Narell: Internationalisation of pan is an opportunity, not a loss

In Part One of his interview with Dalton Narine, Andy Narell spoke about his excitement about arranging for the Panorama competition for the first time in 12 years. In the second and concluding part of this wide ranging interview, Narell says what he would do to change pan’s major competition and knocks the Trinidadians who he describes as pan “protectionists’.

 

Q: What have you been up to since your last Panorama? What has been your experience with Relator?

A: I’ve kept working on composing steel band music the whole time, and feel that I keep learning and developing my craft. I also spend a lot of time on the road teaching and directing that music at universities, and I had a great experience rehearsing and performing it with Trinidad All Stars at the jazz festival here in Trinidad.  

Working with Relator has been one of the most enjoyable and educational experiences of my life. He is a walking encyclopedia of classic calypso music, a great composer and musician. We started with the idea of me putting together a small jazz group to play with him, and we recorded an album and played some concerts.  

When the WDR Big Band in Köln [Germany] asked me to do a concert of my music for steel band plus their horn section (14 horns), I played Lucas Schmid (the band’s director) a recording of Relator singing, and proposed that we do part of the concert with him, backed by the super big band (25-piece steel band and 14 horns), and that we feature Lord Kitchener’s music. He listened for a couple of minutes and was sold. 

 

How will your success over the years come to bear on your approach to the Panorama?

That’s a loaded question. I don’t think about my ‘success’ when I’m working on a project, but I do have confidence in my musical ideas that comes from working hard and having gained the respect of my fellow musicians, the listening public, and people like yourself who write about it. I would say that my success at getting to the finals both times I wrote music for Panorama has encouraged me to stick with what I feel is right musically, and continue to ignore all the people who tell me the music is cool but this is Panorama so you have to do this and that, put all those things into the piece that supposedly will impress the judges.  

 

If you were involved in a reconstruction of Panorama from an artistic and marketing mindset, what would be your direction?

I think it’s pretty clear that people are getting bored with the music at Panorama. And once the show is over and the winners are announced, hardly anyone is listening to the vast majority of the music being played there. And it isn’t just Panorama that’s suffering. Steel bands go out on tour and play the same repertoire they were playing 40 or 50 years ago, when they were trying to demonstrate the versatility of the pan to an audience full of squares. 

There’s a lack of vision and a lack of respect for the listening public. I can think of countless times I’ve been liming with my Trini friends and everybody’s railing against the monotony of Panorama, inevitably pointing fingers and blaming somebody. Change comes from within, and we need to change the way we think about the music. 

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Music is not a sport. It’s art. It’s our culture.  Along with art and literature - and I would include calypso in that category - it defines who we are.  

There are a lot of things we could be doing structurally that could point Panorama in a different direction, but I doubt that any of them will happen as long as it’s being run by an executive committee composed of representatives from the big bands.  They are so entrenched, defending their position and advantage, everybody jockeying for a piece of the financial pie. You know it, I know it, and they know it.  It’s the elephant in the room.  And I have a fundamental disagreement with the notion that giving more and more prize money to the winner will raise the level of the music.  

Rather than give you a top down solution, as if I were in charge, I’ll give you some what if’s.  What if we took all that prize money and spread it out, giving multiple prizes for performance, originality, composition, innovation?  What if we distributed money to steel bands to start music schools in their pan yards, create music libraries where young people can listen to music from all over the world, watch live and instructional videos, have access to computers, basic recording equipment, theory books, be taught by musicians who can teach young players reading, harmony, scale theory, rhythms, musical styles from all over the world, arranging, how to use recording and publishing software like Pro Tools, Finale, and Sibelius?  What if we got a whole new set of judges and gave them a different set of criteria, told them to deduct points for repeating tired Panorama clichés, for banging on the pans, for making a mockery of conducting?

What if we put some energy into promoting Panorama as a world-class music festival?  Try googling Trinidad Panorama - there’s no website. There isn’t even a Facebook page. That’s ridiculous.  

 

DN: Can you envision a global competition? If not, why not?

AN: I don’t think that the rest of the world necessarily shares Trinidad’s enthusiasm for music competition. Rather than trying to promote competition all over the world, maybe we can gain more by continuing to try to attract players to come to Trinidad and play with the bands, learn about steel band music.  Keep building relationships with steel bands all over the world, and with universities where students from abroad could get college credit for playing in a Trinidad steel band while kids from T&T could get better access to scholarships to study abroad. That’s one of the things Dennis Phillip is working towards at Birdsong.   

 

DN: Does it bother you, the claim by many a Trinidadian that “Pan is we ting,” despite the works of yours and others with the instrument’s global outreach?

AN: First of all, it’s not all about me and what I’m doing for pan, OK?  But thanks for the recognition. I think it’s a good thing that Trinis consider pan ‘we ting’ and show it some love and appreciation. I suppose what you mean here is that there are people here who feel that something is being taken away from them when people from other parts of the world embrace it too, and that’s unfortunate, because it’s short-sighted. I think the internationalization of pan is an opportunity, not a loss. I’m arranging for the 2013 Panorama, but I think it would be a pretty big stretch to say that foreigners are coming down and taking away work from Trinis.  On the other hand, quite a few Trinidadian arrangers have done well teaching pan in other parts of the world - Liam Teague, Ray Holman, Rudy Smith, Boogsie Sharpe, Robert Greenidge, for example. 

Here’s a twist for you, if you really want to create some controversy with this interview.   Ellie Mannette emigrated to the USA in 1967 and his work is largely unknown in Trinidad, except by people who remember what he accomplished before he left. But there is an incomparable wealth of knowledge about tuning pan in his head, hands, and heart. He’s been doing it nonstop for 70 years, since the beginning of pan as a melodic instrument, and in my view he is in a class by himself. Now he has given us the greatest gift possible -  he has passed on that knowledge to a new generation of tuners. Now, your ‘we ting’ protectionists will say that he gave away something that belongs to ‘we’ but I for one am grateful, and I work with those younger guys. What’s more, some of them are coming to Trinidad and they’re training young Trini tuners at Gill’s Pan Shop, bringing Ellie’s knowledge back to Trinidad and passing it on, raising the standard of pans being produced right here in the home of pan. And you know what’s even more galling to the protectionists - these guys are white. How crazy is that?  White guys showing Trinis how to tune pan?  Crazy should have put that one into ‘In Time to Come,’ along with ‘America will have a Black President.’   

 

DN: What are your favourite foods and hangouts in Trinidad and Tobago?

AN: I love Trini cuisine in general, and by way of flashing my credentials this would be a good time to say thank you to Miss Merle in Belmont for all those delicious dinners she’s fed me when David Rudder calls her and tells her ‘Ah comin’ one time and ah bringin’ Andy too.’  St. James roti across the street from Smokey and Bunty’s, corn soup anywhere, but the one by Mas Camp is special ’cause it was still going AFTER I finished rehearsing with All Stars for the jazz festival project. Doubles by the Savannah, bake and shark at Maracas Bay, though that’s more like a ritual of coming back home. Too greasy to eat all the time.  I really like the restaurants like Veni Mangé, Solimar, The Verandah. Hope that doesn’t make me sound like a snob.   

 

AN: This conversation is making me hungry.   

DN: Well, then, much appreciation and good luck.

 

POSSIBLE QUOTES: What if we distributed money to steel bands to start music schools in their pan yards, create music libraries where young people can listen to music from all over the world, watch live and instructional videos, have access to computers, basic recording equipment, theory books, be taught by musicians who can teach young players reading, harmony, scale theory, rhythms, musical styles from all over the world, arranging, how to use recording and publishing software like Pro Tools, Finale, and Sibelius? 

 

What if we put some energy into promoting Panorama as a world-class music festival? Try googling Trinidad Panorama - there’s no website. There isn’t even a Facebook page. That’s ridiculous.  

 

I think it’s a good thing that Trinis consider pan ‘we ting’ and show it some love and appreciation. I suppose what you mean here is that there are people here who feel that something is being taken away from them when people from other parts of the world embrace it too, and that’s unfortunate, because it’s short-sighted. I think the internationalization of pan is an opportunity, not a loss.