Blog 2.0

The steel pan still fascinates me as an industrial musical instrument that has the potential to be as commonplace as the electric guitar or portable electronic keyboard. Portability, short learning curve relative to traditional music learning experience, and ease of manufacture seem to be the factors that make the two aforementioend so popular. Some recent innovations by local entrepreneurs are intersting: The P.H.I.® by UWI-based engineers and the e-Pan™ by Toronto-based Salmon Cupid. Both are controllers for synthesizers as opposed to organic instruments, but innovation like this should be encouraged as the music instrument manufacturing industry in the US alone was worth at least US$2 billion in total domestic demand. Globally, the numbers can rival our budget, and the sky's the limit. Smarter persons than I would be needed to advise and move the process of exploitation further along.

Some other innovations of the pan harken back to the original instrument, then a small instrument moulded out of a kerosene drum with a playing surface on a convex shape, and played with the hands. According to the chronnology, the rudimentary pan was played with the hands then the raw stick then padded stick. The European innovaters Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer (PANArt Hangbau AG), started a "re-evolution", to coin a 3CANAL phrase, back to the future. Their instrument, the Hang was followed by The Halo, as well as the Hank, and its derivatives, the HAPI drum, the TurtlePan and the Zen Tambour. All are American innovations. There exists a community of "handpan" players, enthusiasts and innovators.

What has struck me about these new organic instruments is the size. Compact and portable are two features that seem to factor into the popularity of musical instruments. The size of violin versus a double bass may tell of its popularity as an instrument of learning and practice for a number of students outside the music school or auditorium space. So too, the trumpet, saxophone and many reed and horn instruments. I looked at pannist Mikhail Salcedo playing a G-pan family member instrument at Ibiza once, and was struck by its larger size relative to the conventional tenor pan that he normally plays; 26.5 inches for the G-pan compared with 23 inches in the conventional pan. Granted there was a wider range of pitches in the instruments even if there were some pitch problems on the lower notes. That evolution in pan does not seem to be moving in the direction of recent innovations in musical instrument design.

What's the phrase: "It's not the size of the instrument, but how you use it." Electronics manufacturers are churning out tablets and smart phones with 4 - 7 inch screens to view streaming movies on the go. In the right environment and space, one can view a movie on 65 inch LED screens in 3D. The same can be said of the G-pan family, as an orchestral instruments it may be apt, but the new innovations in design point to these compact "handpans", all of which are being created overseas. There is as yet no mass movement towards this class of instruments, but as the home of the steelpan, our vision should be on a horizon where anyone and everyone can buy and play a pan because it's easy to play, easy to handle, relatively inexpensive and readily available online and elsewhere.

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Further Notes by Nigel Campbell on Facebook

PAN HYSTERIA?
Nationals of Trinidad and Tobago let out a collective gasp at the Trinidad Expresss newspaper report by Terry Joseph last month entitled "Pan Shocker" detailing the successful patent by two Americans, Maryland-based George Whitmyre and Harvey J. Price of Delaware for the "Production of the Caribbean Steel Pan." Readers were then hurriedly corresponding with newspapers and opining on electronic media talk shows on the temerity of these two Yankees—read: white men— patenting we own t'ing. "The sweat of the Black man's brow has now been owned by these Americans who have the considerable backing of the US government against all challenges," was how one writer approached TanTan, "much like how they try to thief Lord Invader's Rum and Coca Cola."

The patent document, available online at the US Patent Office's website, outlines the applicants' claim for using a hydro-forming process to make a pan that is consistent and efficient to produce, along with modifications to facilitate transportation, storage and tuning. A few things are apparent from a cursory look at the document:

1. First, the patent was granted since April 10, 2001, a year before the article broke in the Express. 
2. Second, no reference is made to Trinidad and Tobago, but to the more general Caribbean. (We have since heard that the Trinidad and Tobago government is seeking to trademark the name so that all comers will recognise the birthplace of pan.)

The inventors also cite as their only steel pan reference, a pan tuning book written by Swedish pan enthusiast and tuner, Ulf Kronman. And this is where things fall apart! That book on pan tuning was the first such published internationally back in 1992. At that point, we failed to recognise the slow release on the grip of ownership of the idea and culture of pan. Collateral material—books, CDs, score sheets—and the assets of cultural production were ceded by inaction or executive fiat, to "foreigners" to reap the profits of our labours. We missed the boat in encouraging local participation in the process at that point. The international industry in cultural marketing was a void to persons in Trinidad and Tobago. Those trying to breach were called traitors; just ask Ellie Mannette.

DC-based Trinidad-born lawyer, Nigel Scott, who specializes in intellectual property matters first expressed to this writer that this is hysteria. Scott notes that patents are country specific, and so far there is only the US patent on record which speaks to the limitation of claim by the inventors. My counter argument to him that the US represents a large potential market for the inventors' manufactured instrument speaks to the difference in vision between Trinbagonians and Americans; where we see fête and bacchanal, Americans see money! Living in America, as we do, is to be bombarded with ideas and concepts which, useful or not, represent the hegemony of US inventiveness and marketing. By example, Spain will be forever known as the birthplace of the classical guitar, whereas the innovation of the electric guitar, an American invention, has been the catalyst for the rock and roll industry and by extension, the profitable global music industry. Market forces drive industries, not legalisms.

A challenge to the patent is forthcoming from the noises of government ministers, mainly Legal Affairs Minister Camille Robinson-Regis under whose portfolio intellectual property falls. The intellectual property protocols are still being negotiated by the WTO, but examples such as this show our vulnerablty. The legal culture in Trinidad and Tobago, which is not necessarily proactive but reactive allows for effective incursions by others into the creative assets of the islands. Challenges to patents, within the statute of limitations, are always part of the process of patenting. Examples from India, backed by large Indian corporations and research centres, show how Third World nations have successfully reversed patents for cultural by-production of native assets awarded to US companies.

In our case, much of the research on using the hydro-forming process to make a pan was done by CARIRI and the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine by Clement Imbert and others in the 1970s. Their reluctance or inability to apply for a patent on their innovations may be indicative of the malaise of the society. (Petty politics and funding have been suggested.) The hysteria that Scott speaks of is a symptom of the late recognition by our citizens to the gap between industrial societies like the US and Europe and "client cultures" like our own. At the end of the day, guitar music and instrument production, and its profit are the domain of America, not Iberia. Can we be far behind in this example? Unlike Spain, in the previous example, we do not have a documented cultural heritage of centuries to fall back on. A "work of mas" had to be defined by the Swedish consultant to the government on the reformation of our intellectual property laws in the 1990s! Such are our legal minds.

Intellectual property is not something to be glibly laid bare for all-comers to exploit. This patent, Production of a Caribbean Steel Pan, is possibly the first step in a series of patents to streamline the production of the instrument to take advantage of economies of scale between handmade and assembly line production. Quality counts in the ethereal realm, quantitiy counts in dollar and cents: whose side do you want to be on?
Source: Campbell, Nigel A. "Pan Hysteria?" TanTan 1(2) (May 2002): 4. Print.

• Patent Title (US Patent#)
• Pan musical instruments and methods for making same (7745711)
• Soprano steel pan set and associated methods (7696421)
• G-Pan musical instrument (7750220)
• Electronic synthesized steelpan drum [e-Pan™] (7030305)
• Cycle of fifths steel pan (6750386) Reversed
• Portable steel drums and carrier (5973247) Lapsed
• Steel pan musical instrument (D496959) Design patent
• Steel pan tablature system and associated methods (7842872)
• Music teaching tool for steel pan and drum players and associated methods (7799983)
• Apparatus for Percussive Harmonic Musical Synthesis Utilizing Midi Technology [P.H.I.®] (Application number: 12/438,980)
• Electronic Input Device for Use with Steel Pans and Associated Methods (Application number: 12/908,461)