By Dorbrene O’Marde
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Lester E Flax to Antigua and Barbuda
Mar 4 · · By Dorbrene O’Marde An interesting perspective on Pan: PAN AS ICON: PRESERVING, CLAIMING, MARKETING1 (An address to the CARIFESTA V SYMPOSIUM, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago / August 1992) ADDRESS TO Chair etc etc Before adding my contributions to this discussion on 'Pan as Icon – preserving, claiming, marketing', let me be…
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Dorbrene E. O'Marde - Author
Dorbrene E. O'Marde - Author
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DORBRENE E. O’MARDE is a recognized cultural worker throughout the Caribbean region. He is best known as playwright, director and producer (theatre and music), newspaper/magazine columnist, speaker and a calypso writer, judge and analyst.
ABS Television/Radio
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Oct 26, 2016 · · National Heroes Day Baton relay
'Bishop Kingsley Lewis of the Moravian Conference, Mr. @[100000462063992:2048:Dorbrene O'Marde] - Chairman - Reparations Committee'
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Joanne C. Hillhouse to Dorbrene E. O'Marde - Author
Sep 11, 2013 · · Just sharing
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Kaloma O'Marde Hamilton
Oct 3, 2011 · · …DOWNWARDS: The rant against reperations by Dorbrene O'Marde (Published in The Daily Observer 3 October 2011)
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Jun 18, 2015 · · …following the Evening News. Talkin Kaiso tonight's host - Dorbrene O'Marde.
'Time to TALK KAISOOOO!'
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Sep 18, 2018 · · …court. Our guest at 6:30am. Dorbrene O’Marde -Chair of the Reparations Support Commission.
'Tomorrow on Antigua Barbuda Today we focus on the Nation’s quest to make the CCJ our final appellate court. Our guest at 6:30am. Dorbrene O’Marde -Chair of the Reparations Support Commission.'
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Feb 10, 2017 · · AGAINST THE BACKDROP
'Happening now on ATBD ...Taking a look at Black History and fast forwarding to today.....Being Black in today's society (locally and abroad).
Panelists Dorbrene O'marde and Edith Oladele.'
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Oct 21, 2017 · · …The true history of Calypso O'Marde, Dorbrene King Shortshirt: Nobody go run me Ome, Aiyegoro Young Kings Ottley, Rudolph Calypsonians from Then to Now II Ottley, Rudolph Calypsonians from Then to Now III Ottley, Rudolph Women in Calypso I Ottley,…
'CALYPSO HISTORY MONTH 2017 – KAISO AT THE MOVIES
#21 ..by Any Other Name
Calypso Rose: Lioness of the Jungle (2011)
There are books [biographies / autobiographies / critical reviews, pictorials] on Black Stalin, Maestro, Rudder, Chalkdust, Valentino, the Calypso Women sorority. But Calypso Rose may be the first and only singer to have her own movie - The Lioness of the Jungle - documentary covering the life and times of Calypso’s First Lady, Tobago’s MacArthur Lewis.
“ Calypso Rose, the ambassador of Caribbean music, is a living legend, a charismatic character and the uncontested diva of Calypso Music. Traveling with Rose from Paris to New York via Trinidad, Tobago and back to Africa, in each place, we learn a little more about the many faces and facets of her life. It is a film not only about memory, the exchange and discovery of world cultures, but also the journey of a militant and authentic woman, an Afro-Caribbean soul, an exemplary artist, far from the glitz and glitter, at the dawn of her life”.
The Lioness features Destra, Denyse Plummer, Gypsy and Sparrow
Winner of the FESPACO Documentary Film Award (Burkina Faso) 2013
Awards : 2012 : Prize "Attention of the jury" at the 10th International Festival of Film of Ouidah (Benin)
INCOMPETE LIST OF CALYPSO BOOKS
Abraham, Samuel The People's Cultural Book
Anthony, Michael Parade of the Carnivals 1839 - 1989
Barry, John The Finalists I
Barry, John The Finalists II
Constance, Zeno Obi Tassa Chutney and Soca
Constance, Zeno Obi The Man Behind the Music [Valentino]
Constance, Zeno Obi The Man and his Music [Valentino]
Cowley, John Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso
de Four, Linda Gimme room to sing [Sparrow discog]
de Leon, Raphael From France to Trinidad
Devine, Winsford The Progress of Winsford Devine
Dupre, Marie Black Stalin
Elder, J.D Evolution of the Traditional of Trinidad and Tobago
Espinet & Pitts The Land of Calypso
Francisco, Slinger 120 caypsoes of Sparrow
Gibbons, Rawle No Surender, bio of the Growling Tiger
Hill, Donald Calypso Callaloo
Hill, Errol Calypso and War
Holder, Winthrop Classroom Calypso
ISER Seminars on Calypso
Jacobs, Frank Port of Spain, Birthplace of Calypso
Khan, Nasser Cricket calypso
La Fortune, Claudette Hollis Liverpool and His Calypoes
La Rose, John Kaiso: calypso Music
Liverpool, Hollis Kaiso and Society
Liverpool, Hollis Rituals of Power and Rebellion
Liverpool, Hollis Kaisonians to Remember
Liverpool, Hollis From the Horse's Mouth
Liverpool, Hollis Carnival in TT
Liverpool, Hollis Essays on calypso
MacIntosh, Llewelyn Things running Thru mih Mind
Maharaj, George The Roots Of Calypso I
Maharaj, George The Roots Of Calypso II
Munroe, Hope What she go do [Calypso Rose]
Oblington, Percy The true history of Calypso
O'Marde, Dorbrene King Shortshirt: Nobody go run me
Ome, Aiyegoro Young Kings
Ottley, Rudolph Calypsonians from Then to Now II
Ottley, Rudolph Calypsonians from Then to Now III
Ottley, Rudolph Women in Calypso I
Ottley, Rudolph Women in Calypso II
Ottley, Rudolph Calypso Revue: 40 years
Ottley, Rudolph Ambatalia Women
Phillip, Everard The Poitical Calypso
Quevedo, Raymond Atilla's kaiso
Regis, Louis The Political Calypso
Regis, Louis Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Trinidad Calypso
Regis, Louis Maestro, True Master
Regis, Louis Black Stalin, Kaisonian
Regis, Louis Stalin
Roach, carl Tinidad Calypso
Rohlehr, Gordon Calypso and Society
Rohlehr, Gordon A Scuffling of Islands
Rohlehr, Gordon My whole Life is Calypso [Sparrow]
Smith, Keith Mighty Sparrow
Warner, Keith The Trinidad Calypso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSyncTYl6Wo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1D2BFg0o0Y
Trailers for the Lioness'
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Lester E Flax to Antigua and Barbuda
March 4 at 12:36 PM ·
By Dorbrene O’Marde
An interesting perspective on Pan:
PAN AS ICON: PRESERVING, CLAIMING, MARKETING1
(An address to the CARIFESTA V SYMPOSIUM, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago / August 1992)
ADDRESS TO Chair etc etc
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 short time 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'.
1 Topic selected by the SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE
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There are a number of accounts of the origin of steelband in Antigua. Names and dates may often differ from account to account. The account I give here draws on the work and reminiscences of a number of Antiguan panmen and/or researchers. This group includes Eustace Manning, Leroy 'Jughead' Gordon, Harold Lovell, Baldwin Spencer, Anthony 'Mamba' Liverpool and others. Much that is written can be found in various Carnival magazines or as newspaper features. There is space for a comprehensive history of the steelband movement in the country. Many of the pioneers are still alive, some still active. However, it is generally accepted that the sound of pan reached to Antigua before the pan did. 1946, a group of young men were returning to Antigua from Curacao on the schooner, 'Lady Boat' which stopped in Trinidad for passengers, cargo and water. The young men, on arriving in Antigua reported to others what they had seen and heard in Trinidad where the pan movement had already started unfolding. Youths in a depressed urban 'ghetto' called 'the Point' started experimenting and produced their variety of 'the pan'.
An actual Trinidadian pan reached Antigua months later through policemen returning from training programmes in Trinidad. It was more advanced that the Antigua creation. Its clarity especially, was remarkable. Communication between the Trinidad and Antigua movement was established informally, each absorbing creations from each other with ease – more notes, different pane, straps around the neck, two sticks, two sticks with rubber (Antiguan) etc. The social conflicts between the upper classes of society and the urban proletariat in each country are mirror images of each other. Government in Antigua passed laws allowing police to confiscate pans from people. A steelband Association was formed and argued that if Government was going to ban the steelpan which the Association considered an instrument, then it would have to ban organs, pianos, guitars and trumpets too.
The Antigua movement found champions in the middle and upper class. The names of Bertha Higgins and Commander Griffith are associated with this musical support for the movement. Support also came from British Governor Baldwin – a white official who seemed to have won the admiration of Antigua folk and who seemed to have constantly irritated the aristocratic elements of society. Baldwin passed a bill that allowed steelbands to play on the road anytime. Writers in Antigua purport that this act of Baldwin helped to ease similar pressures off the pan movement in Trinidad and Tobago at the time.
The Antigua Steelband Association predated the Government Steelband Committee formed here in Trinidad in 1949. The Antigua national steelband competition of 1949 with test piece 'Peanut Vendor' predated the Trinidad national competition. The Antigua steelband 'Brute Force' is the first steelband to be recorded commercially and produced on wax/records. Of interest is the fact that the singer on their record was Miss Dot Evans, a Trinidadian. Antigua also claims the first all-female steelband when in 1952 'uptown girls' – as they were referred to
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in those days, formed a band called 'Pastel Intruders'. They won acclaim with a rendition of 'Bells of St. Mary's', the same tune 'Casablanca' played to win the first national competition here in Trinidad.
Let me be careful and state clearly what I am doing and what I am not trying to do. I am not engaged in a me-first syndrome or battle here. I hope I am a little too smart to do that. I remember the furors caused here in 1986 when a colleague of mine had his remarks, made in a Symposium on Calypso, interpreted to mean that – 'calypso started in Barbados'. WOW! There are easier ways to commit suicide – even the Express editorial reacted sharply. What I am doing here is identifying parallel developments in two Caribbean countries – dissimilar in size and ethnic compositions but both with common African heritage. I wish to suggest that there important lessons for us Caribbean people to learn from experience, lessons about our similarities, our uniqueness, our common and therefore our imperative integrated future – 'even though Governments do on yet know this'. My thesis is that through our study of pan, the sociological movement in these two countries, Trinidad and Antigua, we can identify and highlight the natural affinity between us as a Caribbean people shaped by the same forces of forced dislocation, slavery, colonialism and present day capitalism. It is this affinity and similarity of peoples and nothing else that will form the basis for future Caribbean integration. No CET, no Common Currency nor whatever else is going to provide it.
Let me get to the point, by quoting J.D Elder from his study ' From Congo to Steelband' where in paraphrasing W. Austin Simmons, he has this to say about steelband;
'........ steelband as the latest link in a cultural chain stretching backwards for centuries into the dim past to primitive music, rich with the voices of African drums in the night, snatched up along with unsuspecting natives from the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Slave Coast, from Angola and Congo littoral swamps. But the musical instruments retained their basic percussional character though changing in form – skin drum, stamping tube, tambour bamboo, biscuit drum, dust bin, (iron band) and finally the steel drum. From Congo drum to steel drum – in unbroken continuity through centuries of human struggle for freedom .... to sing, dance and play masque'.
The steelband therefore can be seen as a manifestation of a cultural continuum, or as Elder continues:
'it is really the latest progeny out of a line of ancestral percussional instruments going backwards into ages and losing itself among the squeeze drum and the xylophones. The cultural chain is not broken'.
And now perhaps a little closer to the topic – 'Pan as Icon, image of heritage' – I think we covered that aspect – then comes there three words. 'Claiming', I have no problem with. We are too sophisticated a people today to have this creation stolen from us so many often African creations. Efforts like these seminars and the writings/recordings of our historians, cultural
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activists, intellectuals, musician themselves and journalists will strengthen are happening in the movement anywhere else in the world.
'Preserving', I am not too sure what we are preserving – as a matter of fact, the use of the term suggests that the development of pan, the musical instrument – is over; that pan has reached its physical limits and therefore has reached the zenith of its instrumentality. I am one who calls for the standardization of the pan, as instrument. I am also wary of the possibilities that standardization may lead to an end of experimentation with steel and fire and hammer and that rigid standardization may be, in a way, a limiting factor placed on our creativity. Maybe it is not time for the museum yet! Yes, the Antiguan 'black pan' and the double bar tone pan and the 'growler', pans that are no longer in use, can be preserved. 'Cherished' might be a more appropriate term.
And then this final word, 'marketing'. It is a word that I am scared of, especially when loosely bandied around culture and the arts. It is one of those words that can shroud all sorts of deviousness. What are we marketing? The art product – music made by musicians on the instrument, pan or the physical instrument itself? Or all of the above? If this is the case, then in normal circumstances I have very few problems with the word and the suggested activities for promoting both pan and pan music.
I have other fears because my interpretation of pan as icon, as image of heritage, does not stop here. For unlike many other cultural and art forms of the Region, this one is entirely ours... the instruments, the music, the organization, the arrangement and production of the music – all ours, and therefore demands certain respect and safeguarding. Its marketing cannot be without reference to the culture out of which it comes and the position it holds as an icon in our cultural and spiritual development. It must not be separated from the history or society out of which it comes, for unlike most other modern musical instruments, it is not a one-man, a single creator's or inventor's product. It is a social product and must be marketed as such, primarily to continue reinforcing our ownership of the invention and to protect it from degenerating into a musical debacle portraying us as 'tourists' see us – dancing, wining natives in big straw hats and clothes pretty like our postage stamps.
If the ancestral links remain as I have claimed, and the cultural continuum is not breached, then our history as a people is much older than five hundred years and should be in no way bound up too tightly with the varies of Columbus and other European manifestations of that ilk. This is one of the lessons I want marketed – the one that uses pan and pan movement to demonstrate in tangible ways that we are from a long line of civilization, with history, with culture, and that as a people, our history did not begin in the indignity of slavery. Pan proves that point to me and I want to market that proof, make it well known to all and sundry and politicians too for 'they do not yet know it'.
It is important that through 'pan', we explore the endurance and creativity of the 'lower social classes', which – without money, without training in the European sense, creates the only acoustic musical instrument for this century. What else lies dormant among us? What other
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immense possibilities and potential lie somewhere – hemmed in by dubious political leadership and the retarding technical and bureaucratic systems than dominate our lives. How come our leaders cannot find a common currency for the region and the lady outside the Jamaica airport can negotiate with George Lamming in the currency of his choice? The point is clear. The developments in culture and 'people economics' and many other fields indicates to me that we do have the potential and ability to solve many of the socio-economic problems facing the Caribbean if we only search for solutions in the right places, utilizing fully the resourcefulness of our Caribbean masses.
Are there no lessons for us from the pan movement in the way tunes are transmitted from one person to another in the panyard? - the teaching/learning interface. No lessons to inform the way we teach art; the way we teach drama or dance or piano or guitar? I doubt that – there must be. Is there nothing to learn from social organization of the steelband with its arranger and sponsor and captains and trainers and part-time musicians who could be doctor-lawyers- beggarman-thief, dockworker, clerk, male or female, young or old? No lessons for our social workers, our social workers, our organization and management specialists, our psychiatrists, our politicians? Panwomen suggest that they are afforded unqualified respect and equality in the panyard, something that certainty does not occur in the wider society. We should know why. Or find out.
I say yes to 'claiming'. There are so many other lessons to be drawn from the movement. What human character traits make this movement possible? What is the source of spirituality and confidence which inspire people who are not 'musically trained' to approach Kitchener and Bach, on the same day, in the same clothes, on the same instruments, with the same facility and creativity as they do Marley or Coltrane or Hancock?
I say 'marketing' yes – but for ourselves, for our regional and total human development – not to satisfy the mundane needs of individuals bored with their own countries and life styles, who came here calling themselves tourists; certainly not for the fickle industry which supports and encourages the movement of these bored vagrants, tourism; certainly not for the satisfaction of the world's ethnomusicologists who refer to our music as primitive or lump it into a weird category called 'world music', a music different and therefore inferior to 'theirs'. I have seen what 'marketing' has done to calypso – how it has turned a most valued and valid art form into one that has 'gone international' – whatever that means, and how this 'internationalizing' of the artform has reduced the lyrical content of the music to the lowest and perhaps most base common denominator of all – 'jam and wine and party and wave'. Perhaps we do have some time, although not much to protect pan from similar marketing ravages.
The role of the artist and I quote Laz Ekweme from his pamphlet 'African Sources in New World Black Music' -
'... is to continue to preserve the heritage and perpetuate those lasting bands that take him back to the original homeland...must seek out and capture that power that lies in the knowledge of his art and culture, his religion, his history and above all, the three dimensional soul of his music, so that the extraordinary strength of his cultural genius
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will – in spite of the demeaning influences of external forces, triumphantly continue to endure.'
Pan as icon, as image and reality of heritage has an important role to play in the unification of these Caribbean lands. Yes, it must continue to make music but that music must encourage common movements of a common dance and united future. I thank you.
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago / August 1992 CARIFESTA Symposium
COMMENT
The great Trinidadian musician GUILLERMO ANTONIO PROSPECT2 was in the audience and came to defence of my understanding of the development of pan in Antigua vs Trinidad (last Page 2) – after a number of persons in the audience challenged my positions mainly from xenophobic/nationalist perspectives. They all retreated after he spoke. The Symposium was broadcast live in Woodford Square and although I did not hear this personally – I was told it generated much discussion there.
2 Prospect began a long relationship with the steelbands of Trinidad when he formed the first steelband in the police force. He composed the test pieces for Steelband Music Festivals in 1966 (Intermezzo in Eb) and 1972 (Maracas Bay). He wrote the score for the film "The Right and the Wrong" and included steelband music. In 1978, he produced an album for the Renegades Steelband after touring South America with the band. In 1981, he was the musical director and conductor of the Desperadoes Steelband in its tour of England. In addition to conducting, he arranged the music for the Casablanca Steelband at the 1980 and 1982 Music Festivals with "Zampa Overture" (2nd Place) and "1812 Overture" (1st Place), respectively. He retired as the Police bandmaster in 1982 but continued to compose many pieces of music for the steelband. During the 1990s, he did the musical notations for Panoramas and Music Festivals as the steelband consultant to the Inter-Cultural Music Institute, a joint venture of the University of the West Indies and the United National Development Programme.
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