Pe­ter Ray Blood

Pan his­to­ry was cre­at­ed last Tues­day when Pan Trin­ba­go launched the Africa Trinidad & To­ba­go Steel­band De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (ATTS­DC). A joint ven­ture be­tween Pan Trin­ba­go and a Niger­ian pan fac­to­ry (Pan Land), the launch was held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. In­trigued by the play­ing of the na­tion­al an­thems of T&T and Nige­ria by Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra, Niger­ian deputy high com­mis­sion­er LT Bade-Afuye said he is an ad­vo­cate for re­plac­ing west­ern in­stru­ments with the steel­band to per­form his coun­try's an­them. Bade-Afuye said that T&T Car­ni­val has tak­en root in not just Nige­ria, but in oth­er African states, all fu­elled and dri­ven by the mu­sic of pan.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, CEO Chief Bowei S Bowei who re­vealed that with Nige­ria hav­ing an es­ti­mat­ed pop­u­la­tion in ex­cess of 130 mil­lion peo­ple, ATTS­DC will ini­tial­ly aim at a tar­get mar­ket of five mil­lion. He added that the fa­cil­i­ty, which is in Nige­ria, will in­clude record­ing stu­dios, as well as fa­cil­i­ties for tun­ing pan in­stru­ments and tu­tor­ing mu­si­cians and tech­ni­cians. He al­so said the com­pa­ny will pro­duce a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme, ti­tled Pan Around the World, to be shown across Nige­ria. Bowei dis­closed that a fea­si­bil­i­ty study is cur­rent­ly un­der­way to es­tab­lish a pan in the class­room pro­gramme, ex­tend­ing from pri­ma­ry to ter­tiary lev­el, across the west African re­pub­lic. In his ad­dress, Di­az re­vealed that 25 years ago, Ex­o­dus vol­un­teered its pa­n­yard, on the East­ern Main Road in St Au­gus­tine, to vis­it­ing Niger­ian mu­si­cians to learn to play pan. Nige­ria had its first ac­tu­al, live taste of T&T pan back in 1977 when Trinidad All Stars per­formed at Fes­tac 1977.

Di­az was high in praise of T&T Am­bas­sador to Nige­ria, Nyahu­ma Obi­ka, who he said com­pre­hen­sive­ly rep­re­sent­ed the na­tion­al in­stru­ment when a lo­cal con­tin­gent vis­it­ed Nige­ria last year. He al­so piled ku­dos on Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards for ini­ti­at­ing di­a­logue be­tween Pan Trin­ba­go and Niger­ian Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan to fa­cil­i­tate the for­ma­tion of ATTS­DC. List­ed to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an was un­avoid­ably ab­sent and the speech was read on his be­half by per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Mar­garet Par­rilon. Aside from Ex­o­dus, al­so per­form­ing at the launch was cel­e­brat­ed pan­nist Len "Boogsie" Sharpe HBM. He was af­ford­ed a stand­ing ova­tion by the Nige­ri­ans, even be­fore he struck a note, and two more dur­ing the play­ing of three items, in­clud­ing a pop­u­lar Niger­ian piece.

The board of di­rec­tors of ATTS­DC in­cludes Nige­ri­ans Chief Bowei S Bowei (CEO), Chan­ty Ba­batunde, Mod­upe Oke­buko­la, La­di Franklin and Em­manuel Udenyi; and T&T na­tion­als Jawara Mob­o­ta, Kei­th Di­az, Richard Forteau and Al­lan "Pablo" Au­gus­tus. Among those at Tues­day's launch were Trade, In­dus­try & In­vest­ment Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath; Min­is­ter of Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas; Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Mar­garet Par­rilon; Niger­ian en­tre­pre­neur Chief Bowei S Bowei; Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az, and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of Pan Trin­ba­go.