There's an old saying about female empowerment that asserts that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.That type of thinking got put to the test yesterday when Pan Trinbago allowed a 70 foot pool to be placed in the middle of the semifinals of the premier steel band competition in the modern world.It wasn't actually in the middle of things. It just happened to be placed centrally to service the attentions of the young audience that populates the Greens, Pan Trinbago's concession to Carnival's next generation.
This is a constituency that might once, in another era, have been learning enough about the nuances of the national instrument to become aficionados of pan.There have been counterarguments that the pan body should make money where it can and anyway, wasn't there a pool in cricket?Two words on that. Music challenge.
Once pan men took up sticks to hit each other, but for decades now that sense of pride and challenge is met on the Panorama stage. It's a culturally rich; deeply important part of T&T history and the meaning of it all is increasingly lost on today's audiences.As it stood last year, The Greens, physically isolated from the pan competition and sporting entertainments as diverse as rhythm sections and fog filled rooms with stripper's poles, seemed to thrive on a vague sense of connection and guilt that pan needed to be supported.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members