D An­tho­ny Black­man

I to­tal­ly agree that the scope of pan and panora­ma needs to be broad­ened, but in keep­ing with the per­cep­ti­ble death of steel­pan, that "killer" state­ment, the af­ter thought that pan will sure­ly be an in­te­gral part of the Peo­ples Band, when cou­pled with the scorn and dis­re­spect of the San Fer­nan­do steel­bands, some­how adds val­ue to the bur­ial of Pan and not the broad­en­ing of its scope. Steel­band and mas was hap­pen­ing and could hap­pen again. Proof, Sil­ver Stars a big time mas play­ing steel­band won the band of the year ti­tle in the 60's, and in that said era, George Bai­ley, the Ce­cil B De Mille of Car­ni­val, pro­gressed from "bring­ing ah sec­tion in In­vaders steel­band," to dom­i­nat­ing the band of the year ti­tle for sev­er­al years. We can­not end the list of mas and mas­men ini­tial­ly dri­ven by the steel­pan. For ex­am­ple, in the fan­cy sailor and sea bees cat­e­go­ry, the Dem­for­tu­nates of Bel­mont was steel­band, and Cito Valasquez, the re­put­ed king of the wireben­ders, his pre­sen­ta­tions were of a steel­band. Not to for­get She by Rene­gades, Des­per­a­does' The Frozen North,and the huge peren­ni­al sailor pre­sen­ta­tions by Trinidad All Stars.

Solv­ing the pan the­o­rem

My ar­gu­ment, there­fore, is that steel­band needs a peo­ple's band sort of boost, in­stead of the Tues­day mas seg­ment of Car­ni­val. A huge per­cent­age of steel­bands, apart from be­com­ing stag­nat­ed be­cause of the my­opic com­pet­i­tive­ness of Panora­ma, do not come on the road and play mas, and those who do so have their pre­sen­ta­tions taint­ed by un­cos­tumed rev­ellers. Use the peo­ple's band con­cept/monies, to pay for cos­tumes for these rev­ellers, and pay the panists for play­ing on the road. They would not be all in­clu­sive, so the ven­dors will sell their goods, be­cause there would be 50-plus steel­bands with at least 15,000 hun­gry and thirsty peo­ple on the road Mon­day and Tues­day. The cru­ci­fix­ion of pan must be abort­ed so that this new cul­ture of arts and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism can fly. Please in­cor­po­rate the steel­pan in­to your ini­tial plans to bring back Car­ni­val to the Sa­van­nah, and sell it to the world. It may al­so be a good idea to pig­gy back on the Brook­lyn J'Ou­vert mod­el, by al­lo­cat­ing a time and a route ex­clu­sive­ly for steel­bands in the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar, peo­ple's band monies can spon­sor that event as well. In oth­er words, since the big stage is the so­lu­tion for ca­lyp­so and mas, if the steel­band be­comes a mi­nus in the for­mu­la, we will cer­tain­ly need Pythago­ras to ar­rive at QED.