The true measure of pan

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We always knew it, but the COVID-19 era is now proving beyond any reasonable doubt that pan as a unique percussive instrument for solo and orchestral music; as intellectual property; and as a platform for social mobilisation, has value way in excess of the roles Pan Trinbago and Panorama play in providing performance platforms, bureaucratic guidance, and money.

It is true that the governing body needs to get its act together and that the constant quarrelling must someday end. But if we did not know it before, we now understand there is much more to the question of pan than state support for competitions and events, channelled through an NGO.

And while judicial edict regarding Pan Trinbago may help clarify some matters, it won’t resolve the dysfunctionality that follows state patronage and cabalistic influence.

The fact is, despite an official hiatus spanning many months; music, innovation, and creativity have prevailed in ways that challenge hierarchical claims based on geography, resources, and large numbers.

In a real sense, the pandemic has levelled the steelband playing field. “North band” chauvinism, “big band” braggadocio and “big sponsor” advantage have come to mean almost nothing.

If you spent last weekend following the gruelling proceedings involving 50 small and single pan bands, and looked beyond near organisational farce, you would have found the key ingredients that render pan, in all is manifestations, the greatest thing we do in this country.

Yet, the masochism of 50 performances over two days and nights, as the Pan Trinbago team moved from band to band, was almost as cruel as the Medium/Large Band Semi-Finals of 2017 that began at 9.00 a.m. and ended at 3.45 the following morning – 58 bands later. Yes, I sat through all of it.

However, between 2020 and today, we ought to have learnt that more does not mean better and that in some respects a schedule of non-competitive performances spanning months is far more respectful than a weekend blitz of “auditions.”

Meanwhile, though needlessly competitive by design, in 2020 and 2021, PanoGrama employed online platforms to bring together some of the best pan talent in the world. Duvone Stewart launched Pan Chronicles online and mustered a global following of thousands.

In 2020, a group of youngsters staged De Coalition – a virtual, international pan collaboration. Wack Radio also hosted a series of ‘Live Stream’ concerts and individual players and stage side bands have been performing and producing and, when not on the road, composing and arranging.

There are numerous activities that have employed new, creative platforms outside of the normal channels of pan expression. I cannot name them all here.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Panorama is the one event deserving of the title of Greatest (Musical) Show on Earth at Carnival time. But it has to and will change.

But I have been able to see Duvone, Boogsie, Dane Gulston, Chuma Akil Jahi Watson, Triston Marcano, Andre White, Hammond Mitchell, Stefon West, Zahra Lake, Natasha Joseph, Mikhail Salcedo, and Aviel Scanterbury in action.

There are many, many more players, bands, and events that have managed the capsizing of the steelpan order. Not easily. Not painlessly. But they have proven the resilience of the instrument, its music, and its people.

I have never quite subscribed to the late Merchant’s 1985 assertion of a pan crisis. It is not that pan has been in any “danger.” It has been the traditional infrastructure and social order under attack by technology, changing demographics, youthful enterprise, and the globalised nature of pan.

Even as we focused on jingoistically hogging the specifications of the panstick rubber, we were losing intellectual property (IP) advantage in the area of pan innovation.

What, for example, has been the fate of Jomo Wahtuse’s “Xylopan” or, more recently, his ‘JW Hydroforming Press’ for which he obtained a patent in 2020, shortly before his death?

Innovators such as Anthony Williams, Ellie Mannette, Neville Jules, Bertie Marshall, Brian Copeland, and Wahtuse have made valuable contributions to the instrument. To me, the spirit of their contributions is even as relevant as sustaining traditional events.

I have heard some of the conversations about pan in the context of the ‘Taste of Carnival’ experiment with Pan in De Sancoche and Musical Showdown in De Big Yard. They do not leave me convinced that people understand a return to the past is unlikely even as the prospects for dogged insistence on the old formulae for pan success remain dim.

In any event, the true measure of pan is much more than that.