By Dorbrene O’Marde
Before adding my contributions to this discussion on ‘Pan as Icon – preserving, claiming, marketing,’ let me be quick to acknowledge my limitations on this subject and give a view as to ‘where I am coming from.’
I am not a panman/pannist/panplayer. I am not a musician. I am a lover of music and not the lover of any particular musical instrument. If I favour any particular instrument, it would be the tenor saxophone in appropriate setting and able hands. I am as comfortable with (Clive) Zanda’s piano as with Miles’ trumpet, as with Luther Francois’ saxophone, as I am with Boogsie Sharpe’s pan. Therefore, for this presentation I separate the product of the steelband/pan i.e. music played on pan from ‘pan’, the sociological phenomena which emerged as a consequence of ancestry, heritage, colonialism and the varying forces that helped shape and create our Caribbean identity. My assessment of pan music is like my assessment of any other music. Music, regardless of source is either good or not good. It is the later concept, pan – the sociological phenomena that I seek to address.
Secondly, I am from Antigua and run serious risks for attempting to ‘talk pan’ in Trinidad, for the simple and no other reason than my place of birth and current abode. But I hope I can bridge that gap and another that exists in our analyses and appreciation of the music of the region. The latter gap exists because many of our leading and better known regional critics and analysts have yet to pay serious attention to the manifestations of pan and calypso in the smaller territories, confining their analyses to Trinidad and Tobago, notwithstanding the fact that Arrow and Short Shirt and Beckett and Gabby and Swallow and Obstinate and Grynner and Winston Soso and arrangers, Eddie Grant and Frankie McIntosh and others, have marched across calypso stages here, leaving giant foot prints, contributing seriously to the present shape of calypso and soca. I hope that in the short time that I have here, to be able to illustrate some similar – if not vivid and dramatic – living connections between Caribbean people within the development of steelband.
What I will do briefly – is – in few sentences, outline a history of the steelband movement in Antigua; identify, if possible, connections with the birthplace of pan – Trinidad and Tobago and then see what learnings we can draw from this history. I will finally re-focus on the topic, ‘Pan as Icon’ and here I interpret ‘Icon’ as ‘image of heritage.’
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