical instrument. The more we mix it with other musical instruments and play with other advanced instrumentalists, the more the steel pan will be appreciated not just as a Trinidad carnival instrument or not just to be played at Panorama with other pan instruments. Panorama actually is still the lowest of the potentials of pan. It is a cultural thing but it is not meant for commercially making money.  It's an impractical monster only suited at carnival time in T&T and elsewhere it is held. What has to happen really is that advanced musicians of pan must desire to play in all countries of the world with other musicians of other musical instruments. All genres of music can be played by the pan instrument. Another thing which should happen is that pan musicians should be able to play all the pans proficiently right down to the bass. Andy does this proficiently. He therefore can record and entire pan set without inviting any other pan musician to play the other pans. He will only do this if he is giving a live show of the recorded music. Plus he would do it in many different ways including joining a full steel orchestra with a full brass orchestra. One of his sons is also a qualified musician but he plays a brass instrument. He was not forced to play pan by Andy. So this shows that Andy's idea of pan is more matured about the musical instrument -the pan, right down to the bass and that it can be played by themselves or along with other musical instruments. So he has done these things very successfully and continues to do so.. 

    There is a T&T musician that plays jazz on a second pan and also plays the drum set. He was invited by Herbbie Hancock whom he met through the Thelonious Monk school to which Herbbie is the Chairman. The local musician went to that school when he was studying. Anyway both Herbbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter invited this T&T musician to play steel pans -not the drum set which the T&T musician adores a little more than the pan. After he played with these jazz giants, he said Herbbie turned to him and asked "Why aren't you guys playing more with us"?. "This is such a beautiful instrument" There goes your answer. It is where the steel pans must reach. There is an opening for all steel pan musicians whether black, white, yellow or purple. Does not matter the skin tone. What matter is that steel pan musicians must begin to desire to play with great musicians of other musical instruments and in any genre of music. That is what most pan musicians are not doing. Instead they want to play lead all the time and start their own band. So the pan instrument is not yet main stream in the world music industry, the artistes playing them have also not gone main stream and they play songs that are not yet known main stream.  Does that make sense?  No it doesn't. Sure they play at concerts but mostly they play within the Caribbean community concerts that are not yet universal in nature. Some one mentioned Andy playing to 80,000 in South Africa. But many jazz musicians of high quality like Hancock and Shorter play constantly to hundreds of thousands each year across the globe. They constantly travel. If steel pan musicians can give up for a short while their selfish desire to always play lead and not with other great leading musicians, it will take them much longer to make good money and to reach that level masses across the globe. Record sales is not it again. It is concert performances that musicians make constant income. Records can bring in something but not as before electronics and Internet came in. Now anyone can download a song if badly placed on the Internet. So there is an opening in the jazz world and especially among American jazz musicians both black and white. Once a person's desire is greater than average, one can be successful regardless of who is there to block you. If you prove to the universe that this is what you want, the universe will clear the way for you. The blockers are really to block the weak people who do not have faith in themselves.

    • Well said Sid, I will send your reply to some of friends in the pan world aspiring to make it their source of income, humility is more often than not the better approach to success.

      I sure wish we can get some input from some people who are out there in the battlefield each day trying to follow in these successful guys footsteps, then maybe the real solutions can be worked out.

      There is so much talent on every corner of TNT we should not even be having a discussion about how to turn that talent into success but sadly we are.

      There are so many well informed and experienced members on this forum maybe you all can help in shaping a blueprint for the progress of the instrument.

      I love the passion with which members respond to my sometimes controversial and thought provoking comments, that shows desire to see more progress for pan .

      Respect and appreciation to all !

  • Wow! Sometimes I wonder (;-)

    Pride and Prejudice (it's a good read.)

    ... if he used a full steel orchestra ... !?

    Brother Andy Narell has run with the best of the pack, 'Boogsie', Ray Holman, Earl Brooks Sr, 'Professor' and others and is one of our 'Boyz' (please excuse this instance of sexism here; good ladies of Pan, just forcing a point), whether we like to face it or not. An exemplary musician, and culturally locked into our TT vibe.

    Unless you've got a handy Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Ma Huateng, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates (ps 'ish, 'dish & Jack Warner are peanuts!) running around in your back pocket;
    You’re not going to get any one of these steelbands (below) to play with in a hurry. Yet!
    Andy Narell has been there. (As below).

    All we need to do here, in TT, is to play and record 'music' (stream, YouTube, Voice &/or Spotify it) with our remarkable and wonderful steelbands. Got it?

    It’s easy; understand what you may hear if you play this first clip. A perfectly ordinary Large TT Panorama steelband, with an ordinary pan crew, playing on ordinary pans on a Panorama stage. They are playing a calypso in calypso tempo (not soca), with a bit of control discipline applied; that’s all. [In the other stage clips, the discipline is a bit lax.] It’s amazing what we can do here.

    TT Steelband Panorama 2013 - Semi-Finals - Large. Birdsong - The Last Word (Arr by Andy Narell)


    tobagojo4sure - Published on Feb 19, 2014
    Large Conventional Steelbands Panorama Semi-Finals 2013, play on 27th January, at The Grandstand, Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, Trinidad, TT; West Indies.

    TT Panorama 2014 - Semi-Finals - Large - Birdsong - We Kinda Music (Arranged by Andy Narell)


    tobagojo4sure - Published on Feb 18, 2014
    Large Conventional Steelbands 20140216 Semi-Finals play at The Grandstand, Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, Trinidad, TT; West Indies.

    "We Kinda Music" Birdsong Panorama 2014 [Greens Practice Session]


    SteeldrumTrust - Published on Mar 10, 2014
    "We Kinda Music" written and arranged by Andy Narell for Birdsong. Playing here in the semi finals, Panorama 2014 T&T

    Skiffle Bunch - Appreciation [2000] (Better sound quality)


    IsDePanInMe - Published on Aug 3, 2008
    2000 Steelband Panorama finals, arranger Andy Narell.

    Skiffle Bunch - Coffee Street


    trinidesi - Published on Nov 24, 2007
    Skiffle Bunch in a controversial move, decided to contract the services of a Non-Trinidadian - The well known, American Pan Jazz artist, Andy Narell, to perform the duties of arranging his own Composition for the band for the 1999 Panorama. Whether you agree with the band or not, is sweet pan...

    • Nice recordings , I can post a lot more to add to these but what have they accomplished for the steelpan in the larger scale of things?

      I think the point was missed by the Andy fans, dont't get me wrong  I'm also a fan of his music but was trying to emphasize the uphill economic and logistical battles facing the music industry as a whole, let alone the steelpan. We rush to defend not understanding it's way bigger than us. 

      Mr Medina has a good idea of what is going on in the industry, I see talented accomplished musicians playing for little or no pay because of the love. 

      There's an old saying "Is who in the kitchen does feel the heat" until you've lived through the peaks and valleys of a musician's life it's not easily understood !!

      Go back and listen to Boogsie's "79 Is mine" album, Earl Brooks's album with Lionel Richie's "Hello", the music is actually a small part of the music industry!!!

      • In passing;
        Pity can't access these videos.
        They are from:

        Solo Harmonites - Topic
        (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCf1GQcfa9J9mvfmBFoyQ8Q)
        Auto-generated by YouTube

        With the message:
        This video is not available [without the - In your country - append]
        (& Comments disabled)

        Which indicates that they have been copyright-blanked; because they are a rip-off from the original CD's.
        However what little info we can get is as follows.

        Tribute to Glenn Miller [3:53]
        Solo Harmonites - Topic
        Published on Nov 8, 2014
        28 views
        Provided to YouTube by NAXOS of America Tribute to Glenn Miller · Solo Harmonites Carnival Jump-Ups - Steelbands of Trinidad and Tobago ℗ 1989 Delos Released on: 1989-01-01 Ensemble: Solo

        (This one is even no longer on this site:)
        Soca Baptist (arr. for steelband) [5:19]
        Solo Harmonites - Topic
        Published on Sep 26, 2014
        53 views
        Provided to YouTube by NAXOS of America Pan Blues (arr. for steelband) · Solo Harmonites Soca Baptist ℗ 1991 Delos Released on: 1991-01-01 Ensemble: Solo Harmonites Composer: Earl Rodney

        Cheers tobagojo4sure

      • Anthony Joseph: From the Caribbean to the EXPAT world plus the odd few around the world who like STEELBAND MUSIC -- I think that we have a decent size base that would support SOME WELL RECORDED PAN MUSIC. And if somebody puts out the right music and we come up with a decent marketing plan -- I can see the music making some inroads globally.

        But I am not talking about STEELBAND MUSIC. I am talking about ONE PAN (maybe two) among conventional instruments playing the right music produced by the right AMERICAN MUSIC PRODUCERS.

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