When pan won

The thing with pan, as with all art and music, different people experience different things when we meet it.

So, true, there is some consensus that on Saturday Trinidad All Stars made our hearts skip beats. The hair at the back of our necks danced and swayed – the siren of the Unknown Band (and not from a COVID bound ambulance) reminding us that all of this was still urgent and real.

That opening medley seamlessly transporting many of us from an Impossible Dream to the Stardust in our eyes.

True, Moods’ rendition of the Al Green classic, Let’s Stay Together, took some of us back to that house party where we met early loves. Tornadoes and Supernovas brought us prayerful messages and melodies.

Yes, there were also the other giants – Desperadoes and Renegades and Exodus. For sure, Starlift and Phase II and Skiffle and Invaders and Cordettes and Pan Elders were also there.

Note, I am mixing the bag – Medium with the Large. Coconuts and Peewah – wonderful in their own right.

Yet, through all of this, people who have been around the music and the instrument for a long time, were noting at least one dramatic transition, as the traditional Panorama model was (thankfully) modified to constitute an unbridled exposition of what pan is capable of despite vain expectations of a contest.

“Who won?” was the refrain all of Sunday. “Pan won” was the overwhelming response. But there was more.

For one, there was much to disclaim the view that “young people not into pan.” The evidence against this has long been abundant.

Has Pan Trinbago done the figures though? What is the average age of pan players in all categories? What is the average age of the current crop of arrangers? How does it compare against, say, 25 years ago? This would certainly settle my guestimate of declining age averages.

For instance, it was only when TTT’s Ruskin Mark spoke with Dr Mia Gormandy-Banjamin about some of the “oldies” being played you remembered that this brilliant, accomplished musician is still in her mid-thirties!

I happened to have followed almost the entire process this year – from the Single to the Small to the Medium and Large band performances. Young people ruled the roost. The transition is undeniably on!

One of the two young arrangers for Silver Stars, Kersh Ramsey, even spoke with Ruskin about “succession.” It is not the kind of word easily employed when used alongside the fact that 47-year-old Liam Teague (once a boy wonder himself) is a longstanding incumbent. Ramsey’s partnership with Ojay Richards must be considered among the most promising pan alliances in a long while.

Young Melodians arranger Raechard Bernard, who moved from stageside to the main stage on this occasion eloquently described the involvement of his teenage charges on stage. His band followed Arima Angel Harps whose arranger, pan phenom Aviel Scanterbury, comes from the same age group.

This column risks some notable omissions, but I hope you see where I’m going with this. Pandemic conditions and an accompanying revisiting of major pan events have conspired to remind us of the great future in store for pan music.

Let me tell you what I thought made this point most forcefully. This might be controversial. Couva Joylanders. Stefon West. “Essence” by WizKid. You know what I am talking about?

This leading Medium Band (2020 champs) used the occasion to tell us that our young people are taking over. West must have initially met some resistance … not from the players. All over-40s Google it.

An Israel-based young pan musician arranges a song for a Couva band composed by a popular 31-year-old Nigerian afrobeats singer/songwriter on a Savannah stage two nights before the days of Carnival.

The teenager on the double tenors on the frontline closed her eyes behind her face shield and threw her head back. Mothers’ milk on the faces of the double-seconds.

In May 2020, when the world was closed, Boogsie played “Yesterday.” One online comment I jotted down (since it wasn’t me) went: “I am in tears. Is this normal?”

Well, a bunch of young people from Central Trinidad moved me to conclude last Saturday that pan had won at least one battle over despair and looming hopelessness. I could well have asked the two-year-old question myself.

There is a lot more to be done to win the war. The children will have to lead us there.