Lord Kitchener and Pan Music: A Match Made in Heaven

[Pan Times]

Presentation from the Kitchener symposium held at Medgar Evers College - Brooklyn, New York, USA

©2009 When Steel Talks. All rights reserved

“I made the steel band a real study. I know the runs and the notes that mean something to the sound of the band. I can hear the sound of the tenor pan.” ^[1]

Kitch at home    -   photo: Carl Newallo

It is to our eternal good fortune that there developed very early a symbiotic relationship between Lord Kitchener and the steel band milieu, and that despite spending a goodly portion of his early career in England, that bond with the pan culture only grew stronger after he relocated to Trinidad and steel band haven.

In that opening quote from Kitch, from the Pan magazine Fall 1987 issue, he is of course conveying a sense of what gave him such facility in composing music for the steel band. Many others would doubtless lay claim to similar familiarity with the pan idiom. Whether this is in fact so is ultimately a moot point. Suffice to say that the Kitchener connection to pan proved to be literally in a class by itself, well beyond the contact point attained by lesser mortals and considered by them to be special. Pan magazine summed up in these words the serendipitous circumstance of Kitch’s return to share space once again with those whose lot it was to secure pan’s place as a spellbinding new addition to musical culture: “For the steel bands, the ranks of the music suppliers now included someone who had a real feel for what embodied the quintessential panist’s turn-on.” ^[2]

It became quite obvious upon his return home that he had pan music very much in his sights. He returned late in 1962, in time for the Carnival of ’63, and he began his impressive run of road march mastery with The Road, followed in ’64 by Mama Dis Is Mas and My Pussin in ’65. Evident in all of them was Kitchener’s propensity for crafting melodic lines that ideally suited the steelpan format, most significantly, the dominance of staccato form as opposed to legato, in the notes that found their way into his musical sketches. In that period, when steel bands were the predominant road/party music for Carnival revelry, Kitch was also well aware of the importance of people-friendly chorus lines. So that whether in the Carnival-themed The Road (“De road make to walk on Carnival day…”) and Mama Dis Is Mas (“De band will be passin’ down Frederick Street…”) or the slightly risqué My Pussin (“Is my pussin/My pussin/My pussin…”) the audience sing-along requirement was handily met.

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