To save pan… Yes we can

[Pan Times]

Trinidad Guardian Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, WI - It seems so long that our griots (calypsonians) have been singing the demise of our national instrument. The portents have been there for some time, as elucidated by the likes of Merchant (Pan in Danger); Cro Cro (Wey Pan Reach) and Manchild (Pan in Crisis). David Rudder gave hope when he eloquently penned “out of a muddy pond, ten thousand flowers bloom.” But, at the end of the first decade of the millennium, the global warming phenomenon seems to be seriously threatening the pond, with its flowers now muddied, gasping for some bit of air and space to bloom again. Yes, pan has given us too few blossoms, like Liam Teague, Mia Gormandy, Yohan Chuckaree, Keisha Codrington, BJ Brooks and PCS Silver Stars drill master Donnell Thomas. Looking at the larger picture, it paints a portrait of despair for the future—in spite of the National Steel Orchestra. As recently as last weekend, in the Sunday Guardian’s Sound Off column, former Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold was lamenting the stagnancy of pan and its current sad plight. He commented that after a decade of promises by the State the national steelband movement still doesn’t have a home. The last political utterance from the powers that be was that the steelband headquarters, still an unfinished, rotting eye sore on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, would have been completed last year. http://www.panonthenet.com/online/index.htm#f