A wise man once said it's bet­ter to keep your mouth shut and let every­one think you're wise; than to open it and let every­one think oth­er­wise. You like that eh? To­day I want to ad­dress the Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, and his state­ment that "Panora­ma has killed the steel­pan." Let me tell Mr Pe­ters that Panora­ma is the show­piece of the steel­pan, and is what re­turn­ing res­i­dents and vis­i­tors (tourists) come for an­nu­al­ly. It has be­came an in­te­gral part of the Car­ni­val mix, and Mr Pe­ters can put that in his pipe and smoke it, whether he likes Panora­ma or not. It is not the World Steel­band Fes­ti­val that's the show­piece of the steel­pan. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, its Panora­ma. Pan­men them­selves, and lack of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship have shot the fes­ti­val in the foot. I would have thought that with the in­puts of the Tour­sim De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the World Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val would have been a tourist at­trac­tion, but no such thing.

The at­ten­dance at the last steel­band mu­sic fes­ti­val in 2008 was dis­ap­point­ing. To me the fes­ti­val is al­most dead, and Panora­ma is now pan's sig­na­ture event. Mr Pe­ters talks about "broad­en­ing the scope of the steel­pan." Does he have any ideas? It will be in­ter­est­ing to see what he comes up with, and what his lega­cy as it re­gards the pan will be. One of the ways Mr Pe­ters could "broad­en the scope of pan," is to build "the Pan­man's shame" (head­quar­ters), the skele­ton of which sits at Or­ange Grove, Trinci­ty. How about fur­ther­ing the work of Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland and his UWI crew, and es­tab­lish­ing an In­sti­tute of Pan Tech­nol­o­gy, where young in­ven­tors can go and ex­per­i­ment? I am sure there are oth­er ideas which could "broad­en the scope of pan." How­ev­er, The Buzz spoke to some pan en­thu­si­asts and a few per­son­al­i­ties agreed that Panora­ma was pan's main event and it would be so for a long time. How­ev­er, any Min­is­ter of Cul­ture who will con­sid­er the pro­pos­al of Car­ni­val every three months, needs to have his head ex­am­ined. Nuff said.

Wick­ham, Corey, Brad­shaw head the class

The cat­e­go­ry of the "iron­men" is one of the hot­ly con­test­ed. I near­ly "buss" my brains. Let me say first off, these leg­ends of per­cus­sion are many, and were linked to more than one steel or­ches­tra. The nom­i­nees in the en­gine room are:

• "Nic­ka" Best

• Carl­ton "Maifan" Dray­ton

• Corey "Corey Iron" Fras­er

• El­lie Manette (In­vaders)

• Neville Jules (All Stars)

• Big Jeff

• Beck­et

• Granville

• Willis

• Fran­cis "Pea­cock" Wick­ham (In­vaders)

• Al­bert "Phi­lo" James

• Michael Phillip

• Pel­ham God­dard

• Mor­ton "Dicko" El­lis

• Rudolph "Iron Char­lie" Brad­shaw (Des­pers)

There is noth­ing bet­ter, or should I say sweet­er, than an iron­man cut­ting or chim­ing in a steel­band.

It's tru­ly a dif­fi­cult task to pick an iron­man of all time, so I ask read­ers to al­low me to tie Fran­cis Wick­ham, Corey "Corey Iron" Fras­er and Rudolph "Iron Char­lie" Brad­shaw as the best. Bless!

'Bob­by' at Nalis,

Talk­ing about con­cert, pan­nist/arranger of Gui­ness Cav­a­liers fame, Lennox "Bob­by" Mo­hammed is back at the Nalis Au­dio Vi­su­al Room on De­cem­ber 4, at 4 pm. Bob­by, to­geth­er with for­mer Hill­side Sym­pho­ny stand­out, Rawle Mooti­lal, is ex­pect­ed to have Port-of-Spain throb­bing with the sounds of sweet steel and the songs of Christ­mas. Un­til next week, keep lov­ing up the pan.