Pe­ter Ray Blood

With more than 200 years of pan mu­sic to­geth­er, the ex­pe­ri­ence of four par­tic­i­pants shaped a re­mark­able show and com­pe­ti­tion on Sat­ur­day. Caribbean Air­lines In­vaders is the old­est with 79 years of ex­pe­ri­ence. Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars and Tokyo be­ing around for the past 75 years, and Wit­co Des­per­a­does be­ing the ba­by at age 65. Pa­trons braved the in­clement weath­er and thor­ough­ly en­joyed the Four Pil­lars of Steel Reper­toire Com­pe­ti­tion, pro­duced by Ju­nior Hut­son at the Grand Stand Fore­court of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain.The four leg­endary steel or­ches­tras were play­ing be­fore judges David Cuffy, Cuth­bert Matthews and Ju­nior How­ell for a first prize of $40,000, run­ner-up cheques of $20,000 each, and cat­e­go­ry prizes for Best Pop, Latin, Clas­si­cal and Ca­lyp­so pieces. In what was a well man­aged event, Tokyo opened pro­ceed­ings, 15 min­utes be­fore the sched­uled start time, thrilling fans and bring­ing back mem­o­ries of days of grandeur for this John John band.

Two pieces which stood out were the band's in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Lou Don­ald­son's Cater­pil­lar, one of its sig­na­ture pieces from back in the days of block­o­ra­mas, and Mer­chant's clas­si­cal 1985 ode to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, Pan in Dancer. Reign­ing Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on All Stars was up next and took the ex­cite­ment and join de vivre a cou­ple notch­es high­er with its reper­toire in­clud­ing crowd-pleas­ing se­lec­tions like Rossi­ni's the Bar­ber of Seville, Mas Que Na­da and its im­mor­tal, Leon Ed­wards' (Smooth) arrange­ment of Scrunter's Woman on de Bass.Look­ing snazzy in their psy­che­dlic out­fits, the mem­bers of In­vaders played with much verve, pro­duc­ing a crisp, clean sound. The Wood­brook band's 45-minute set opened dra­mat­i­cal­ly with Black­ie's Steel­band Clash, flow­ing in­to Con­ga, Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus and a suite of Baron's hits like Tell Me Why, Feel­in' It and Say Say.

Des­per­a­does was the fi­nal com­peti­tor and from the get-go it was ap­par­ent that the Laven­tille Hill band came to prove a point. Pan fans danced in the rain as Des­pers opened with Let the Mu­sic Play, Pan in the 21st Cen­tu­ry win­ner John Leg­end's Or­di­nary Peo­ple, an ex­cerpt from Of­fen­bach's Or­pheus of the Un­der­world and cli­maxed with its trade­mark Re­bec­ca-its 1983 Na­tion­al Panora­ma win­ner.

Few seemed sur­prise when the re­sults were an­nounced and it was re­vealed that Des­per­a­does had copped this in­no­v­a­tive in­au­gur­al ad­di­tion to pan's an­nu­al agen­da. Led by David Davis on the night, Des­per­a­does al­so took home the spe­cial awards for Best Pop, Latin and Clas­si­cal se­lec­tions. All Stars' copped the award for Best Ca­lyp­so.

The Flug­tag blame game

Since Sun­day, blame has been fly­ing left, right and cen­tre as to who should be held re­spon­si­ble for the trag­ic de­ba­cle that was the Red Bull Flug­tag event at Williams Bay, Ch­aguara­mas. I've heard peo­ple blame the pro­mot­ers, the man­age­ment of Pier 1, the po­lice, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA), the fam­i­ly of the de­ceased, even the en­tre­pre­neur­ial boat men. No one is ex­empt from blame in this trag­ic sce­nario. I think every­one is cul­pa­ble in this messy sit­u­a­tion. In the first place, it was al­ways a case of in­san­i­ty on the part of those in au­thor­i­ty to grant any­one per­mis­sion to stage any event along the west­ern penin­su­la on St Pe­ter's Day in Care­nage, far less for one as mam­moth as the Flug­tag. From the be­gin­ning, based on hard­core facts from pre­vi­ous Flug­tag events around the world, this was al­ways go­ing to be a ma­jor crowd-puller, not to men­tion it be­ing the first ever staged in this part of the world. Un­of­fi­cial records sug­gest that Sun­day's event broke the world record for the largest au­di­ence ever. I can­not lay all the blame on the po­lice or the pro­mot­ers as the re­sponse by the pub­lic Flug­tag T&T was cer­tain­ly not ex­pect­ed. In short, not on­ly were they shocked out of their wits by the turnout of near 50,000 peo­ple, but clear­ly they were over­whelmed on every front.

Every artery in­to Ch­aguara­mas was grid­locked, in­clud­ing Mu­cu­rapo Road which was trans­formed from a three-lane road­way in­to a one-way. No amount of plan­ning could have changed this sim­ple Math equa­tion of more than 25,000 ve­hi­cles fil­ter­ing in­to a two-lane road­way of ap­prox­i­mate­ly four miles just can't fit. On a per­son­al note, Flug­tag was a trag­ic event as my Princes Town friend lost her ba­by broth­er Nicholas Quam­i­na, who drowned when the pirogue in which he trav­elled in with his fam­i­ly cap­sised. This brings me to an­oth­er point, how can so many boat cap­tains be al­lowed by the law to place their ves­sels for pub­lic hire when hav­ing no life­jack­ets on board? An­oth­er ques­tion is, how can so many sup­pos­ed­ly sane peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly non-swim­mers, even think of rid­ing in a boat with­out wear­ing a life­jack­et? I feel that the or­gan­is­ers of Flug­tag should have col­lab­o­rat­ed more with the au­thor­i­ties and try to coopt the Min­istry of Trans­port to op­er­ate shut­tles us­ing the wa­ter taxis from the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front to the venue. This would have eased a tremen­dous amount of the traf­fic con­ges­tion along the Fore­shore and West­ern Main Road. Hind­sight is al­ways the most in­formed and best sight and I'm sure that on hind­sight no pro­mot­er will nev­er even con­sid­er stag­ing an­oth­er zany event like this with­out every pos­si­ble con­tin­gency plan in place. Sun­day al­so showed us all that there is dire need for an al­ter­nate thor­ough­fare that links the west to the east. Since the days of Dr Er­ic Williams, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have made nois­es of build­ing a road that links the west­ern penin­su­la to the na­tion's cap­i­tal. Per­haps Un­cle Jack can ini­ti­ate this bold plan and make it a re­al­i­ty.