IN A RARE light moment during official public duty, Minister of Labour Errol McLeod on Monday recounted his childhood experiences of having pan beaten out of him, as he explained to an audience why to this day he cannot play the national instrument.
"My mother would reprimand me," he said. "Whenever I played the pan she said, 'you want to be a rogue and a vagabond?' So they beat the pan out of me."
The Minister was speaking at the launch of the International Year of Co-operatives, which will be observed next year. The launch was held at the Hyatt Regency, Dock Road, Port of Spain.
The Minister's comments came after a short interlude in the programme during which pannist Keisha Medley played a medley which mesmerized many in the audience."I had always really wanted to learn to play the pan," Mc Leod said as he stood on the podium to deliver his feature address at the event.
"Then, at the time, if you played pan you were seen as a rogue and a vagabond." Mc Leod said his brother played pan, and when his brother was not at home he would try his hand. "Quite often I would have been beating pan," he said. Mc Leod recounted how, in 1991, as labour member of a Trinidad and Tobago delegation to a United Nations conference, he was embarrassed by not being able to play the pan when called upon to do so by a Japanese member of that conference who had brought a pan with him to the conference.
"My colleagues said, 'Errol, you have to play the pan,' "he recalled. "The Japanese man ran through the scale then played 'Yellow Bird High Up In A Banana Tree'. When he was done, he motioned to me to come up."
"I said to myself 'Lord, I cannot let Trinidad and Tobago down'. I knocked the two sticks together and everybody applauded. I dropped the sticks on the pan and then I said that we had done such a great job ensuring all of Trinidad and Tobago could play the pan that other people could play the pan."
The Minister said he told the audience that to play the pan, one must be inspired. But he was not.
"I told them I didn't feel well. I dropped the sticks on the pan, and they applauded."
"To date, I am still unable to play the pan," he confessed. www.panapparels.com
Replies
This is the legacy of a colonial internalisation of the inferiority of self ... anything created indigenously was by definition inferior, and I am personally familiar with many such cases where a choice had to be made (very often between pan and church). I highly applaud guys like Neville Jules ]& All Stars] playing Ave Maria in front of the church on Hart St.
Peter
I agree with you Glen. I am around the same age as Mr. McLeod born in the mid- forties. I started to play pan when I was thirteen. At that time no parents wanted their children to be a panman. All the young panmen of that era had mucho prpblems with their parents. It was the Love for that sweet sound that made us defy our parents. Errol never had that Love for the pan. He should not use his Mom as an excuse. You know how much licks I got!
I knew Mcloud well.
We were apprentices in the electrical department of the Oil Refinery then called Texaco Trinidad Inc at the same time.
Similar ages, similar background and (I assume) similar up bringing, since many of our parents didn't want us to mess around with pan either.
As a result, I started with pan at around nineteen or twenty, as a young adult when I had some independence.I was still at Texaco at that time and so was Macloud.
If Mcloud had any interest in pan, he could have done the same.
So this talk of parents is bogus.
Or in other words, he's full of crap!
I hear you Glenroy... lol
bugs