“Trinidad is known as a community that naturally doesn’t support its own regardless, not music only, in sports, academics, whatever. We have become a society that kinda taught itself not to believe in ourselves and we have this attitude of only if it goes and gets big abroad then we can accept it and say it worth something but all the other cultures build their own from home first and send it out, we have the reverse mentality,” he said, calling that attitude our Achilles heel.
http://www.looptt.com/content/bunji-garlin-soca-music-suffers-lack-support-home
http://www.looptt.com/content/bunji-and-fay-ann-land-acting-roles-la-0
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Well, as far as the PAN goes, I eh tie up in the history ting and the spiritual ting and African ancestors ting and the God give the Pan to Trinidadians ting and the whey the Pan was invented ting.
I am more on the "this quote from Raf Robertson ting": "PAN is an instrument that we are trying to define as NOT AN INSTRUMENT but SOMETHING SPECIAL. Anything that has 12 notes is an instrument. And you better learn music because you shouldn't be playing the PAN, you are PLAYING MUSIC ...."
And the day TRINIS wake up and start PLAYING SOME DECENT MUSIC on the PAN -- it will FLY all over the world. Just ask dem YANKEE fellahs who going all over the globe AMBASSADORIZING THE PAN!!!
I have come to the conclusion that this attitude is to be measured in the level of collective self-esteem we hold at a national level. This perhaps may have been developed from our thorough lack of knowledge of who we are and to whom we belong. We need to know how to appreciate the ancestral strengths of resistance which brought us to the now. We need to know how to affirm our attachment to the past. As my grandmother would say yuh en drop outa ah tree, yuh know. We have to learn to respect the facts of history--the oppression and the achievements of our ancestors, to recognize that their struggle helped them then and provided a path/example for their descendants to keep moving on. And that struggle is not done. A single success is not a nation's success until that nation collectively can identify with it.
Presentation, Presentation, Presentation. Going to pan shows of the same format and bands playing same music is no longer working.
Besides Marchel most soca artists just want to go on stage sing. No tough into Presentation.
Promoters are not creative enough. Spending extra on creating a unique experience for their audience would affect their short term profit. On investment in the future.
Aquil: Is your first sentence a shot at the upcoming INTERNATIONAL STEELBAND FOUNDATION concert coming up on the 22nd, January? Merrytonestothebone made a similar comment about hearing the bands play all those same tunes over and over.
Has nothing to do with no one but every thing to do with every one. We are in a sad place. We are stuck in a time zone. We can't even recognise the paradigm shift in international and local entertainment and just to suit. The heads simply not with the time.
Aquil: You and Gregory sounding real depressed, boy. Allyuh wake up one day and suddenly realize that KEITH DIAZ ain't going NOWHERE and any hope of moving the STEELBAND MOVEMENT forward in Trinidad is dead -- at least until 2020 when Keith Diaz gets sick and can't rule NO MORE.
And then the ISF come and take the SPOTLIGHT off the CIP going and try to do what PAN TRINBAGO was supposed to be doing.
Did you stay stuck in a TIME ZONE? If GREGORY LINDSAY gets the right COACH he might be able to see the light and take some risks but he is not going to have too many supporters and he cannot act against THE PARTY. Even though I am getting hints that he is starting to see the light that there is only one narrow part to victory and it is not for the politically faint of heart.
All the INGREDIENTS are there in TRINIDAD (in the ROOTS of TRINIDAD MUSIC) to make GLOBAL MUSIC both with the SOCA and the PAN. I have always said that and believed that and will continue to believe that. The problem is mostly about having a better understanding of what works on the outside (which is kind of hard to see from the inside). The second point is that they need to work with AMERICAN PRODUCERS and take directions from them.
Finally, POPULAR MUSIC is about PASSION and DESIRE and OBJECTIFICATION but it has to have some romanticism and polish and lipstick on it.
This JAM DEM IN DEY BAM BAM and JUST HOLD DEM AND WUK DEM is fine for TRINIDAD but it will not FLY on the outside. And because of the surer bet in the SMALL MARKET the local artistes do not want to take LONG SHOT risks on the outside market (again, which they do not understand) -- so we are mostly going to continue spinning our wheels dreaming GRAMMY DREAMS (while catering for the LOCAL SCENE first) without the music ever leaving the shores.
I hate when TRINIDADIANS compare TRINIDAD to JAMAICA!!!
Mi Amigo, I know and understand what you're saying, (1) you know, that the ingredients are there global and otherwise, I've also been on the inside looking out, and the outside looking in, now I'm above looking down, where it's a much clearer and better view, (2) the steel pan musical instrument can play ANY KIND OF MUSIC, American, European etc, you name it pan can and has played it, have you ever heard Robert Greenidge's work on the "Earth Wind & Fire" album the tune "Side by Side", and have you ever heard of an English Group named "The Break Fast Band, how about Gay Flamingos calypso version of Franz Von Suppe "Poet and Peasants", Invaders "In a Monastery Garden", Desperadoes "On the Street Where You Live", Pan Am North Stars and the Marionette Choir with "Poet and Peasants, Voices of Spring, and Some Enchanted Evening", Starlift's "Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey" West Side Symphony "Roses of the South", Guinness Cavaliers " Carmen", the problem is not about or with American producer directions them, it is with the arrangers they have today, they DO NOT KNOW the instrument, and or how to use them, pan music and band or orchestral music are two different of music, pan can blend in with any type of musical band or orchestral but, said orchestral band or group has to adjust adjust to the pan, do you know that all musician has to blend up before they start, the piano A has to match the guitar, sax, trumpet etc etc etc, especially indoors, because indoors, the wind instruments has attendance to rise a semi tone in pitch, that is why on every concert site or stage there are 2 pianos back stage, one tuned at A440 vibration per second and the other at A444 per second, music are basically instruments in conversation telling a story or a tale with each other, when they are not blended properly blended that's where the story becomes an argument, these arrangers has to learn how to use these instruments like Anthony Williams, Herman (rock) Johnston who won the 1964 Music Festival 6 months after leaving Pan Am North Stars forming West Side Symphony ,using North Stars type instruments that's because he knew how to use the instruments, Beverly Griffith, Ray Holman , Errol Zephrine who gave Invaders their musical style, Edgar (Junior) Pouchet, I could go on and on and on mi amigo but, the arrangers has to regroup and find another route/road on which to travel, because the road they're on has a DEAD END...
Bunji is on the money. Had our Ministry of Culture set rules in place years ago we would have learned to appreciate what we do.
Then it is possible that your argument reinforces Bunji's.
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