Pe­ter Ray Blood

It is a month since this year's Car­ni­val week­end yet still ex­cite­ment con­tin­ues in the steel­band world. Pan Trin­ba­go has a lot of events planned for the re­main­der of this year and 2015, with the most am­bi­tious be­ing the stag­ing of the first-ever in­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma con­test next year.

Pan Trin­ba­go launched the lo­go for the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma (ICP) last Wednes­day at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), Port-of-Spain. Head­ing the list of dig­ni­taries at the for­mal func­tion were Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona; Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas; Speak­er Wade Mark; Cari­com Am­bas­sador Sir Ed­win Car­ring­ton; and, UWI Pro-Vice Chan­cel­lor/prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat.

The ICP lo­go is de­signed by 28-year-old Chevon Le Gen­dre, as­sist­ed by Kalesh Forde.

The in­tent of the ICP, ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for Au­gust 15, is to es­tab­lish T&T as the mec­ca of pan and Panora­ma.

The cen­tral im­age of the lo­go is a steel­pan, sur­round­ed by the flags of coun­tries to be in­vit­ed. Among the ex­pect­ed in­vi­tees are bands from the USA, UK, Cana­da, Nige­ria, Is­rael, Aus­tralia and every pan-play­ing na­tion of the Caribbean.

Some of the rules of the com­pe­ti­tion are that just one arranger will be per­mit­ted per band, and no mu­si­cian can play for two bands. Bands will al­so be lim­it­ed to 60 play­ers.

Per­form­ers at Na­pa on Wednes­day night in­clud­ed 2014 Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, Schools Panora­ma win­ner QRC/Prov­i­dence, Earl Brooks and ca­lyp­son­ian Eu­nice Pe­ters singing An­them for Pan.

In his fea­ture ad­dress Dou­glas said: "Pan Trin­ba­go has been hand­ed a very se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty...to nur­ture and de­vel­op a cre­ation that came from the bel­ly of the peo­ple. With this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, though, comes a high ex­pec­ta­tion.

"To com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly, our brand of steel­pan must be sup­port­ed by the type of lead­er­ship that em­braces the cur­rent re­al­i­ties and reads the mar­ket to pre­dict changes.

"While the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and, by ex­ten­sion, the Gov­ern­ment, is in sup­port of all the ef­forts of Pan Trin­ba­go to in­crease the in­come de­rived from the steel­pan in­dus­try, I must in­sist on the con­tin­ued demon­stra­tion of high­er goals and de­liv­er­ables for the na­tion­al in­stru­ment."

He con­tin­ued: "And so, this is my chal­lenge to Pan Trin­ba­go. Make this the im­por­tant and in­ge­nious ini­tia­tive that you have cre­at­ed, this ICP the bench­mark, the ul­ti­mate event for the in­ter­na­tion­al steel­pan mar­ket."

How­ev­er, be­fore fi­nal­is­ing the ground­work for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, Pan Trin­ba­go re­sumes its Pan in De Coun­try­side se­ries of con­certs to­mor­row in Grande Riv­iere, at 3 pm.

Steel­bands in­vit­ed in­clude Su­per­novas, Carib Wood­brook Play­boyz, San­gre Grande Cordettes, Pan Stere­onettes, South­ern Marines Steel­band Foun­da­tion and City Sun Val­ley, plus DJ KC Klass is Class. Pan Trin­ba­go has or­gan­ised a shut­tle ser­vice from its Park Street head­quar­ters, from 9 am. The shut­tle fee is $200.

Eight of Hearts com­ing in May

The oth­er blue riband steel­band event tak­ing place short­ly is the Eight of Hearts con­cert in May.

This bi­en­ni­al event, held for the past eight years by Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val Foun­da­tion (LSFF), is be­ing moved from its tra­di­tion­al Laven­tille base to Na­pa, Port-of-Spain this year, on May 16-17.

Eight of Hearts fea­tures the eight top large steel or­ches­tras in the Na­tion­al Panora­ma fi­nal every two years.

This year's top con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tras in­cludes cham­pi­on Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, bpTT Rene­gades, Wit­co Des­per­a­does, Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus, PCS Ni­tro­gen Sil­ver Stars, Skif­fle, CAL In­vaders and NL­CB Fon­claire.

LSFF di­rec­tor Ju­lian Cud­joe said this week: "We've done a to­tal eval­u­a­tion of our prod­uct and de­cid­ed to take it to the next lev­el.

"The Eight of Hearts brand needs to evolve; to breathe and grow. I think we have the best steel­band con­cert in the world, one which de­serves noth­ing less than the best. Af­ter all, it has the best steel­bands and the best pa­trons and spon­sors.

The Laven­tille venue was de­void of the type of in­fra­struc­ture to be­fit an event of this stature.

Na­pa is state-of-the-art, es­pe­cial­ly its back­stage ameni­ties, and the on­ly venue in Trinidad to stage a pro­duc­tion of this mag­ni­tude and im­por­tance."

Pan Fam­i­ly con­cert in the works

An­oth­er ex­cit­ing pan event is the in­au­gur­al Pan Fam­i­ly con­cert be­ing planned by Pan Trin­ba­go's North­ern Re­gion.

This unique pro­duc­tion will show­case the tal­ents of pan mu­si­cians and their off­spring.

Still in its plan­ning stages, artistes to be ap­proached for this unique event in­clude The Co­dring­ton Pan Fam­i­ly, led by pa­tri­arch Cary Co­dring­ton and fea­tur­ing his daugh­ter, cham­pi­on soloist Keisha; Dane Gul­ston and his sons (De­nil­son and Daniel); Mar­tin Kane, Mighty Spar­row and Black Stal­in, and their sons.

This week the re­gion's chair­man Ger­ald Mendes said: "We are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty to se­cure a venue for this show as all the main con­cert halls are ful­ly booked. Hope­ful­ly, we will get one be­fore the end of the year?"

Ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for Au­gust 3, the LSFF will be hold­ing the Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val for yet an­oth­er year, along the East­ern Main Road, in Suc­cess Vil­lage.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly four more edi­tions of Pan in De Coun­try­side are to be held na­tion­wide at venues to be de­cid­ed. Last year, these free, open-air con­certs went to dis­tricts as re­mote as Siparia, Moru­ga and Biche, and Spey­side, To­ba­go.

cor­rec­tion

Echoes of Car­ni­val, the re­view of the UTT Mu­si­cians con­cert at Na­pa which ap­peared on Page B9 in yes­ter­day's pa­per was writ­ten by Nigel Camp­bell. Apolo­gies to Mr Camp­bell for the omis­sion of his by­line.

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