Happy Birthday, Panorama! What with the lineup of finalists in three categories tonight, the vibes cyar done. Truly golden, pan. This happening. Yet, as with most things pan, disagreements over the competition always cut through the burning of the drum. Down an allegorical road, one surely must have heard the term, "tempering the steel." But toning down the instrument before it is tuned sets it up for the tuning. Which is unlike tempers flying over pan because there have always been multiple gospels of its nativity, just as there are disciples willing to risk a heart attack over the artform.
One can never not have an argument over an instrument that pioneers had beaten into shape so it could be given life. But a couple have already been floating around the competition of pan on its very birthday. Never argue over pan, so they say. Indeed, Pan Trinbago should begin a workshop on why we should never argue over the international instrument of our times. Unless it's to set the record straight. And there's the rub.
A case in point is the belief that only 49 editions of Panorama have been staged. Those who cite the 1979 Pan Boycott are wrong. Despite only a preliminary round being conducted that year, there's absolutely no need to run a chord on the four pan in a pissy fit. It's 50 years of Panorama. Get with the programme already. Given deeper importance is how Panorama got its name. Melvin Bryan, currently an advisor to Keith Diaz, president of Pan Trinbago, and who held a similar position under George Goddard, former president of the Steelband Association, cited his mentor's book: "Ronald Williams said the CDC would give it a try to raise the $1,000 (for the 1963 first prize) and he was going to change the name of the competition to Steelbands' Panorama. I agreed with him."
But Desmond Chase, a retired banker from Sayreville, New Jersey, USA, said he was an executive member of an ad hoc committee charged with christening the inaugural night of pan with a name. Chase said that as he rode his tick-tick from his Belmont home to the meeting at the old Immigration Office on Wrightson Road, he lucked upon a movie poster outside Deluxe that trumpeted its new screen persona: In Cinemascope and Panorama (a wide-angle view or representation of a physical space). Chase said just before the meeting was called he told committee member Lloyd Pollonais of his discovery. That evening, Chase recalled, Panorama was the unanimous decision.
"Not many members had contributed ideas," Chase acknowledged, "so I don't know how Ronald Williams came up with Steelbands' Panorama. The committee can vouch for my integrity." Don Clarke, a tuner for City Syncopators, remembers how unusual bands prepared for the first Panorama in 1963. "They played their music like a Bomb," Clarke said. "You couldn't go to the pan yard to maco. They held back and sprang a surprise on the audience at the Savannah."
Treatment of the arrangements, notwithstanding, Anthony Williams, Pan Am North Stars band leader and arranger of the winning song, Sparrow's Dan is the Man, says his experience in the competition was bittersweet. "We were professionals," he said, "and we shouldn't have been judged like amateurs. Why judge professional musicians?" North Stars' second win in a row, with Kitchener's Mama Dis Is Mas, was testament that Panorama had become a repository for creativity. Diaz recounts changes in tuning, arranging, wheels, pan racks, canopies, new instruments such as the double tenor, four pan, rocket pan, six pan, 12-bass and triple guitar.
Seated with his back against a window that looks out to Victoria Square, Diaz reels off a spate of stats.
* Eighty two per cent of youths play pan
* Forty seven per cent are women
* Thirty-five arrangers are under 30 years old
* 8,500 players perform in the Panorama
* 167 registered steel bands in the country
* 81 steel bands in the 2012 semifinals, including 49 large bands.
* 48 percent younger crowd at the event this year.
"We see growth from 2011-12 that young people are paying to come. I want to thank all of them for carrying the flag of T&T culture. They have a good time. I don't want to stop them. That's why I opened the gate during [the contretemps at] the semifinals. The attraction of young people is because the music is done by young people, basically. So many young arrangers in the country penetrating the market of Panorama. We've given young composers a shot at changing old mentality into new vision.
"It's why we decided in 2012 to be more businesslike. Increase the space and make more money." Hence the Greens. For example, the North Greens is expected to become self-sufficient, Diaz says, considering that maximum attendance at the Grand Stand is 12,000 and 9,800 in the North Stand. The Greens may enhance the Panorama experience of 11,000 patrons. But attorney Martin Daly sees the area as the crux of the Panorama problem.
"Not enough paying space is created to accommodate all of the patrons who'd like to pay to be in the vicinity of the Panorama," Daly says. "Not everybody wants to sit and watch it live. Pan Trinbago is making enough attempt to deal with the North Stand subculture. It needs that revenue. You want this group to stay interested in pan, even if there's marginal interest. If it were up to me, I'll let the Greens run as far as All Saints Church."
To accommodate this subculture, Daly says patrons need to accept the status quo in the North Stand. "You work with what you have. Few traditions find the right balance to effect change." Daly has seen signs that the steel band body is thinking for the betterment of pan. "It started with Patrick Arnold and continues with Diaz-that the organization has been making pan available more and more every year. They've removed the seasonal ceiling. Also, allowing adjudicators in the pan yards is a progressive step.
For his part, Diaz has scheduled "right after the Carnival" an in-depth planning session for 2013. A Yoruba who was made chief of Alara of Ilara in Nigeria several months ago, Diaz began performing in Panorama in 1967. Bands that were eager for his skills on the second pan included Silhouettes, San Juan All Stars, Trinidad All Stars, Merry Makers, Tripolians, Playboy, Modernaires, Starlift and Desperadoes.
To "upgrade" himself, Diaz studied communications at Cipriani Labour College for a year. "We send staff to training courses at The College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago (COSTAATT). I myself plan to continue pursuing studies at COSTAATT. The world is changing and you need to update yourself." Do you think the beast is still in pan, a visitor wants to know.
"The beast still in this thing? That's the nature of pan, the trials and tribulations of the panman. That's how I became a steel band man who knows the belly of the steel band movement. You need to be strong. Hardcore. Tough decisions. The demands placed on a steel band man...The steel band movement is not easy. "I knew George Goddard. I watched him walk up and down fighting for Panorama, and I said one day that I'd be in his shoes. I served under past presidents of Pan Trinbago, such as Arnim Smith, Owen Serrette, Patrick Arnold. You have to know the pan world. You have to know the belly of the steel band man. Rudolph Charles was a steel band man."
Staff bring documents for his authorization. It moves him to accentuate such regimen with a story about cross-checking himself while signing checks. Three silver bracelets jangle on his right hand as he sifts through piles of stuff on his desk. A huge gold ring with distinguishing marks that remind of an order or society, offers a glint of the metallic action figure in him. But his black-rimmed glasses and a Carnival documentary playing on a TV throws off the calibration.
"I learn that in the steel band," he prefaces the story. "A man was given $800 and sent to buy stuff so the band could make a cook in the pan yard. But he didn't buy chicken and rice. We asked him for the bill. He said 'They don't give bill in the market.' So we forced him to write on a piece of paper how much he spent in the market, and that is a bill. He had to account for the $800. That's why I'm careful whatever I'm signing."
The moral of the story segues into the Holy Grail of the Panorama-Desperadoes' semifinal score sheet. There's not a scratch, not a blemish, he says. "See, it's clean." That such a revelation augurs hope to steel band men who hold a grouse also has a familiar ring about Pan Trinbago's financial planning, including the next decade for Panorama.
Daniel Lambert, advisor to the president on finance, revealed his intention to brand Pan Trinbago as a world steel band body to facilitate Panorama competitions anywhere. Lambert spins it as the legal underpinnings in terms of a wholesale recognition of pan that originated in Trinidad and Tobago. "The definition of what is pan and its classification terms of the different instruments leads to a significant level of promotion," Lambert says. "The establishment of Panorama associations in different countries, and guiding those associations to set up pan industries-in that perspective, you'll have the right to be seen as the premier body."
Lambert plans to develop formal programmes of training, tuning and playing that could lead to accreditation. "Who accredits those bodies in the US?" Pan Trinbago also plans to "address" the credibility of local accreditation. "They do a degree in music that includes pan," says Lambert. "It would help in the profiling of Pan Trinbago, and by extension Trinidad and Tobago. Once it's organized, the movement will be able to deal with stakeholders in terms of recognizing Pan Trinbago as the body of authority that your programme is good. Then, sanction should be originated through Pan Trinbago, and once we're financially independent, Pan Trinbago will get the respect it deserves."
For now, what's on Bryan's mind is the principal achievement of Panorama. "When I think about the 50th anniversary of Panorama, I realize how interesting it was to trace the development of the instrument in technique, players and arrangers. The ability to impart, says Bryan. "One must recognize that development was born out of competition. And such development over the years gives the lie to those who say there should be no competition. Because of competition, tuners have honed their skills, arrangers in their techniques, and the dexterity of the performers would have seen vast improvement."
Diaz, however, has set his sights on the bigger picture looming in the next decade. An elaborate revolving stage that would bring pans up from a holding bay, thus cutting into set-up time. "It'd cost a lot of money. But who'll foot the bill?" Changing the concept of Panorama on stage sounds like a log line for a whalish movie like Moby Dick. But it's a steel band man's dream. To futurize the Panorama. You bet arrangers and panists, and TV crews, too, are watching which way the wind blows.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar tries her hand on the tenor pan during her visit to the Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars pan yard on Thursday night. Photo: Shirley Bahadur