From Musical Arrangements To Dance and Prance:

[Orleron Depeza]

PANORAMA's INEFFICIENT JUDGING

2009 & 2010

 

NYC.

 

THE DESTRUCTION OF PANORAMA 2009 & 2010 BY THE JUDGES & PAN TRINBAGO’S INEFFICIENT ADMINISTRATORS:

My Question Is: WHAT IS THE POINT SYSTEM OR CRITERIA YOU USE TO JUDGE PANORAMA?

FOR SOMETIME IT HAS BEEN, (45) POINTS FOR ARRANGEMENTS; (10) POINTS FOR PERFORMANCE, AND (10) POINTS FOR RHYTHM ETC. ETC...

HAVE YOU CHANGED THIS POINT SYSTEM?

What we have here is a FAILURE TO PROPERLY JUDGE MUSIC:

Taking You a Stage Further, I will Now Point out Some Important Points.

1.    The Judging of Panorama 2009 & 2010 was poor and fixed.

2.    The Judges are adopting the Brooklyn Style of Judging Panorama where most of the bands consists of KIDS AND Young People who Jump Around and Dance and in the Process GIVES UP THE Proper Techniques of playing, Slamming of the Pans and beating notes out of tune as can be noticed with some of these bands.

3.    The whole Process of Panorama is like a School Game where all the Friends and Families go to support their kids and in the Process most of them don’t know the arrangements.

4.    Why is it that Trinidad is following that style of judging Steel Band Music instead of modifying our System?

5.      IF PAN TRINBAGO AND THESE JUDGES WANT THIS TYPE OF PANORAMA PERFORMANCE, THEN THEY HAVE TO CHANGE THE JUDGING CRITERA AND POINTS SYSTEM.

6.    You have to follow or Present a SOCA RAMA STYLE PANORAMA. Soca Rama was created to portray and judge the dance and Crowd participation, which is different to the more constructive LYRIC Style Calypso.

7.    These Judges That Judge Panorama at present does not know the difference between GOOD MUSIC ARRANGEMENTS AND SHOW AND PERFORMANCE.

8.    If one is writing an Essay you have to introduce what you are writing about, then present the body and complete with a proper summary of what you wrote. MUSIC ARRANGEMENTS IS THE SAME WAY.

9.    Have you Judges and Pan Trinbago’s Official gone back and looks at these tapes and listens to the music over and over to analyze them?

10.                      Take a look at the winning Band Performances for the two years they won. The Band played too fast and wild. Slamming and beating of the instrument was present and the whole performance was a HIGH SCHOOL Performance.

11.                      Here is the real solution: Pan Trinbago has to bring back the Foreign Judges like they did in the Steel Band Music Festivals. People like Wynton Marsalis and other Professional Musician and combine them with the local Judges.

12.                      At least three foreign Judges are necessary each year to Judge Bands Fairly.

13.                      Most of the Local Judges Have Their Bands That They Support and are Friendly with their arrangers and visits their Pan Yards Regularly. THESE JUSGES CAN’T JUDGE FAIRLY. All they have to do is to give a competitive Band LOW POINTS.

 

Finally all Bands should demand the INCLUSION OF FOREIGN JUDGES.

Remove Alvin Daniels from commenting on Panorama during the show while he has bands such as the winning Band playing his compositions in the competition.

If Pan Trinbago prevented arrangers from arranging for more than one band they have to eliminate Alvin Daniels from the Panorama Show. There is a connection between Him, Silver Stars and Pan Trinbago and this is a CONFLICT of Interest.

Instead of having the competition by the SIZE of the Bands it should be changed to these categories:

a.    The Performance and Show (Category)

b.    Musical  Arrangement (category)

BRING IN THE FOREIGN MUSICIAN TO JUDGE A FAIR PANORAMA.

Depeza O (Musician/Panist/Sound)

(CMIS/BA)

 

 

[Sweet Eustace]

Depeza either you biased or you do not know how to play pan properly or you know not the the difference between strong well cordinated playing and slamming pans, one cannot slam a pan if one waits till the sticks are in the pans before the pans or in the case of bases til the stick is less than 6inches above the pans, this is what I have observed in the winning bands performance they all attacked their notes with a unified intensity, and one can clearly hear crescendoes and dimuendoes in the performances, the responses of the enginge room was well pronounced and the call and responses between sections was clear, the re harmonization was felt the balance was allways there , what is wrong with enjoying a performance, all other categories of music people get down in it why not enjoy your pan, on the contrary some of the other bands were actually slamming their pans, and cadences were not clearly established because there was more individual playing and not group playing, so a lot of the statements lacked lusture, if 35 -40 tenors hit the same note the same exact way it will sound louder than another group where some hit louder than some, a confident execution allways seem to be loud, if the pans were being slammed out of tune the dimuendoes would have collapsed but it did not, ps I do not like Silver Stars Music but the best band won, the band is not judged for the arrangers offering but the performance of it,

[Sarah-Ann]

I would question the remark that the best band won. The loudest and the band that probably caught the spirit of the young players carnival won. But as far as arrangement goes had you sat through the entire Panorama from the prelims to final night you would realise that they were not.. No Silver Stars was deffinitly not the best band, and I just hope that their noise is not the way of future panoramas. I think that Pantrinbago and the judges should pay more attention to the performances of the bands throughout the entire excersise and deal with the end result with that in mind, No Silver Stars was not the best band they were the noisiest,

[Sweet Eustace]

with sound system being part and parcel of panorama, mind you the judges are usually seated behind the sound system and they hear the raw pan it might be wise for the sound man to have an engineer near the judges pre mixing the sound and the sound man has the ability to turn up or down the system so that the audience hears , one level sound, the video personell allways do a better job of mixing than the pa system people, what is heard on the PA is not what the judges hear, I have been infront the judges enclosure many times, if you listen to raw footages of amature cameras stage side on you tube you will take back your remark, my band Phase II was noisy and the playing was something else the frontline drowned out the rest of the band, often you may hear some washed up performer doing a real popular song and the audience goes wild, even though it might be the worst performance of that number, the music is good music but the band is no good,if you give an old granny a fast car and she drives it slow, another driver with a slow car driving fast will pass her,look at the videos, Silver stars were tight with their playing,so they would get more power than the other bands, if you know about playing music you should notice that the players were hiting precise almost as if they choreographed their movements, yes they were dancing and prancing about but were able to temper themselves to get loud and soft when needed such precision cannot be acheived with uncontrolable playing, what makes a band is the ability to deliver the music, irregardless to its scientific appeal, a past quote from Haffers when he was drilling PhaseII in the 80's "all stars may not have better music, but they play whatever they have at their best" that made them the better band, as far as young look at the video some of the players playing pan before they had panorama, Black Holman ent no spring chicken, payne playing before they ever had panorama, I hear people blame the mixer man for thier scoring, I'll say this again the judges DO NOT HEAR THE SOUND SYSTEM, despers and phase II had the best music, despers made a better attempt than the phase, but the best band, not music won, world cup is on now a team could play real good football, but the ones who score the most goals wins and is the best team even if the are the worst players

[Claudius Phillips]

Panorama should be an expresssion of the cultural as well as musical exposition of the community in which it resides. The conflict which resides within panorama would always be there, because there is the farcial elements of inoclastism. I would tend to agree with Dalton Narine in his comment: for true growth to take place with panorama,the event needs to be treated as a hybrid cultural event, which would incorporate elements of musicianship, which would allow creative musical interpretation, ( this would allow for showmanship and musical structuring), tonation and other elements which would be relevant to the event. This is not to place less emphasis on the event, but to recognise it for what it is. The Steel band Music festivals however must be encouraged, if one would like to develop professional musicianship, a la what is required within the classical symphonic form of music, whether that be Waltz, castilian, Chamber, Jazz or whatever. Keep in mind that while we fight Japan, france, Denmark, Sweden have gone way ahead of our limited musican editions. It must be remembered that whatever one has created until it is accepted by the masses, it is just treated as an indeginous curiousity. Steel pan has gone way beyond this limited form of competition. Please remember this competition was done to give the Pan Man his space and some repectability. Now that the event has run its course, lets introduce world based events of our culutral contribution to the world: notice I stressed 'World'. Not Brooklyn New York,Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, some Universities and Colleges and a couple West Indian islands? But the WORLD. There is where our focus should be.
Our culture must be preserved and to do so,what is required is to ensure that those to whom the responsibility of doing so is entrusted, do live up to the highest ideals. With that said I would agree with most of your argument.
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[Noah]

interesting points. mostly, i agree.