Pe­ter Ray Blood

It seems so long that our gri­ots (ca­lyp­so­ni­ans) have been singing the demise of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment. The por­tents have been there for some time, as elu­ci­dat­ed by the likes of Mer­chant (Pan in Dan­ger); Cro Cro (Wey Pan Reach) and Man­child (Pan in Cri­sis). David Rud­der gave hope when he elo­quent­ly penned "out of a mud­dy pond, ten thou­sand flow­ers bloom." But, at the end of the first decade of the mil­len­ni­um, the glob­al warm­ing phe­nom­e­non seems to be se­ri­ous­ly threat­en­ing the pond, with its flow­ers now mud­died, gasp­ing for some bit of air and space to bloom again.

Yes, pan has giv­en us too few blos­soms, like Liam Teague, Mia Gor­mandy, Yohan Chucka­ree, Keisha Co­dring­ton, BJ Brooks and PCS Sil­ver Stars drill mas­ter Don­nell Thomas. Look­ing at the larg­er pic­ture, it paints a por­trait of de­spair for the fu­ture–in spite of the Na­tion­al Steel Or­ches­tra. As re­cent­ly as last week­end, in the Sun­day Guardian's Sound Off col­umn, for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold was lament­ing the stag­nan­cy of pan and its cur­rent sad plight. He com­ment­ed that af­ter a decade of promis­es by the State the na­tion­al steel­band move­ment still doesn't have a home.

The last po­lit­i­cal ut­ter­ance from the pow­ers that be was that the steel­band head­quar­ters, still an un­fin­ished, rot­ting eye sore on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, would have been com­plet­ed last year.

While the high-tech, ul­tra-mod­ern, state-of-the-art Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts was opened last year, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment is still with­out an ad­e­quate per­form­ing space, with ab­solute­ly no hope of ac­quir­ing one any time soon. Though with a new ad­min­is­tra­tion, head­ed by Kei­th Di­az, Pan Trin­ba­go con­tin­ues to be trans­fixed in a pre­car­i­ous place at the start of what seems will be a non-pro­duc­tive 2010, for an as­sort­ment of de­bil­i­tat­ing fac­tors.

Cor­po­rate T&T has been tight­en­ing its purse strings where cul­ture is con­cerned–well, un­less you are Amer­i­can pop god­dess Be­y­once, or Ani­ta Bak­er. In­dige­nous cul­ture con­tin­ues to have to grov­el for the crumbs, with pan way down the food chain; which brings me to an­oth­er ques­tion–will the mil­lions be­ing in­vest­ed for Be­y­once af­fect what lit­tle in­come lo­cal artistes re­ceive an­nu­al­ly in spon­sor­ship and spe­cial con­certs?

Land for pan

One crit­i­cal as­pect of pan which re­quires ex­pe­di­tious at­ten­tion by the new Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive is the se­cu­ri­ty of tenure of lands for steel­bands. It is shame­ful that two of this na­tion's old­est steel­bands–Caribbean Air­lines In­vaders and Wit­co Des­per­a­does–are still squat­ters on lands they've oc­cu­pied for over 60 years. Scores of oth­er bands are in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion. There's even a steel­band now re­sort­ing to oc­cu­py­ing the premis­es of the burnt out ru­ins of Pa­traj roti shop in Wood­brook.

And what of Des­pers?

Be­fore I run out of space I must add my two-cents to the plight of Des­per­a­does. First off, I am be­mused by the sen­sa­tion­al­ism at­tached to re­ports on the cir­cum­stances that have led to this steel or­ches­tra tem­porar­i­ly mov­ing out of Laven­tille for Car­ni­val. For as long as I can re­mem­ber, af­ter per­form­ing at the pre­lim­i­nary round of the an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, Des­pers nev­er takes its in­stru­ments back up Laven­tille Hill, to its home base, un­til af­ter Ash Wednes­day. Af­ter that ini­tial leg of the com­pe­ti­tion, the band prac­tices away from the Hill, pre­vi­ous­ly pitch­ing camp at lo­ca­tions like Char­lotte Street, Pic­cadil­ly on the Greens, and more reg­u­lar­ly in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. And it has nev­er had any­thing to do with crime in Laven­tille.

The dif­fer­ence this time around is that Des­pers is do­ing its pre-pre­lim­i­nary prac­tise at the cor­ner of Cadiz Road and Queen's Park East, and not in the bow­els of the Bel­mont com­mu­ni­ty, as some alarmists would have us be­lieve. With the na­tion­al in­stru­ment con­tin­u­ing to be un­der seige by the haters, it is un­for­tu­nate that some me­dia have sug­gest­ed, some­what sub­lim­i­nal­ly, that the rank and file of the world's pre­mier steel or­ches­tra con­sists of ban­dits, ex-cons and law break­ers. The truth be told, at the helm of Des­pers is a doc­tor and a lin­guis­tics uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, and sev­er­al law-abid­ing aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sion­als. In fact, very few, if any at all, of the band's mu­si­cians even have a po­lice record.

Panora­ma of Love

To the re­port­ed­ly con­cerned busi­ness folk of Bel­mont and the east­ern fringe of the Sa­van­nah, Des­per­a­does' join­ing your neigh­bour­hood should not af­fect you neg­a­tive­ly. There will be no up­surge in mur­ders, shoot­ings, mug­gins, car theft, rape or any heinous crimes dur­ing these en­su­ing five weeks. The ad­min­is­tra­tion and mu­si­cians of Des­per­a­does are fo­cused on one thing on­ly–be­gin­ning this new decade as they did at the be­gin­ning of the last–tak­ing the Na­tion­al Panora­ma ti­tle back up Laven­tille Hill on the morn­ing of Valen­tine's Day (Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 14). This year's fi­nal can ap­pro­pri­ate­ly be sub-ti­tled "the Panora­ma of Love."

An­oth­er un­found­ed re­port is that of "loud noise" from the band's prac­tise ses­sions af­fect­ing the res­i­dents of Bel­mont–in spite of Casablan­ca be­ing a Bel­mont res­i­dent for count­less decades. This no­tion is ut­ter non­sense and pure ma­li­cious­ness. The Sa­van­nah breeze takes all sound at night in a west­er­ly di­rec­tion, away from Bel­mont, to ar­eas like St Clair, Fed­er­a­tion Park, New­town etc.

As a for­mer res­i­dent of Flagstaff Hill in Long Cir­cu­lar and Wood­ford Street in New­town, I can at­test to this. The C2K10 sea­son is a short one and could do with­out the bac­cha­nal and ru­mour-mon­ger­ing too many peo­ple con­tin­ue to be­lieve must be an in­gre­di­ent of our na­tion­al fes­ti­val.

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BLOOD­NOTES

Go­ing to the movies

I must con­fess that I am a movie buff and on the week­end I watched a flick that could be one of the best for this year.

It's the movie In­vic­tus, an­oth­er Clint East­wood mas­ter­piece, and tells the sto­ry of for­mer South African pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela (played by Mor­gan Free­man) and his adop­tion of his coun­try's na­tion­al rug­by team, charis­mat­i­cal­ly led by Fran­cois Pien­aar (Matt Da­mon).

RIGHT: Mor­gan Free­man stars as Nel­son Man­dela and Matt Da­mon stars as Fran­cois Pien­aar in Warn­er Bros. Pic­tures' In­vic­tus.

The movie de­picts Man­dela's phe­nom­e­nal abil­i­ty to heal this racial­ly torn coun­try; his abil­i­ty to be an out­stand­ing leader and vi­sion­ary, lead­ing from in front; and, the un­de­ni­able and proven the­o­ry that sport is one of the strongest uni­fy­ing forces of peo­ple there is. I re­spect­ful­ly and strong­ly sug­gest that Min­is­ter Gary Hunt and his Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA) host the pre­miere of In­vic­tus.

I al­so rec­om­mend that not on­ly the en­tire Cab­i­net go see it, but that all cin­e­mas host spe­cial screen­ings of In­vic­tus for school stu­dents, with spe­cial ad­mis­sion fees for ter­tiary stu­dents. Yes, In­vic­tus is that good. Hav­ing seen al­most every movie screened lo­cal­ly last year, my two favourite movies of 2009 were In­glou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds and A Law Abid­ing Cit­i­zen.