Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
Trinidad & Tobago, W.I. -The Prime Minister says his inability to play pan remains one of his lasting regrets.
Dr Rowley made the statement Wednesday at the launch of the Alutech Research and Development Facility at the Tamana InTech Park, Wallerfield.
He was responding to a musical interlude in which three schoolgirls from a Seventh-Day Adventist School in Sangre Grande played one of the country’s national songs on pan.
“When I was their age, I went to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church as a boy and I was banned from those things,” he told the gathering.
“I could not go into the panyard and I could not be known to even aspire to be a panman, because those adults of the time, who were raising me, they knew all that had to be known, and they knew that I had to be kept away from that, because that was the Devil’s work.”
He added: “And today one of my lasting regrets is that I can’t play a note to save my life. And in this country of the steelband, I must be one of the few people who owned a pan and can’t play it.”
Replies
meet him outside the pan yard
Evan Lobo: Ting I does take FIVE HUNDRED WORDS to say -- you does summarize it in 2 to 6 words!!!
Ah coming by you to take some lessons on BREVITY OF EXPRESSION -- meet me outside the pan yard with Rowley!!!
I could teach ROWLEY to play pan in ONE WEEK!!! So he just playing politics!!!
Now I cyar play no PAN!!! But I have studied THREE SONGS on the PAN so i could teach ROWLEY the theoretical structure behind the three songs (and he is ah bright fellah so he go learn quick) and how the arpeggios and chord progressions apply to the 3 songs and the diagramatic spacing on the pans (the 1-4-5 root relationships) and then ah put him to learn them 3 songs in ALL TWELVE KEYS and he on his own to practice after that. In six months time he ready to do concert!!!
So if he serious -- tell him to call my SUBSTITUTE TEACHER AQUIL ARRINDELL!!!
This is only proof that the white colonialism penetrated deep down into the black man's existence. Not only pan, but other areas of life were also affected. Such as becoming rich through a business. That was also looked upon as evil. The white conditioning was and is still very powerful indeed.
Absolutely, that's how it was but with the society in which we find ourselves, one now wonders whether that was a "good" thing. We can't handle our sh*t today.
I outa dat.
Not me, I outa dat.