Pan singing a new song

Posted By: Express
Date: Tuesday, 2 April 2002, at 1:29 a.m.

Express Editorial

We hope that those calypsonians who so willingly joined the once necessary crusade for widespread awareness of steelband music, will now consider updating the message.

For if, as was once widely believed, pan is in danger, its perilous location must not be in Trinidad and Tobago and from recent reports not in many parts of the world. While there may be steelbands whose fortunes are yet to materialise, the instrument is fast becoming not as marginalised as it once was.
A successful pan concert was held on Good Friday in Idaho and last month pan was for the first time used as the music of choice in the opening sequence of an official NBA home fixture of the Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Centre and exclusively comprised post-game entertainment.

Next month, 25 steel orchestras from across Europe will compete at the magnificent Ville de Sete in France for four places in the final of the World Steelband Music Festival 2002, which takes place here next October.

Last November we witnessed the inaugural Caribbean Panorama Championship, which was held in Grenada and not unlike the May 2001 experience, were pleasantly surprised by the quality of instruments and music coming from those territories.

Last month Pat Bishop’s Lydian Steel stunned audiences at the Baroque Festival in Coral Gables, Florida. Last week, New York Pan launched a new website that features audio channels of steelband music, including full-length Panorama selections. Pioneer Sterling Betancourt will in June become the first person to receive an MBE from Queen Elizabeth, all for his contribution to the extension of pan’s reach.

Nor is pan king only outside of its home country. For eight months of last year Hotel Normandie sustained its Saturday night Pan on the Piazza concerts. Its 2002 season is already underway and attracting good audiences.

Pan Trinbago also mounted an extended season of Friday evening showcases and not one but two music festivals were held for junior players.

On Easter Sunday night a better than fair crowd turned up for the annual Valley Harps Pan Jamboree, a community activity in the Petit Valley area supported by several bands from west Port of Spain as well as Solo Pan Knights in the east.

In the run-up to Carnival 2002, panyard judging of Panorama’s preliminary round culled fresh pan enthusiasts, many of whom turned the exercise into a pilgrimage. The Panyard Vibrations concert series, although shortened this year, took the concept to another level, embracing available technology to satisfy larger audiences.

The enthusiasm has been maintained well outside of Carnival, as evidenced by the following during the preliminary round of the current Pan in the 21st Century contest, which climaxes this Saturday at the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain.

Pan is therefore out of danger on both sides of the divide. And while we could still catch up with some of the developed countries by offering pan as a music option for school students, it is not difficult to notice the already large and still growing percentage of youth that comprises today’s orchestras.

Taking stock of the strides made by pan on the international stage must give pause to those responsible for its furtherance in the instrument’s birthplace. Gone are the days when our narrow parochial jealousy worried about this treasure being stolen.

The greater glory must be reposed in the realisation that what we have invented is steadily growing in mainstream musical integrity. We must now sing the new song with one voice, if this growth is to be sustained.

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Pan singing a new song
Express -- Tuesday, 2 April 2002, at 1:29 a.m.