Blog 2.0

A tribute to Starlift & Ray Holman

Lyrics By Henry O. Miller.   https://henryomiller.com

THE PEOPLE SAY THAT WE BEATING SWEET

HAVE PEOPLE WILD IN THE STREETS

NOW PANMEN WANT TO DICTATE

WHAT ALL STEETBANDS SHOULD BEAT

WOMEN SHAKING WAISE

GOING CRAZY IN THE PLACE

STILL, THEY MASH-UP WE TENOR

AND DESTROYED WE BASE

BUT IT’S WE THEY WANT TO SPOIL

AFTER YEARS OF TOIL

BUT THEY CAN’T MAKE THE GRADE

WE WERE NOT AFRAID - AFTER

ALL WAS SAID AND DONE

WE CAME BACK WITH -PAN ON THE RUN

IT WAS ADVANTAGE

THEY WENT ON A RAMPAGE

IT WAS PAN ON THE RUN

FOR EVERY MAN AND WOMAN

THEY SAY PAN ON THE MOVE

STILL, PAN-MEN DISAPPROVE

BIG FIGHT!  CARNIVAL SUNDAY NIGHT

IT WAS A BURNING SHAME

BUT PANMEN GOT THEMSELVES TO BLAME

TELL ME WHY WE CAN’T COMPOSE

BUT BETAT PENNEY LANE

WHAT PANMEN DIDN’T UNDERSTAND

STARLIFT WANTED TO ADVANCE PAN

FROM THE BIG YARDS TO

THE CONCERT HALLS OF THE LAND

BUT IT’S WE THEY COULDN’T SPOIL

WE CONTINUED TO TOIL

WE WERE NOT AFRAID

WE STILL MADE THE GRAD

AFTER ALL THEIR FIGHTING AND CONFUSION

WE CAME BACK WITH PAN ON THE RUN

IT WAS ADVANTAGE

THEY WENT ON A RAMPAGE

IT WAS PAN ON THE RUN

FOR EVERY MAN AND WOMAN

THEY SAY PAN ON THE MOVE

STILL, PAN-MEN DISAPPROVE

BIG FIGHT!  CARNIVAL SUNDAY NIGHT

NOW PAN HAS COME A LONG WAY

PAN AND PANMENMEN ARE HERE TO STAY

BUT WE MUST NEVER FORGET D HISTORY & YESTERDAY

THANKS - FOR YOUR BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS

AND WHAT WILL ALWAYS BE THE GOLDEN YEARS

THANK YOU - RAY HOLMAN, THANK YOU

FOR YOUR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS.

Henry O. Miller © - 1972  + 6 Revival singers.

Island Jazz Chat is a Jazz in the Islands podcast featuring conversations with Caribbean jazz and panjazz musicians based in the islands and the diaspora. For more, click here.

Andy Narell, globe-trotting and pioneering steelpan jazz musician, composer and arranger chats about his beginnings in the world of steelpan in the 1960s, and the evolution of the sound that he is leading in the 2020s with a new sample library of steelpan instruments created by the legendary master tuner Ellie Mannette. And everything in between. From the West Coast of America to Trinidad to South Africa, to the French Antilles and Japan, the Narell sound and music is a standard for many on how the business of steelpan jazz performance and recording operates. Caribbean and Latin American rhythms, African pulses, post bop references all colour his music, and with a prolific output of recordings, steelpan jazz is part of the global jazz conversation. Wed, 21 Sep 2022

• Programme Date: 21 September 2022
• Programme Length: 01:31:10

If you can't see the embedded podcast player, click here for the podcast. 

Island Jazz Chat is a Jazz in the Islands podcast featuring conversations with Caribbean jazz and panjazz musicians based in the islands and the diaspora. For more, click here.

Victor Provost, from St John, USVI, has been variously described as a "rising steelpan master...whose refreshing melodic approach to soloing on the pan is wholly steeped in the jazz tradition," and "living proof of the nuance and versatility of the [steelpan]." In this chat, Victor discusses his beginnings, his influences and the practicality and privilege of "being in the right place at the right time" to develop both a performing and recording career that continues to build receptive audiences. Solo albums, collaborations and featured sideman duties over a two decade professional career are explored. Sun, 28 Aug 2022

• Programme Date: 28 August 2022
• Programme Length: 01:58:10

If you can't see the embedded podcast player, click here for the podcast. 

I lost my sister this year, around the time when it would have been Carnival and there was instead "A Taste of Carnival". I'm still processing the loss but wanted to share this as it speaks of a big part of her and of me-our love for pan.I think anyone who reads this shares that love.  Do enjoy and respect the copyright!

12^th POEM FOR LISA

There was no Carnival this year

A blessing for me a curse for others

Carnival was your time

You loved the music, the colour, the shedding of identity

The happy abandonment of routine daily life

The music that stayed in your ears for days after the season had ended.

You left and once you returned

To nest in the land where you cracked the egg of life

You visited the panyards every year

Like one of the faithful on a pilgrimage

You reveled in every note, every repetition of the song played

Your delight was visible, palpable, contagious…

I shared that love with you as children, adolescents, women

That excitement and wonder

At the miracle of pan and steelband

And I made my own pilgrimage when I could.

On the last real Carnival two years ago

We met in a panyard, danced and continued our separate pilgrimages

And on the big night in the big yard

I, in the audience looked for you among the crowds

Pushing pan onto the stage

In an orderly chaos

I saw you helping the pans of our band to get there

To settle and begin to dazzle

That was your joy- the track, pushing pan onto the stage

One of so many who needed to do that

Like a mother rooting for her beloved child

My joy was the track, then the stands to listen and cheer.

To have a Carnival this year while you slowly expired

Would have been painful, unbearable, unthinkable for me

So I thank the stars for sparing me this year

Next year I will cope and dance one for you.

©Denise Haynes

March 22 2022

Island Jazz Chat is a Jazz in the Islands podcast featuring conversations with Caribbean jazz and panjazz musicians based in the islands and the diaspora. For more, click here.

Panman, steelpan virtuoso, steeldrum musician. Just don't call Annise 'Halfers' Hadeed a "pannist". He is more than that! This important musician and recording artist from Trinidad and Tobago, now resident in the U.K., has been blazing a trail in the jazz scene there, as well as contributing significantly to the Caribbean presence there as an award winning steelband arranger. He made his recording debut in the 1980s with The Breakfast Band, and recorded, toured and performed widely in the U.K. & Europe, the US, and the Caribbean, as part of a new wave of Caribbean jazz talent, reinforcing the work of pioneer kaisojazz musicians like Clive Zanda and Russell Henderson, and moving the music forward with important collaborations that put the steelpan at the forefront of a new jazz aesthetic. Wed, 10 Aug 2022.

• Programme Date:10 August 2022
• Programme Length: 01:32:28

If you can't see the embedded podcast player, click here for the podcast.

By Ajamu Nyomba, Ph.D.

and Kiara Nyomba,  M.Ed., CCC-SLP

It’s A New Day: Influence of the Steelpan and Steelpan Players Across Music Genres, Pan People Steelband’s Different Drums Steelpan Experience Spring 2022 production, was held on July 26. The production highlighted the steelpan, its history and its influence in the music of popular artists from various genres. From the Beetles to Earl Rodney to Cardi B, steelpan has made a major contribution to music and thus the story had to be told (see full song list in Appendix I).

Since it was a major production it involved loading and transporting instruments, props, back drops, etc. to the library, a short distance away but it still required manpower and coordination. Of course the break-down, clean-up, transporting instrument and equipment back to the Pan Studio and on to racks and storage (which may take several days) was even more tedious because most players were tired having worked most of the day putting things together.  I didn’t have time to contribute to the clean-up/pack-up because my mind was on Trinidad. I left Atlanta for Trinidad on July 31 in time for the August 1st  COVID-shortened Emancipation parade and activities. In a sense that was a relief because attendance at our show was also impacted by COVID concerns.

I planned to complete the story underlying It’s A New Day while I was in Trinidad. But I found myself too immersed being on my block and with my band to focus on putting some context to the contemporary Royal issues and the underlying omissions of British history pertaining to the Beatles which I uncovered as I conducted research for It’s A New Day.

It’s A New Day for Sister Rukia Imani who wrote the song It’s A New Day in 1984, one of the songs on her Faith for My Mind Album with S.O.L.A.R.(Source of Light Arkestral Revelation.) Rukia transitioned September 10, 2021 before getting the recognition she deserved as one of Atlanta’s best Jazz singers/songwriters.

It’s A New Day is also in memory of the countless steelpan players who paved the way for the international spread of the instrument beginning with TASPO in 1951.

Dey say pan have a jumbie! This time the jumbie was on our side.

In 2019, we sought funding for the It’s A New Day project. Unfortunately, we were ineligible because we received funding in 2018. That year made a big difference since the resulting project enabled us to incorporate the intersection between the Queen’s Jubilee and issues related to historic racism in the UK.

It’s A New Day brings to the fore what my good Brethren Felton calls, cultural inequity. It’s all around us! Welcome to the jungle of funding for Black artists in Atlanta (and in general). The “New” Arts Exchange was opened in 2018. We occupied a studio at the “Old” Arts Exchange from 1997 to 2013. We may have been one of the last tenants to leave the building. We were not notified about initiatives to obtain a new building. Further, I was a participant in many of the discussions to sustain the Arts Exchange and address issued related to years of financial mismanagement by staff.

The It’s A New Day project also reflects on our struggles in Atlanta. Pan People Steelband has literally been struggling for survival since the group began in 1986. From a garage to an attic to a community center, finally to our own studio--- we survived through the goodness of members of the community.

It’s A New Day as we big up the Narvie Puls founder of the Omenala Griot Afrocentric Teaching Museum and Alvin Dollar, then the director of the Dunbar Neighborhood Center, for their contribution to our survival in Atlanta’s West End. Just south of the Atlanta University Center, that area has several black-owned health food eateries including the now famous Tassili’s Raw Reality, Caribbean Vegan, Soul Vegetarian, several barber and beauty shops and small merchandise shops. This is the heart of Atlanta’s progressive Black community, noted for several summertime festivals and organizations such as the Shrine of the Black Madonna (chapel, bookstore, apartment complex) the Hebrew Israelites and a large Muslim community.  

The neighborhood remains marginalized though the Tyler Perry Studios is now a major fixture in the West End occupying some 300 acres of the former Fort McPherson military base. Even Bishop T.D. Jakes is capitalizing on the situation by acquiring some 75 acres of the former military base and adding real estate to his gospel of prosperity.   

Although ours were not physical struggles such as in Brixton, Notting Hill and on Charlotte Street in the 1960s. Nor were they as dangerous as travelling by train to and from work and school during the train “riots” of the late 1960s which endangered the lives of commuters between Curepe and Port of Spain. But our struggles were real, even against the carnival organizers and other segments of the Atlanta expatriate community.

Evolving out of those struggles were steelbands such as Scherzando, Sforzata, Potential Symphony and others. But for a time the Sharks of Curepe and the Cubans of San Juan/Barataria struggled for turf on the East-West Corridor (now the Priority).

It’s A New Day as the steelband movement reflects on the economic well-being especially of our ageing artists juxtaposed against the true beneficiaries of the instrument -- sponsors, producers, the one-percenters and others.

It’s A New Day for the public to know that the Queen and Prince Philip were not the only “celebrities” who developed an interest in the steelpan. In their youth, Mick Jagger and John Lennon had an interesting relationship with pan. Apparently Mick Jagger would frequent Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival and, more likely than not, play mas with his friend and one of the country’s top mas men, Stephen Leung.

It’s A New Day and the celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Anniversary benefits steelpan players from the UK and Trinidad and showcases the instrument on an international level. That should not obfuscate the fact that, when she became queen, Her Royal Highness continued the leadership that exploited devastated millions of people on the continents of Africa, India and China. Stolen Empires!

It’s A New Day when in 1976, I was fortunate to play a tenor pan with the short-lived New York Harmonites when they opened for Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at a celebrity cricket match at the Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey.

This was not my first recording because my band, Solo Harmonites, recorded an album with 10 songs every year between 1989 and 1995. The recording with S.O.L.A.R. may be one of the first or at least one of the early recordings of steelpan tracks on a jazz album in Atlanta.

In 1975, for the New York segment of their US tour; the Rolling Stones used 100 pan players from the top steelbands in Brooklyn. The show in Madison Square Garden ran for six days with the 100 pan players steelband playing together and in smaller ensembles in different segments of the show. The use of hydraulics and lighting enhanced the performance of the entire 100 piece orchestra and the sub-groups into which they were divided.

But let’s go back to the Brits because there is more Trini-type “comess” and “racism by omission” with the story of the Beatles in Liverpool. It is said that the young John Lennon and Mick Jagger were among the first “steelband roadies” as they followed Lord Woodbine.

Who was this Lord Woodbine? I have not yet seen the new movies on the Beatles but Woodbine has been strategically left out of British History. (Much of this information was posted by Pan Times in October 2013.)

The punch line in the story is Lord Woodbine was not a “lord” in the aristocracy sense but in the calypso sense. Calypsonian Lord Woodbine was born in Trinidad in 1928. His real name was Harold Phillips. He was only 14 years when he joined the RAF. After the war he went back home to Trinidad then returned to England in 1948 on the now infamous MV Empire Windrush which brought close to 500 Caribbean citizens, including children, to the UK purportedly to help address labor shortages after the War.

Back in Liverpool, Woodbine was a singer, songwriter, promoter, and nightclub owner. In 1958, he was a member of the All-Steel Caribbean Band when the teenagers who became the Beatles started hanging around. They could be considered the first “steelband roadies” and Woodbine provided a foundation for the young musicians unlike some of his compatriots who considered the interest of Paul and John as indication “they were trying to pick up the black sound.”  Paul McCartney admits that the Beatles were always looking and listening for new sounds to use in their music. “This began in Liverpool, and the city’s black musicians were part of it.”

The Beatles were called “Woodbine’s Boys” and Woodbine was called the “Fifth Beatle.” Clearly their relationship with Woodbine was not simply a casual one. For example, even before the Beatles (they were called the Silver Beatles), Woodbine them on their first tour of Hamburg, Germany.

Considered a good opportunity to seek a better life in England in the 1940s and 1950s, the Windrush deal eventually turned sour for many with deportations and legislations in 2014 and 2016, which essentially required long term residents to prove that they had the right to be in the UK. Further, the authorities limited access to services for anyone who could not prove that they was a rightful citizen. Imagine mas players in All Stars on Carnival Monday or Tuesday being told they were illegal aliens!

It Was A New Day when Liverpool slave owners received reparations for income lost when slavery ended. Fans of British professional soccer may not know that Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsnel and Manchester United originated from reparations. They should know that It’s A New Day and reparations for almost 400 years for free labor are overdue.

It Was A New Day when Haiti finished paying off their reparations to France. In 1825, two decades after winning its independence, Haiti was forced to begin paying enormous “reparations” to the French slaveholders who had been overthrown. Haiti paid France reparations, with interest, over the course of nearly six generations.

Back to Pan People’s production of It’s A New Day, the song list is attached as Appendix I.

Appendix II briefly addresses the perception of some in the scholarly community that Andy Narrell has been “shortchanged” by the steelband community in Trinidad and Tobago.

PROPS

We made use of several props to put in context the story of the steelpan in relation to the idea of the Queen’s Jubilee Celebrations and issues with the steelpan movement. These props are examples of traditional mas in Trinidad, other Caribbean nations, in North America and wherever there is a Caribbean expatriate carnival. They are also consistent with the vision of the group’s director, Dr. Ajamu Nyomba, which has driven Pan People over the years and best characterized by the title of the 1986 workshop at which the group first performed: “The Creative Artist at the Cutting Edge of Social Change: A Pan-African Perspective.”  

Military Mas

After the 1990 Coup, the wearing of camouflage and other military clothes became a criminal offense. It would be safe to say that military mas and steelbands go together. I recall as a youth seeing the military “storming” of the Savannah Stage complete with tanks, landing crafts and hundreds of marines, sailors, the red cross and other military personnel. With the new laws steelbands are restricted mostly to sailor mas. Now thousands of white sailors are prominent in steelbands like Trinidad All Stars. This is an annual pilgrimage for thousands of expats who come to carnival annually from NY, Baltimore, and other North American cities to play sailor especially with All Stars and Starlift. All Stars is usually so large that it hires other steelbands, Tassa groups and rhythm sections to provide music for its thousands of revelers.

Pan People Steelband has presented versions of sailor mas in Atlanta’s carnival and in the homecoming parades of the Atlanta University Center institutions including “A Caribbean Cruise, Sailors Ashore in the Third World: Black Star Line, Dance Diaspora, and War: Wars Worth Fighting. In 2018 we dramatized World War II in our production “From Tamboo Bamboo to Steelband: the [True] Story of the Steelpan.”

Props used in that show included the band clad in camouflage with a missile around which we identified several “Wars Worth Fighting:”

• War Against Poverty
• War Against Hunger
• War Against Homelessness
• War Against Students Who Don’t Study
• War Against Teachers Who Don’t Teach
• War Against All Wars

Jab Lives Matter

The Jab Jab is one the traditional mas in Trinidad that stems the test of time. Dressed in mud, paint, different colors and really menacing—say rubbing against someone or bumping into spectators for fun or a few dollars. The Jab Jab therefore has a bittersweet relationship with spectators during carnival. Hence Jab Lives Matter is synonymous with Black Lives Matter and in general with the notion that All Lives Matter.

During J’Ouvert in Brooklyn, there is usually a large contingent of motor oil drenched Jab Jabs purportedly from Grenada. Because their instruments are minimal: horns, bells, etc. they can meander themselves through crowds of spectators as a large snake. To many, the Jab Jab is a nuisance but an integral aspect of Caribbean culture.

Tamboo Bamboo

Tamboo Bamboo is the immediate precursor to the steelband. In the 1880s, when goat skin African drums were banned by the colonial authorities, brothers retreated to the foothill communities like Tacarigua where they experimented with different instruments especially bamboo. I recall my mother, a Spiritual Baptist, talking about Andrew Bedow the  great Orisha drummer and his connections to Yoruba traditions.

Tamboo Bamboo evolved into steelbands when on VE Day, August 1st, 1945 celebrants added pieces of steel to the trash cans and other improvised instruments. Today the steelpan is recognized as a bone fide musical instrument across the globe.

Indeed, It’s A New Day and the resulting changes from the Black Lives Matter and other movements worldwide would be recorded in history as significant as when Columbus “discovered” the West, the industrial revolution and the development of microchip technology.

SOURCES

Andrew Martin and Ray Funk, “Pan is everywhere …pop, jazz, country, hip hop, electronica, and more. http://www.guardian.co.tt/life-lead/2017-08-28/pan-everywhere

James McGrath, Liverpool’s black community and the Beatles. Black Liverpudlian angles on the Beatles’ history.  https://www.panonthenet.com/news/2013/oct/liverpool-black-beatle-10-2013.htm

Dalton Narine, We Kinda Music: White Clothes and Gravitas - (An open letter to Andy Narell) https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/forum/topics/we-kinda-music-white-clothes-and-gravitas-an-open-letter-to-andy-?commentId=2534462%3AComment%3A440098

Ray Allen and Ray Funk, Rolling Stones Get Steelband Satisfaction. http://digital.guardian.co.tt/global/print.asp?path=/djvu/Guardian Media Limited/Trinidad and Tobago Guardian/13-Jul-2015&pages=page000002%E2%80%A6

James McGrath. https://www.panonthenet.com/news/2013/oct/lord-woodbine-10-2013.htm

Editorial, March 19, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/the-guardian-view-on-the-windrush-scandal-a-result-of-a-hostile-environment.

BBC News, November 24, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43782241

Boston Herald Editorial Staff, July 28, 2022. https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/07/28/explore-the-ins-and-outs-of-acoustic-instruments-at-fests-folk-craft-area/

APPENDIX I

It’s A New Day: Influence of the Steelpan and Steelpan Players Different Musical Genres

Song list

APPENDIX II

In the scholarly pan community there is a view held by some that Andy Narrell may not have received justice, in relation to his contribution to music in Trinidad in general, but more particularly with his lack of success in panorama with Birdsong and We Kinda Music.

Opinions from the public are varied. Some said the slower tempo of the song was inconsistent with the spirit of carnival and panorama. Others argued that panorama was not the appropriate place for someone Andy to showcase his jazz idioms. Dalton Narine was more impartial to the song (though he didn’t hear the final night performance), and extolled its style and “richness” in his flowery, poetic language.

A prominent ethnomusicologist shared with me, in confidence, a draft of the paper, "'We Kinda Music' is 'Not for Panorama:' The (Paradoxical) Marginalization of Andy Narell," which was presented at a conference at the University of Trinidad and Tobago in 2016. The completed paper will become popular knowledge in the scholarly pan community unless challenged by local scholars.

The point here is that there are pan scholars in the international pan arena who are producing ideas which could become accepted by scholars in the international steelpan community. It’s therefore incumbent on the powers that be at UWI and UTT to ensure that students and professors are making scholarly contributions about the instrument and the myriad of underlying issues such as standardization and nationalization without an accompanying set of national policies.

I rest my case. Indeed It’s A New Day. If not now, when?

Trinidad & Tobago’s Phase II Pan Groove, founded by Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, celebrates its 50th anniversary in August. Nigel A Campbell looks back at the pioneering journey in the July/August issue of Caribbean Beat magazine.

Caribbean creative and cultural institutions that have achieved the half-century mark are not rare — the National Dance Theatre of Jamaica and the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, for example. But the ongoing adulation and newsworthiness sometimes peter out — not so much as a sign of decrepitude, but possibly as a signal of lagging public awareness and commercial support.

In 2022, HADCO Phase II Pan Groove turns 50. With that landmark, it joins the pantheon of legendary bands that paved the way for sustaining an original sound born in the Caribbean, and elevates the idea that “the audacity of creole imagination”, as coined by steelpan researcher Kim Johnson, has gone global. The band could be a case study for a modern consideration of steel orchestras.

The names of pioneer steelbands formed in the 1930s and 1940s — Renegades, All Stars, Desperadoes, Casablanca, Invaders — suggest both a combative spirit that was a hallmark of early pan life, and the fantasy of cinematic imagination. Phase II Pan Groove, by contrast, was born in the turbulent 1970s. It was a time that saw Trinidad impacted by American Black Power animus, heralding an awakening of cultural pride among a new generation of musicians. They sought new sounds, and to distance themselves from a colonial past.

Phase II would be the bellwether of steelbands born in this era, as it trod an uneven path towards self-identification, self-sufficiency, innovative creativity, and commercial independence. It survived the flux of Caribbean entrepreneurship. But before one gets to 50, a little historical context is needed...

READ MORE at: In the Groove: Phase II at 50 | Backstory | Caribbean Beat Magazine https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-171/in-the-groove-backstory#ixzz7aDALBMXA

Quadrophonic Sound Systems now available for hire at a musician price for all Brooklyn Steel Orchestras. We specialize in LIVE MIXING for Steel Bands and also Brass/ Soca Bands.

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Hello Pan Diaspora,

I need info for Casablanca, Wonderland, San Juan All Stars, Sputnik, Kintups and Am Boys.  Do you know what was their tunes of choice and arrangers for the 1960's panorama.

Thanks. 

‘Boots” passed away in Coquitlam, BC last week. Well known Tuner and Pannist on the Vancouver scene for many years. Rest in Peace our Brother and Insiration.

Is there a carnival in or near your city or town?

Kim Johnson tells us in his book, The Illustrated Story of Pan: Second Edition that,

"Anthony 'Muffman' Williams is arguably the most important panman in history, because of his brilliance as an inventor, tuner, arranger and captain. He introduced the use of oil drums for the background pans, the cellos and bass, and then he put them on wheels so the heavy oil drums could be played on the road. He discovered harmonic tuning, in which more than one tone could be hammered into a note; and from that insight he created the now-standard 'fourths and fifths' arrangement of notes on the tenor pan. He was the first to experiment with oversized pans. As an arranger, Williams set a standard for how a band should sound, how the sections should be voiced in an ensemble, that is unsurpassed. His arrangements for the first two Panorama competitions created a template still followed. As a captain, his band was one of the most well-organised welfare-oriented, progressive ensembles."

High accolades never to be surpassed as a pioneer.

His passing this morning leaves a major gap in the ongoing conversation on and contestation around the idea of steelpan as more than accompaniment for revelry. Pan is more than the cliché sound of the Caribbean, it is more than an iconic image of tropical fun so popular in island tourism adverts from the middle of the 20th century coming forward. It is the soul of a people, of a nation. The pan's symbolism as national instrument, born not by official fiat, but by a transcription of an excerpt of a former Prime Minister's 1992 Independence Day speech, is not to be taken for granted here in T&T. Anthony Williams, and his pioneer posse — you know the names. Buy Kim's book if you don't! — began all this conversation of what is our gift to the world, our opportunity to be a trailblazer in a world leaving behind "small places with simple people" (yuh done know who write that Nobel phrase). His passing today still leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of those who know that the "traditional knowledge for making a steelpan and its role in the music and festivals of T&T" should be on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, an action still remarkably left wanting all these years after our country's ratification of the Treaty governing these matters, in 2010, I believe. (Wake up, Mr. Minister!) His innovation of the circle of fifths on a pan was unwisely patented in the US by a fresh water Yankee in 2004 and successfully challenged by the T&T government and revoked by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Anthony Williams, unfortunately, lived in a time when the "audacity of creole imagination" was looked down on. His genius was not the conversation of industry. His genius never made him a millionaire. His genius was not the asset that our country would try to tap into for inspiration and profit. Today, as we reflect on his life and contribution, let us remember his significance in shaping a modern T&T by the unintended consequence of his innovation with an oil drum and the idea of music, and how we have made it part of our intangible cultural heritage. Rest in Peace Anthony 'Muffman' Williams.

©2021, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Congratulations to Barbados on becoming another Republic in the Caribbean. Let us wish Barbados success in its endeavors. On observation, I was hoping to see steel pans in Barbados’s military.

The steel pans are permanent features in Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda militaries. Although Trinidad and Tobago invented the steel pan, the steel pan is the strongest symbol and the greatest identifiers of Caribbean people. Barbados took the opportunity to honor one of its illustrious daughters, Rianna. Rianna ambassadorial connections is a blessing to Barbados.

Sincere good luck to President Sandra Mason and Prime Minister Mia Muttley of Barbados.

On Saturday, November 6th, 2021, Professor Liam Teague of Trinidad and Tobago displayed a masterful pan performance in a NIU Faculty Steel Pan Recital. He was immaculately dressed. His chrome pan shone as if it was a mirror. The sound of his pan induced the taste of honey . He played the standardized cycle of fifth treble pan. He opened the recital with percussive strokes on the side of the pan. Then the professor dazzled the listening audiences with lightning runs and stalk virtuosic glissandos. Later in the recital, professor Teague was well supported by cello, violins, viola, harp, piano, and percussion. Professor Teague Faculty Steel Pan recital was a precursor to pan playing in the twenty-second century.

Congratulations to Halcyon Steel Orchestra for receiving the Institutional National Honor in Antigua and Barbuda. The Halcyon Steel Orchestra has served the Antigua and Barbuda tourist industry with high distinction. They entertained thousands of tourists on tourist boats and also in hotels. They are synonymous with Sherly Heights, a magnetic venue for tourists and local patrons. The Halcyon Steel Orchestra performed in many countries promoting Antigua and Barbuda. Halcyon took scores of idling youngsters off the street and taught them to play the steel pan. So far, Halcyon won panorama championships thirteen times.

The Halcyon Steel Orchestra holds the record for winning the panorama championships four consecutive times in Antigua and Barbuda. For example, they won the panorama in 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995. Victor ‘Babu’ Samuel of Antigua and Barbuda arranged the four consecutive winning panorama tunes.  Other notable arrangers that arranged for Halcyon steel Orchestra were Gerald ‘Belly’ Charles of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr, Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe of Trinidad and Tobago, Devon Bachelor, Fitzroy ‘Blakey’ Phillips, Curtis ‘CC’ Cochrane of Antigua and Barbuda.

Politician Selvyn Walter of Antigua and Barbuda was the founder of the Halcyon Steel orchestra. After Halcyon Steel Orchestra was formed in 1971, Dr. Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago engineered Sponsorship for Halcyon.  He successfully convinced YDelima to Sponsor Halcyon Steel Orchestra. As the years progressed, Halcyon received sponsorship from various businesses. Some of the businesses were LIAT, Corn Producing Service, Hadeed companies, Antigua Masonry Products, and Bryson’s Digicel.  In 1971, pan tuner Norman of Trinidad and Tobago made the band’s pans. Soon After,  former Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Dr. Baldwin Spencer became the manager of Halcyon Steel Orchestra.  James ‘Tanny’ Rose, Melvin Simon, Walton Theodore, Mr. Dublin, and the Kirby brothers are some of the many persons that served the Halcyon Steel Orchestra very well.

There is this thing about books on the steelpan and the steelband movement. They are sometimes large books with plenty words. There are not that many books though; certainly, less illustrated coffee-table sized books have been written on the steelpan than on the electric guitar for instance, or the piano The thing is, Kim Johnson, pan researcher and author of this new book, The Illustrated Story of Pan, has already written three of those large coffee-table sized books. And to make matters worse for the idea of the proliferation of pan publications, he wrote the first edition of this book a decade ago in 2011. There is still a lot of work to be done. This new edition is updated with never-before-seen photographs, new ideas, clearer editorial. It is a renewed celebration of that “audacity of the Creole imagination,” as he brilliantly describes the steelpan, which one would be remiss not to have on their shelves.

Caribbean pride aside, having a book like this is a “must-have” for music lovers, for people curious of the “other”, for people looking for an exploration of the worlds outside the centre, for people looking to populate their “shelves as furniture and decoration”! Derek Walcott told us in his poem The Spoiler’s Return: “…as for the Creoles, check their house, and look / you bust your brain before you find a book…” Don’t be that guy! Get the book.

Kim Johnson uses a phrase for the title of the first chapter of this book, “The Archaeology of Memory”. This is where I intersect with him. Some years ago just after the launch of the first edition, I showed Johnson a few photos that my late father took in 1961 of some kids playing those early instruments as a kind of entertainment or frolic at our house. Next thing I knew, I saw the picture at a lecture he gave on early pan. At that point, I knew our paths would cross again, as he formally requested to use the photos in this second edition. Pride and place is given to Danny Campbell’s photos of a memory lost to me, but not to time.

Kids playing early pan in Trinidad, circa 1961. Photo by Danny Campbell

That is the power of the photograph over the written word. No matter how well constructed a sentence is, in my mind, it can not eclipse the proof of concept, the certainty of memory, the captured reality of a photo. Even if there were no words in this book — there are many, and all well written to capture a perspective unseen by many foreign researchers — the photographs in this book tell a story. An almost linear history of the evolution of pan is revealed, and the familiar exercise of seeking stories to go with images that many do with old family photo albums — or in modern times, photo and video sharing social networks — allows one to go into the world that created the steelpan.

What was termed by a writer as those “urban yards, those laboratories of sweat and spit and fire,” where steelpans were created and nurtured become the backdrops for a visual narrative that suggests that there were also social situations, people and politics that melded to form a movement and an image that is more than the cliché of the Caribbean in those vintage Caribbean travel posters — a barefoot wide-brimmed hat wearing native playing a pan-round-the-neck.

Images and words here place the steelpan forward on the arc of musical instrument development in the 20th century and puts into context its place in the history of Caribbean independence and self-determination. We see in this collection of photographs, which is by no means an authoritative canon or an official source, and we read in the well researched and attested words, the power of determination to be more. A Caribbean circumstance of stolid repetition of Colonial manners — the Haitian Revolution and other smaller slave and labour rebellions aside — has marked our slow march to modernity and to self-sustaining normalcy in the 21st century. The steelband movement and the instrument’s evolution as determined by the pan people, celebrated characters and forceful figureheads who are all shown in this book, have taken that slow road to maintaining a dogged and sustained presence.

Creole audacity brought to the world an instrument and a movement, a community that removes barriers of race and class, importantly at a time of celebration of the West Indian brio. The denigration of past authors and travel book writers — VS Naipaul in The Middle Passage reminisced infamously, “the steel band used to be regarded as a high manifestation of West Indian Culture, and it was a sound I detested” — is superseded by the majesty given to the steelpan and the steelband in the words of and in the collation of memories by Kim Johnson here.

Memory, audacity, determination are celebrated in this book. Inclusion, too, that has allowed for modern jazz, world music and folk musicians to take the steelpan sound to a wide global audience. The timbre that resonates as a relaxing tone for meditative minds can also move masses to chip and jump and celebrate in our unique way. The Illustrated Story of Pan, Second Edition is the unravelling of all these parts that make the steelpan and the steelband movement significant and possible. If this book inspires long time pan people, limers, panmen, flagwomen, panyard crawlers all to tell their stories, to build those memories, to learn the instrument’s history, it has done a good job. If it inspires a new generation everywhere to take pride in the continuing evolution of Creole audacity, it is well worth the purchase.

© 2021, Nigel A. Campbell. All Rights Reserved.

Dear pan community, during the ninth century, Guido d’Arezzo invented western music notation. In the twentieth century, Trinidad and Tobago invented the steel pan. Western music notation took hundreds of years to arrive where it is today. Brass and combo bands read music notation to accompany calypsonians. Philharmonic orchestras read music notations when performing in concerts. Police and military bands read music notation in march parades. Many steel orchestra arrangers read music notation to teach pan players their parts.  Western music notation system has been highly beneficial to countless musicians. Therefore, this era may be the right time to redouble the efforts to teach steel pan players to read music notation on steel pans. Here is my question: What are the advantages or disadvantages of reading musical notation on steel pans?