Pan Trinbago owes the Trinidad Pan Community an Apology

[MakeItPlain]

Catt says "people STILL do not GET IT. It's the PRINCIPLE of the thing - not about Renegades individually"

 

Catt, the Trinidad and Tobago pan community in general is still not of the mindset that he or she is worthy of respect, and by extension, his or her art and/or artistic endeavors - in this case Pan.  If the opposite was the case we would not be having this conversation. They do not really respect themselves to the level of making others exhibit that same type of respect. Case and point - the disrespect - that is commonly meted out at the semifinals.  If you have never had respect, you don't what it looks or feels like, or how to ensure it.  It is a lot easier to blame yourself or others like you, rather than the real culprits.

 

Rest assured this is not about some deaf DJ who could not stop playing.  The majority of people in the North Stands have absolutely no interest in pan.or pan music, or pan culture. This is a reality that exists in Trinidad and Tobago and always has. The sick thing is Pan Trinbago promotes, invites and sets the conditions for this to happen every year.  Why you may ask? Because it is part of the payoff that Pan Trinbago must do for the monies it receives from the government.  It is an agreement that allows the corporate drunks and their friends to come to the Savannah and behave like a scene out of bacchanalian imperial Rome and colonial times.  Ignore the idiots (steel orchestras and the players) on stage (they're only mimicking music, after all, isn't it just a set of noise - this is how the majority of the North Stand people operated, and thought of, and behaved towards the players on stage at the semi finals).  Who comes to a music competition to play your own music?  Most of these people have never seen the inside of a panyard and they live in Trinidad.

 

Pan Trinbago promotes the event as a Savannah Party, not a serious music event that is to be respected. This is nothing new.  Instead of setting up the conditions that even an insect would consider the Savannah a "no-fly zone" during a steelpan competition, Pan Trinbago is complicit in and facilitates this obnoxious and uncivil behavior.  Instead of apologizing to all the pan people who performed that day and all the Ancestors and Elders of Pan, Pan Trinbago chooses to actually defend these disrespectful worms in court against one of its own members.  Of the ancestors who have given so much to bring legitimacy to the instrument and those who play the instrument - none more than Rudolph Charles, who I'm sure can't wait to greet each member of the executive board of Pan Trinbago personally with his Hammer.

 

I thought the episode with Exodus was as low as it could get for the pan community with Pan Trinbago, when they threw musicians off the stage, and behaved like their own colonial masters by calling the Police on their own members, but I was wrong.

 

Before the start of this 2011 Panorama competition the members of Pan Trinbago must stand in front of the pan community and ask for forgiveness from its members and the Pan ancestors for what they facilitated and put in motion to happen to the pan community.

In the final analogy, Pan Trinbago did not serve the interests of Pan.  Pan Trinbago is not fit to call itself the "World Governing Body for Pan."

[Sandra L Blood]

Um. um. um. um, um!!!!!!!

I have no clue what to say. It's the first time I can access this contribution.

Not sure why, but maybe there is a good reason beyond my powers.

I hear you!

I performed with Renegades thus, I hold my peace.

I made my contribution and await 2012.

[Jojo]

What are your expectations for 2012?

[Char Burgess]

Th author of the first message - "Make it plain" has come to the crux of the matter.  However, Sarah Ann has a point - The northern zone is not the be all and end all of the steelbands of Panaroma and indeed we have to stop talking about them as such.  Sarah Ann you have to understand that in the beginning the Northern zone was the only pans in Panorama and gradually bands like Skiffle Bunch and Fonclaire became as good or even better than the POS bands.  The moniker however still stuck which was the Northern Zone that counted.  We in the pan community in T'dad and T'bgo have to come together in the terms of our national motto - "together we aspire...together we achieve"  and it's a hard lesson for us to learn in the individualistic society that is TnT.  WE HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO COME TOGETHER AS ONE otherwise we will never be able to right the wrongs that is being done by Pan Trinbago.  Together - all zones have the power and authority to put Pan Trinbago in its place but fractured we will never win and the louts and jagobats that inhabit the North Stand will get even worse next year.  Doh talk about elections for Pan Trinbago...we all forget too quickly and the same type of worms will get back in again - UNITED WE STAND - DIVIDED WE FALL.

[Hugh Haydn Anthony]

Catt, you have summed up this most sordid affair quite well.

[Ayesha Mohammed]

You are correct! we have allowed DJs to takeover entertainment spaces as they please. Imagine no one was hearing the appeal. As well, we are an accomodating society. North Stand behaviour of dis-regard and dis-respect for PAN, has been going on for decades, with announcers making appeals, yet the care-less and loose behaviour did not stop, it just grew and developed. It is about time some persons  at the highest level of governance speak out critically about erroneous behaviour giving guidelines to change. The bottom line is we are an individualistic society, thus we do not care what happens to others as long as we get what we want.

[Dave Dedier]

I believe that the "Panorama experience" accurately reflects the state of the wider society, as do all the other aspects of Carnival - which explains why calypso tent attendance has declined dramatically and soca "stars" are becoming millionaires, and at the same time masqueraders display their bodies rather than portray a character or a theme. While I agree wholeheartedly that PanTrinbago must do something soon, I do not think that Panorama will ever change for the better. Panorama is what it has become over the years, and the way forward may well be the development of a new and creative product outside of the Carnival season designed to accomplish what all pan aficionados yearn for. Panorama will always be confusion, but it remains the best financial opportunity for bands, players and a host of micro- and not so micro entrepeneurs associated with the Pan movement.

[Jeston Lett]

For some humor... Have you ever seen a flying multi-colored donkey?? That you shall see before this Lying bunch of Money Hungry thieves apologize to US... The steelpan Community.

[MC Joseph]

Pan Trinbago is truly the "World Governing Mockery of Pan"

[evan lobo]

 they are all too aloof

 only studying the $$ to lick up

they have been a failure in the past and will continue to be

 nuff said

 do something for pan

[AMD]

Well-put. It is amazing to see how shocked people are (people from outside Trinidad and Tobago) to learn that Pan Trinbago is NOT fully accepted by us all as our representative, and how we certainly do NOT accept them as the World Governing Body of Pan. That is being promoted outside...and it is being believed. Pan Trinbago is big on marketing itself and we have to ensure that we let the true story be told about how they REALLY treat us here, in the Birthplace of Pan.