Guyana’s steel pan icon Roy Geddes talks with Guyana Review about his life and his music
You wouldn’t guess that Roy Geddes is seventy. Clad in his trademark Kangol and jeans Guyana’s celebrated Professor of Pan looks a full ten years younger. Now retired from the more hectic pursuit of pan-playing his active mind remains preoccupied with the art form that has been his life. He talks about steel pan with the demeanor of a wizened veteran exuding the authority of a man who, this year, celebrates his fifty sixth year as a pan man.
Pan in Guyana goes back to 1947 just two years after its origins in Trinidad and Tobago. It started, Geddes says, “in backyards” and in the seedy pre-independence inner city slums of the capital. “Steel band started in the ghetto; in alleyways and on corners. It was a typical Porgy and Bess environment.”
Those years have been punctuated by two National Awards, a host of accolades and the unquestioned distinction of being one of the last of the great pan men of the Caribbean. How to take pan out of the ghetto; how to burnish its image and to locate it in what he describes as “a beautiful place” is Roy Geddes’ remaining ambition. He wants to leave a legacy that is about Pan rather than self; a legacy that acknowledges the humble origins of the music and pays deserving tribute to the hard men of the art form who, more than half a century ago, gifted the sound of the cultured oil drum to the pantheon of the performing arts.
From Geddes’ own informed perspective, pan music, for all its celebration, for all its national acclaim, remains a prodigal son, still without a real place at the table of national culture. He believes that long ago we ought to have created some national shrine, some lasting public monument to pay fitting tribute to the role and the relevance of the steel pan. Until that happens Roy Geddes’ work will remain undone,
Pan Geddes says, has been his life. “From very early on I was bombarded with pan. At Leopold and Cross streets there was the Chicago Steel Orchestra; there was the Casablanca Steel Orchestra in High Street and then there was the Tripoli Steel Orchestra in Leopold Street. These were the recognized bands of the day and they were all part of my own steel band experience.”
When you ask Roy about the journey that pan has made over those more than fifty years he pauses and fixes you with a beady-eyed stare. “I am not happy.” His voice recedes into a whisper as though someone else is eavesdropping. “There has been no real spiritual development in the art form. There has been a lot of technological advancement but I feel sad to say that there has been no forward movement as far as the spiritual development of pan is concerned.” By spiritual development he means “the transformation of pan into a vehicle through which there can be a better way of life for pan men, the men who have worked tirelessly for the development of the art form. After all those years there is still no organization and it seems that there is no love for the persons who have given us the pan. Unless pan men begin to matter the music itself is meaningless.”
He believes that much of the problem lies with the pan men themselves. “The art form may have come a long way but the pan men themselves have not evolved with the art form. They have to think of pan as a means through which they can give themselves a better way of life. I believe that the effort has to be collective. A band is a collective thing and if there is to be any forward movement it has to happen together.”
Geddes himself has brought the pan with him on his own personal journey through life. Through his boyhood days in the pan yards of Georgetown to his quiet retirement years he has embraced, and cared for pan music. Today, his home in Festival City is a well-ordered archive to the art form. Scores of magazine and newspaper cuttings, photographs of public performances noted events in his career and neatly framed listings of noted pan men, tuners and players, displayed on tables and walls. Pans adorned with the names of some of the best-known old-timers, the men he says who created steel band music, sit comfortably in the midst of a stunningly beautiful plant and flower garden; both well kept, both tended by himself and Pat, his wife of more than four decades. “I will die a pan man,” he says.
Walking along the garden path that leads from the street to his front gate you catch the halting notes of an amateur on the first pan. He gestures in the direction of the music. “I teach pan to anyone who wants to learn. I have a few students who come here and I teach pan at the Victoria Training Centre.”
On the subject of the once famed Roy Geddes Steel Orchestra Roy is deliberate and defensive. “There is no Roy Geddes Steel Orchestra right now. That is all I will say on that subject.”
“I do not wish to say any more right now.” You detect in his tone that the deeper story behind the disappearance of what was once Guyana’s best-known steel band embodies part of his own sadness with the wider challenges which the art form has had to endure.
Replies
Yes Mr. Roy Geddes as you stated, the pan has indeed evolved, but the average pan man did not.
Do you know what happened to the Chronicle Atlantic Symphony Steel Orchestra of Guyana. They performed with Desperadoes in Cuba, circa 1980, and I hung out with them when they visited Los Angeles, California in April of 1981. They were housed at the USC Campus. I was indeed surprised of their playing ability. Robert Greenidge was even present at one of their concerts. I also bought their Album with Classical selections like: "The Barber of Seville" and "Sawn Lake."
what does that statement “I will die a pan man” really mean... does it mean that you'll die destitute, or in poverty, or dependent on family & friends, or you'll die w/ your needs met with a system that will assist you at the time of your death...
Is this the same person responsible fo
r the band Silver Tones AKA Pele.???