Blog 2.0

Trinidad & Tobago, W.I.

TIME FOR ‘CONGRATS’

Today I am in a congratulatory state of mind as I send out greetings to Terrence Noel and his BT Melodians in lonely London, England on the fine work they are doing spreading the Gospel of Pan. These Pan troubadours have been touring the world flying the British flag in the name of Pan.  They have taken pan to the Middle East, Asia, and far-flung places.  Hooray!
 

I thank God their efforts have not gone unnoticed, because just a few days shy of the historic tour by the, Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO), comes the exciting statement that “the steelband is part of British culture.”  I like that too bad. I like it more than cooked food. You think I vex?  I happy like a golden posey.  I repeat:  I love it more than a curry pelau with hog features.
 

Now that statement was made by the British Ambassador to Vienna, Mr. Simon Smith when the BT Melodians toured there, and celebrated the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II.  Today I want to thank Ambassador Smith for recognizing Pan’s worth and value to the British society.  As an old colonialist, myself; I really feel to kiss the man big toe..... and who vex lorse.
 

In Pan’s native land [Trinidad & Tobago], we are yet to recognize its value in a serious way.  Panmen still have problems, and are treated like an outside child, or a ‘dorg’ (my word).  Pan is only taken seriously when politicians want to use the Pan, and deejays want to defecate on Panmen.  I am glad Ambassador Smith is saying “Pan is we ting.”   We continue to bump our gums with our Listerine mouths, paying only lip service to Pan. I will forever praise those who love the pan whether they are “foreign” or local.
 

Cultural activist and pan jumbie Pat Bishop once said “we don’t deserve the Pan” and she is so right.  Now I expect Switzerland, Germany ,Holland and Denmark to say Pan is part of their culture. Hooray!  Bring it on guys. You think I vex?  I love it more than cooked food.
 

Just imagine in ‘Pan country’ [Trinidad & Tobago] a Minister of Culture could rail against Panmen and Pan Trinbago - talking about accountability and transparency, and was found wanting owing the government dollars over the years, the latest being one million. Now this is taxpayers dollars we are talking about, not his money. This is the same man who refused to pay Panmen their TT $1000 stipend, and when they protested threatened - them and started to talk big...like a big Tanto!  He really lucky panmen awoke before the cavemen.
 

In a so-called Cabinet reshuffle he retains his post. How’s that for hypocrazy... not hypocrisy?  That’s why when a Britisher [British Ambassador to Vienna, Mr. Simon Smith] say “Pan is we ting”...... I love it more than cooked food..... I love it, I love it - more than my former wife. Pepe Francis of the British Association of Steelbands, take a bow for 30 solid years of pan in Britain.  You reach!

TIME TO LOOK AT THE G-PAN AGAIN

The time has come to look at the G-pan (Genesis pan) with a view to making it more practical. Pepe Francis, Chairman of the British Association Of Steelbands, is of the view that the pan should be scrapped. I don’t think so; I feel we should re-engineer the Pan with a view to making it more light-weight.  I’ve heard tuners and panmen complain the Pan is an exercise in weightlifting. Now we really don’t want to see panmen with hernias do we?  Nobody is listening to these complaints.  Pepe also pointed out that designer drums are available in London (Coventry), Denmark and Holland.  Why can’t we look at metals and how they could enhance the sound of the pan?  But what are we doing?  Sitting on our hand or playing pocket billiard.
 

I have been clamouring for a Pan Development Institute where young inventors could go and express themselves. This institute could be tied in with UWI (University of the West Indies) and the brilliant Dr. Brian Copeland and his team.
 

Government must stop ‘funding ole talk’ and start with solid projects like the Philharmonic Percussive Instrument - the PHI (pronounced “fie”) Pan, and invest in its large-scale development. There’s money to be made in Pan technology....it’s Pan’s final frontier.  We must put young engineering inventive minds to work. The G-pan should be a work in progress; but then you’ll hear the familiar refrain....no funding.

PAN JAMMING ON CHARLOTTE STREET

The Renegades Pan Theatre will come alive with the sound of steel when six hot bands pelt out music at 8 p.m.  It is the first fund-raising project of the innovative grouping PAN LOVERS INTERNATIONAL.  All bands have come on board, as the Pan Lovers - once thought of as a rival organisation to the ruling Pan body - get down to work, with the aim of helping Pan pioneers in their dying (no pun intended) days, establishing a secretariat, an All-Pan radio station as well as other ideas.
 

For only one blue note (TT $100) you can get a delectable diet of Petrotrin Phase Two Pan Groove, Couva Joylanders, Woodbrook Playboyz, T&TEC Tropical Angel Harps, Bptt Renegades and Defence Force, now celebrating 16 years.

Panmen and pan enthusiasts don’t forget to dress up as the bands and Pan Lovers pay tribute to men from TASPO who left these shores 60 years ago.

________________

Until next week, wherever you are in Pan’s Diaspora, keep on loving The Pan.  Bless.

A thought occurred to me that I had almost forgotten.

Remember when Carnival in Trinidad used to be a two speed affair?.

Long before the DJs, we had music bands on the road, and their music was at a faster tempo than the steelbands.

Most of the big costume bands (we called them "Historical" bands) preferred the brass bands for their music, and their masqueraders "jumped up" much like they do today with the DJs.

On the other hand, if you played mas with a steelband, it would have been a military mas or a simpler costume like cowboys, lumberjacks etc.

The steelbands held a slower pace, and moving along to their beat was called "chippin". By the end of the day, most people chose "chippin" over "jumping up"

It is interesting to  note that as the steelbands participation on the road declined, so did the "chippin".

Of course, the change in music tastes to the faster soca style also accelerated the disappearance of "chippin".

I remember the calls by calypsonians like Maestro and others for steelbands to pick up the tempo.

But one can not help but  wonder if a more aggressive effort of the steelbands to stay involved on the road would have kept the slower steelband "chippin" style as an alternative to todays manic jumping up on the streets at carnival..

Just a thought, folks!

http://www.peppertt.com/index.php/blog/marketing-strategy/how-can-we-make-the-pan-more-marketable/

Pan needs a big idea. Like when Peter Ueberroth made the 1984 Olympics the TV games, raising close to a billion US dollars from broadcast rights. Previous to 1984, others focused on stadium seats to be the main supply of revenue.

So we need a big idea. Ueberroth changed the “product distribution” from the stadium seat to the living room couch.

What if we went on a massive YouTube thrust where we put steel bands in worldview and simultaneously start a conversation with the world? Blogging and building a communities interested in tuning, arranging, organising, building teams and all the other great stuff that steelbands do. This will mean steelband people learning some new skills. Skills that are no harder than what they do now. Of course steelbands will also be able to sell their recordings and take bookings.

Or what if we did something crazy like stopping Panorama for a 3 year test period and get steelbands back playing in their community blockos and across T&T. What if we could promise the movement the same level of government subvention to be distributed to its membership as it determines.

Stopping Panorama might be the biggest big idea. It removes the focus on 8 minutes of music and places it back on the instrument and its power to delight well beyond 8 minutes. Do pan people have the belly for this big idea? 

One of the greatest unsung contributors to Caribbean music is pan and reggae pioneer, the late Mr Nerlin Taitt from San Fernando.

An outstanding pan player who also did some tuning, he was the winning soloist in the island wide ping pong (tenor pan ) competition of 1956.

He was also an outstanding guitarist and band leader in Trinidad, playing with the Dutchy Brothers Orchestra and fronting his own band, the Nerlin Taitt Orchestra.

Stranded in Jamaica after an unsuccessful tour in the early 1960s, he remained there to become one of the founders of the new beat "rock steady" which evolved into reggae.

This  link is to an article from tallawah.com, which celebrates the life and accomplishments of this Trinidadian who was an outstanding panist, and one of the most important contributors to the development of reggae music.

http://tallawah.com/articles-reviews/lynn-taitt/

Nerlin (Nearlin) "Lynn" Taitt died on January 20th, 2010. Here is a link to Mr Taitt's obituary in the UK Guardian .

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/10/nearlin-lynn-taitt-obituary

The Roots Steel Band say happy 40th Anniversary to the AMP Halcyon Steel Orchestra

of Antigua and Barbuda, keep going guys, its hard work but we need to keep the art form alive.

Happy,HappyHappy 40th Anniversary.

I am Michael Mizma, Professor of Music at San Jacinto College Central. I've had a steel band here for over 15 years. We have a brand new website with lots more information about us, our music, our history...

www.sanjacsteel.com

Come say "Hi!"

I found this interesting perspective on the East Indian involvement in the development of the steelband in T&T.

It is written by the late Trinidad Express journalist Terry Joseph, a scribe who truly had his finger on the pulse of Trinidad culture.

It is bad enough that the Indian contribution to the development of the steel orchestra has so often been under-rated, but what is infinitely worse, is the misguided view that pan is an African thing.

Indeed, the very Indian population has fuelled the devaluation of its own input by cowering to African claims of exclusivity in any discussion about the origins and development of pan.

Africans have jealously embraced pan as part of their culture and frequently limit any mention of the Indian input to only the latter-day shining lights (most notably Jit Samaroo). Indians, under the perception that they were diluting their own heritage, have not been vocal about their achievements in this area either, making for a near-complete obfuscation of the facts.

Influential Indian religious leaders have also indicated to their followers that pan-playing and education were mutually exclusive concepts, and since pan cannot accomplish sruti, an integral part of their music (which sometimes requires quarter-tones in tremolo), the instrument was foreign to their aesthetic.

The thrust at that time was to ensure that if government attempted to introduce a pan-in-schools programme, it would have to also consider supplying and equal number of harmoniums to the classrooms.

The Indian community, therefore, also saw pan as African, and a seven-year-old girl, who had the temerity to attempt a bhajan on a tenor pan, was publicly admonished by her elders.

But history is difficult to hide. Fact is, Indians arrived in the panyard since the 1930s and have been there ever since, fully involved in the development of the modern steel orchestra, to an extent that may shock large constituencies on both sides of the ethnic divide. Some of their direct inputs still serve as benchmarks in pan's evolution.

Nestor Sullivan, better known as manager of the Pamberi Steel Orchestra, but himself a tireless researcher of pan history, last October delivered a lecture at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, on "East Indian Influence in the Steelband Movement in Trinidad and Tobago", which documents some astonishing truths.

While admitting that his work was by no means the definitive piece on the subject of Indian involvement in pan, Sullivan identified several key figures among the hundreds of Indians who have been involved with pan over the past 60 years.

One of his more striking discoveries is that some Indian families have actually produced more than one pan icon. Although Bobby Mohammed became a legend in the 1960s with his band Guinness Cavaliers, his brother Selwyn was, at the same time, the resident arranger of what is now the Amoco Renegades.

San Fernando also produced the Lalsingh boys, and San Juan boasted Lol and Jack Bactawa, while of all the most unlikely places, Couva gave us the Zackarali brothers.

Sullivan notes as well that since steelbands in the early days were strictly community-based organizations, those villages, which were predominantly Indian, perforce, produced its pannists from that grouping. Princes Town, Rio Claro and Tunapuna produced steelbands whose membership was virtually all-Indian.

Jimmy Bridgenarine, leader of Golden Dukes and subsequently Curepe Scherzando, was, up to the time of his death in 1987, one of the stoutest defenders of the steelband (and the Curepe community). Bridgenarine's role is seen by Sullivan as "not only pivotal to the development of Curepe Scherzando", but to the steelband movement during the 1970s.

The Samaroo Jets, originally an orchestra comprised exclusively of members of an Indian family, has evolved into the most travelled steelband in the history of the instrument. In existence for over 30 years, all members of the Jets are full-time professionals and musically literate. The band has also enjoyed the longest-running steelband contract, playing as house band at the prestigious Hilton Hotel for more than 25 years.

An entire section of the Sullivan paper is devoted to Samaroo, whose work with Amoco Renegades has produced a stunning hat trick of Panorama wins, among the record nine times he has taken the band to the top of the national standings. It is noteworthy that the Renegades panyard is located in the patently urban African setting of Lacou Harpe in Port of Spain.

Speaking to the Sunday Express, Sullivan explained that in areas like St. James and San Juan, the ethnic mix delivered bands comprising equal numbers of Africans and Indians. "And a kind of cultural cross-fertilization also occurred," Sullivan said.

"Bobby Mohammed's influence is among the more striking examples," Sullivan said. "It was his creative use of the bass pans that won the national title for Guinness Cavaliers in 1965 and 1967, causing bands from north Trinidad to follow that style, in the hope of improving their chances."

Sullivan added that Mohammed created an impact never before experienced in pan, and did not limit his resulting victories to Panorama. The Cavaliers were also successful in steelband music festivals, and the band toured extensively in the wake of those successes.

He added: "Another Indian arranger, Steve Achaiba, led Hatters to winners row in 1975, and later South Stars to glory at the national level as well, taking the revolution started by bobby in the sixties, well into the next decade.

Also operating at creative decision-making levels at that time was Henry "Bendix" Cumberbatch, an Indian arranger from San Fernando's Antillean All Stars, who took that band to several Panorama final during the 1970s.

Sullivan, who is currently doing a research assignment on popular Caribbean culture for the University of South Florida, took his work one step further, to look at the results of social integration and the work of Anthony Williams and Roland Harrigin.

Williams, who led the Pan-Am North Stars to several Panorama wins, introduced a major change in the design and structure of the tenor-pan. His "spider-web" design forms the basis for today's fourths and fifths tuning patterns, and gave the instrument a leap in the quest for standardization.

Harrigin is the preferred tuner for some of this country's top steelbands, including Phase II Pan Groove, Pamberi and current Panorama champions, the Arima Nutones. He is also master-tuner at Panyard Inc., the world's most sophisticated pan manufacturing company in Akron, Ohio.

But some of the examples of social integration are even more curious. Unlike Samaroo, Dudley Rouffe was an Indian-born and bred in the heartland of urban Port of Spain. He became leader of what is now Carib Tokyo, a band from John John, the heart of Orisha country. Rouffe not only led Tokyo, but also became a respected community leader, passing on the mantle to his son, who now represents the band in North America.

The view that pan is an African thing with a few Indian interlopers is, therefore, fundamentally inaccurate. Although the feeling first surfaced in the 1970s in the wake of Black Power agitation), with no move to dispel the perception coming from Pan Trinbago over the years, the players and those who are most passionate about the instrument and its music are least troubled by ethnic considerations. It is they who will tell you that pan is not exclusive to any ethnic group, but belongs to Trinidad and Tobago.
   
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The Steelpan Store is looking for more pannists to help out.  We, here at The Steelpan Store, strive to be an active part of the steelpan community.  We love to sell products from other pannists in our store.  Do you make your own mallets?  Great, send us some!  Did you design a super awesome folding stand?  Excellent, let us see it!  Do you have a CD available of your music?  Fantastic, let us hear!  Whatever you have, we want to help make it available to other people.

We are also looking for steelbands that would like to possibly gain a little extra money.  The Steelpan Store would love to offer your steelband's CDs for sale in both physical and digital format.  Also, we'll make merchandise available with your bands logo on it!  That's right, you could get coffee mugs, t-shirts, frisbees, mousepads, or just about anything else you can think of with your band's logo on it.

If you would like any more information, or have any possible products please e-mail us at info@steelpanstore.com

Thanks,

Matt Potts

info@steelpanstore.com

815-893-9PAN

steelpanstore.com

ANYONE REMEMBERED  WHO PORTRAYED 'BEAUTY IN PERPETUITY'.??????    .I THINK IT WAS AT KING OFTHE BANDS COMPETITION.

ONE OF THE GREATEST I HAVE EVER SEEN......

Mr.Hoyte I will not dispute Donald's portfolio. I opine he placed psychics

and panmen on the proletariat, but then, I could be wrong again.

It has been a great pleasure hearing from you, sir, It  is an honor and a blessing to meet a sage.

Peace and power.

What's that sound? Mummy what's that sound?

Those were my words at the age of four (or so my mother told me) while tugging excitedly on her skirt.  Even before she explained it to me I knew I wanted to know more about steelpan music.  Every year during Carnival I waited for when the bands passed. I begged my mother to let me join one but she wouldn't because of the late practice hours.  Luckily, at 13 I got my first pan experience at a summer programme with a young but extremely competent tutor. I stayed with that pan group until it dissoved 5 years later. 

Living a 3-minute walk away from Diamond Steel, one of the most popular and respected bands in St. Lucia, I was devastated when my mother refused to allow me at 15 to join them for the Juniour Panorama.  But I would still stay up into the wee hours of the morning, listening to the rigorous practice from my balcony, mentally corecting errors and formulating suggestions for better arrangements.

At secondary school, there was a pan group led by the arranger of North Stars but the fee charged was relatively high although affordable.  Plus my mother wanted me home by 4.  I still cheered passionately whenever they put on performances. 

I had two years of basic music education at my school and I intended to make the best of it.  I couldn't sing so it was all I had to rely on.  In the pan group, Culture Flames, I often attempted arrangements of popular dancehall songs like those by Dr Evil and Sean Paul, local soca songs like tose by Ricky T, and classics like Flight of the Bumblebee and Pan in a Minor.

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)

One day in my yard in Rose Hill, Laventille, I was practising the tune Mambo Jambo on a tenor pan. A voice screamed

"Allan I don't want any panbeating in this yard!!!". The man was The Honorable (sic) Donald Granado, PNM's Minister of

Education ---what a paradox!!!.

A few days after I was practising with our newly-formed band led by Winthrop Thomas. At one point, the band stopped

playing abruptly and the players were laughing. I turned around and saw my grandmother had placed a dilapidated

suitcase on the ground and as she walked she said "yuh wanna be ah panbeater-----not in my house." That was the end of my pan beating.

It is quite a blessing that there were few "grammas and granados" and that others did not go to the few, if any, music libraries that were nearby.

The drummer in every band controls the tempo and provide the rythm. I have never seen one reading musical

scores while performing.

Frank Sinatra did a lot for musicians, yet they spoke about him punching photographers. A very famous singer was

arrested regularly for possession of marijuana. Billy Eckstine kicked 'arse'.....when they tried to make him enter from

the back of a concert hall.

Panmen perform pieces from memory - no scores......In a Monastery Garden, Capriccio Italien Opus 45, Marche Slave, etc., the Mighty Sparrow sang ballads with a calyspo tempo.

I give credit to anyone with an impeccable lifestyle, but we are "beings" -----some perfect, some not.

So how about we help to keep pan away from the doldrums from which it emerged!!!

Allan Gibson