By MIRANDA LA ROSE Tuesday, August 18 2015 - Trinidad Newsday
The early steelband, a crucial site of power and privilege for panmen through which they established an identity, still holds true for the contemporary steelband even though women were now in middle management positions.
This is according to Joanna Shortt, a musician, educator, composer, and steelband adjudicator who said that, “Men still continue to control the apparatus of power in the Caribbean and although women have experience some mobility and increase the status of women over the years, these advances do not represent the diminishing of real power.
This holds true to the contemporary steelband movement.” In a presentation on “Gendered roles and discourse in two contemporary steelband in Trinidad and Tobago” on August 6, at the International Conference and Panorama at the Hyatt Regency, Shortt looked at Desperadoes and Invaders steel orchestras because they were the two active, successful, historically and culturally relevant large conventional steelbands.
These two bands, she said, have experienced organisational transformation to include female participation and the regendering of their space, a far cry from the early days as the former Gay Desperadoes and Oval Boys (Invaders) Steelband.
Replies
There are a lot of female arrangers now and more to be expected given the number of women pan players there are currently.
Interestingly Invaders, one of the subjects of the discourse, has long relied on a woman at the top of their administration and it is only time before other steelbands see the women in their ranks rise to the top of the hierarchy.
Wayne Cezair, Arranging might be the most difficult area in the steelband for women to penetrate and it's not because of their sex, there just are not too many opportunities for arrangers.
As more and more females play pan, it would be interesting see the changes in musical arrangements. There would be other changes which will become apparent as time goes by, though not visible now.