Attention: Mr. Nigel Williams and the management of Massy Trinidad All Stars, La Famille United Steel Orchestra would like to take this opportunity to thank you for sponsoring La Famille for Panorama 2017. Information from the past, it has never been done before having a large band sponsor a single pan band. We just wanted to express our appreciation for your contribution to our band.
Yours truly,
ROGER WHITEMAN
MANAGER
PANORAMA ACHIEVERS CAN BOOST TOURISM AND REVENUE
By: SANDRA L BLOOD
Official Panorama 2017 preliminary large band results were released on February 6th, and like students who wrote an exam seeing themselves, their parents, relatives and friends keenly awaiting results, the anxiety comes to an end…a sigh of relief, the first is done!
Some achievers would have passed with distinctions, some, credits and some, merely qualifying establishing a specific chosen to advance to a higher level preparing for a more intense exam.
But while some critics note highest achievers, yearly, are from the same type of schools, record shows that these achievers gain student and revenue traction for the schools.
And so, following the just-concluded Panorama prelims large-band exam, last year’s champ, Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, topped the qualifying list, ironically seeing on a February 7th When Steel Talks blog, Claude Gonzales asserting that, “Over the last 12 years, no band outside of the North has won Panorama,” questioning if “it’s a North band talent, or a North band bias.”
Suffice it to say, all band members and diehard supporters, unstintingly root for their respective bands to the point where there is the belief that impartiality does not exist as it relates to adjudication, but as difficult as it is for more than half of the USA to accept Donald J Trump’s presidential style, so it is difficult to believe that Panorama judges mark fairly.
But it’s all part of human nature.
Questions and concerns emerge, as bands advancing to the semi-final round, related marks and placings are recognized, bringing a mixture of emotions – shock, disappointment, satisfaction, sadness, anger, joy, disbelief – to manifest in various quarters.
Money or no money, Greens or no Greens; Pan Trinbago or National Carnival Committee-led, the Panorama exams are continuing with 58 bands – 30 small, and 14 medium and large, respectively – to be appraised come February 12th.
With the Large category viewed as the key pillar and selling pitch for Panorama, and the semi-finals on a whole, a most critical meet, arrangers are back to the drawing board.
Revision, being objective, adjustments, some scolding, new work, motivation and improved discipline, are the core principles adopted to impressively beef-up performance and ratings during this leg.
Respectful of the sacrifices made to satisfactorily survive to the middle and final exams more so, excel at, as similar to the academic achievers of their gruelling school exams who boost their school’s brand and financial support, the achievers of the Panorama gruelling music exams, especially at Finals, must be able to ameliorate tourism and augment revenue during the year of their success by way of being aptly recognized, well-marketed, receiving endorsements, attracting lucrative business and markets, being ambassadors for the nation and a global eminent face of the artform.
Trinidad and Tobago, is the ‘mecca’ of pan!
For 2017-18, how many tourists is pan to attract, and projected revenue?
A tall order the weak and visionless might think, but this assures of meaningful job opportunities as similar also, to when students succeed academically.
This plethora of breath-taking, pronounced music presented year-after-year, during this under-rated yet potential state-of-the-art production called Panorama, underscores the need to place immeasurable value on these competitions – a branding and marketing forum where, despite whatever rumblings, challenges or adversity befall the organizers, the world anticipates, sits-up and witnesses a pan product like no other, when steel orchestras in Trinidad and Tobago take centre stage.
Presently, the 58 semi-finalists within their categories, are readying themselves to see who will get a passing grade in their categories but equally important, persevere to the finals, making themselves automatically available to become T&T’s tourism and revenue boosters 2017-2018.
"Passion, precision, percussion. The panman dedicates sleepless nights and countless hours to memorizing arrangements of calypsos for competition, the Panorama. The necessity for that element of competition in Carnival is still being debated." Photo © 1997, Cyan Studios Ltd. Excerpted from the book, Return to Kairi: A Trinidad & Tobago Journey (Port of Spain: Jett Samm Publishing, 1998)
I am a steelpan fan, not necessarily an overt steelpan junkie, but I do appreciate the music born here in Trinidad and Tobago and that sound that makes that original music. This is ours, and once a year, we can all participate in a festival that not only celebrates that sound, but reminds those who are sensitive to the subliminal signs of what steelband researcher Kim Johnson called “the audacity of creole imagination.” The annual Panorama competition has increasingly become a “must do” option for Carnival because, to me, it is more than music, it is history and individual biography, it is sociology and science, rhythm and motion, it is tonic and elixir for Carnival. It is fun. I become a “people observer” trying to create stories out of the snippets of overheard conversations, and the sights and sounds of this organised chaos that we call Trinidad Carnival.
First things first: Trinidad Carnival is not a spectator sport but a participatory event, or a series of participatory events: soca fêtes, costume masquerade, pre-dawn j'ouvert, soca and calypso competitions, and the Panorama. Panorama Finals, a celebration of and a competition among the best steelbands nationally happens in the Queens Park Savannah in Port of Spain—or the Big Yard, as we refer to it locally—on the Saturday before Carnival. It includes bands from all over the islands performing eight-minute arrangements of calypsos, although one is now more likely to hear arrangements of soca songs increasingly composed by the steelband arrangers who don't normally produce songs to compete in the hustle and bustle of carnival music.
The Panorama Final is the end of a series of gatherings that awaken a spirit that anybody can partake of. If you are in the island early enough, about 3 weeks before the Carnival days, one can do a panyard crawl to sample the sounds and sights of that urban space where late-night practice makes for a blending of musical dexterity, rote learning devoid of the fully understood theory, and wilful determination towards an oft elusive Panorama champion title. As in the football World Cup, there are just a few winners in the history of Panorama, but that has not stopped bands from all corners of the island from competing for the idea of Panorama champion. Arguments about “who play better,” and “who had more excitement in the pan”, and “that is not a tune for Panorama” resonate for months after Carnival is over. Panorama is more than music.
Panorama is music in motion. Panorama is an awakening of sensibilities that give us permission to behave badly. Music and movement and emotion all in one. The motion of the players rocking and grooving to the sound and rhythm of the engine room, the percussive centre of the steelband. The motion of the fans dancing to this music, percolating at a clip rhythm that guarantees body and tempo should become one. Dancing is inevitable. Dancing in time with the music, more so. Chipping (slow steady sliding steps as you move forward with the bands) and to a lesser extent, wining (sexy and suggestive gyrating of the hips, preferably with a partner), and jumping up (vertical with hands in the air, and in time with the music) are the dances of carnival and the dances inspired by pan music. Shoes, then, become mandatory. Slippers may work, but if pedicures are important, sneakers are better.
When you consider that the early Panorama preliminaries in the 1960s were judged “on the move”—with steelbands in racks being pushed on wheels by partisan supporters from the community—you may question whether we have gone backwards or away from our Caribbean instinct to move. Now we have bands being judged in a static formation on a stage, facing one direction, orchestra-like, in defiance to the urge to jump up. What ends are we serving, a European ideal for conformity or a Caribbean reality for participation, joy and movement? I guess the answer can be better considered depending where you are seeing and hearing the Panorama. For we do have a couple options: the drag or the stands.
The action, the real action takes place on “the drag,” a strip of tarmacadam that wends its way in and out of the Savannah passing in front of the Grand Stand, an evolution of the old horse racing grandstand. (The original was demolished in 2006 to be rebuilt as a clone in 2011). That original pavilion for Sport of Kings birthed a sister stand, the North Stand, which has become the playground of and a magnet for the imitative “mimic men” of the middle classes, pretenders looking to become one with the people. Between the drag and the North Stand, you can sense what the atmosphere of true liberation—and libation—the Panorama can be.
The North Stand is the fun place to be if you're is liming in the stands. A cacophony of rhythmic iron clanging, hand drumming and bottle and spoon beating makes for a noisy air of communal spirit and activity that one may find at an EDM festival or Glastonbury maybe. In Trinidad, rum rules, and the idea of the primacy of music is slowly giving way to the idea of a new kind of hedonism that travel writers casually describe as a selling point for Caribbean people.
All this pleasure becomes evident when you're on the drag. From this vantage point, you can hear all the bands do a final practice performance of their competition tune and it's all free. Restriction and freedom are two opposites that shaped Trinidad history. At Panorama, on the drag, they live side by side to shape what we see and hear. Food and drink, drink and food, the cuisine of the casual participant is the fuel for what seems to be an endless celebration. Time has no boundaries at Panorama. The Panorama semi-final, an important milestone in the series as this allows for a gauge of what is possible and what is really happening in steelband music is normally a 14-hour event starting before mid day!
Panorama, to some, is the apotheosis of the steelband. To others, it reflects a growing decay of the communal spirit associated with the movement and a movement. Commercialism ;and a kind of redundancy, and a number of alternative events have eaten away at some of the appeal of Panorama. But for me, it is a rekindling of hope that we are masters of our domain, not necessarily conforming to the dictates of gatekeepers that rule media and creative enterprises. It is our little rebellion. Our fantasy that for a day, after many days and nights in those panyards, those crucibles of creativity and sweat and fire, we as a nation can make something that will last the test of time. It is also our chaotic and fervent and rhythmic moment when time stands still, literally—we can all move as one to the beat.
* Originally published in the January/February 2017 issue of Caribbean Beat Magazine
© 2017, Nigel A. Campbell. All rights Reserved.
PANORAMA SHAPING-UP TO BE THE BEST BUT…
By: SANDRA L BLOOD
(Written: Feb 2, 2017)
Panorama 2017 got off the ground, and is in full swing, this, in the midst of the 2016 non-payment controversy that intensified on January 2, 2017 at the Massy All Stars panyard, pointing towards the executive of the pan governing body, Pan Trinbago, to demit office, compounded by the threat, then, of “no Panorama 2017”.
Despite a delayed start, Single-pan bands have already been fully adjudicated, with Medium and Large preliminaries just completed.
Pan, as a conduit to direct or re-direct youth on a path of discipline, is one of the nation’s crime-prevention ‘apparatuses’ – “pick-up a panstick instead of a gun” – but with payment failures and squabbles, it leaves many to conclude that pan does not seem a viable option at this time.
Sending a distinct message to those called upon to responsibly manage the affairs of and improve the pan fraternity, panists have indicated that the love of pan goes without say, but want the world to know that they are resilient, loyal to the artform, want to do better, and understand the need for and benefits of the competition, and despite the psychological trauma assaulted on them from this resting impasse, they have risen to the challenge – they are ensuring a good Panorama happens.
Thus, the high caliber of music already adjudicated on, no doubt, being testimony that all is well with the musical trajectory – which creates or boosts the competition itself – then, why is there this perennial problem of ineffective payment to bands when yearly, the music gets more superior? What are the Public Relations and Sales teams really selling?
Panists are aware of the power, full potential, salability, and lucrativeness of pan.
“The best way out is always through”, says deceased American poet, Robert Lee Frost, and so, panists are hoping the comptrollers find “the best way out” of this honorarium dilemma if they are to stay in.
A heavy burden to bear, these music service providers, have consistently felt the wrath, pain, disrespect and humiliation of being “always through” the managerial, accountability and integrity debilities of those ‘large’ and in charge.
The clarion call: to be respected and considered worthy – be fully paid, if not promptly after competition, then within three weeks thereafter.
While it’s unclear what the size or aesthetics of the ‘Big Yard’ [savannah] would reflect for the ‘world’s biggest pan party’ come February 12th, from all indications given quality music, this year’s Panorama is shaping-up to be the best, but does that guarantee that the event will generate a substantial profit?
The Panorama Financial Statement when published within six weeks after carnival, will advise upon.
Chairman Kenny DeSilva, head of the NCC [National Carnival Committee] – under whose purview Panorama lies – has already outlined new [and hopefully improved] changes to Panorama VIP patrons as it relates to the effective management of complimentary tickets and liberal use of refreshments …but will this change derive profit?
Not just the arrangement of tunes, but the original tunes themselves are triggering a natural party high, which has proven to attract more patrons to the ‘big yard’, especially when the top three bands are playing any of them.
The top bands currently in winner’s row (from 2016) – Desperadoes, reigning and 11-time Panorama champs; Supernovas, history-making second-place; and Renegades, hat-trick and nine-time champs tied with Phase 2 – are bracing for stiff competition.
Like the Next Top Model: who will be the Next Top Three Bands?... is the burning question pan lovers, worldwide, are asking.
Word has reached me that my expression of disappointment with the speed at which CAL Invaders delivered their rendition at the Oval Car Park at the Preliminaries for the Large Bands Category has hurt or even angered members of the Invaders fraternity.
I take this opportunity to unreservedly apologize for the negativity it has caused and to stress that there was absolutely no malice meant.
I remain
Yours respectfully
CHAIRMAN – NORTHERN REGION
