In the latter half of the year, during rainy season, lawn owners are usually bedeviled by infestation caused by grasshoppers, mole crickets, locusts and other grass-chomping pests. Sadly though, long before wet season begins, in fact in the midst of the dry season, the Queen's Park Savannah–the most popular green acreage in the nation's capital–is also invaded and infested by pests: pests with two legs.
At Panorama, the world's foremost percussion competition, you see them: pan hoppers, more ignomiously referred to as "crackshots." This breed of pan player is easily recognised by the knapsack worn on the back, containing jerseys of the multiple bands they perform with at national Panorama, especially at the preliminary stage.
During the competition they can be seen hastening offstage after performing with a steelband, not in the direction where their colleagues leave but in the opposite direction, towards the entrance, to subsequently return on stage to perform with another steelband, or with another few.
Unlike earlier times, when pan folk were loyal to a steelband, mainly one in their community, pan hoppers have no allegiance to any one steelband. Few of them are actually musically astute, and for them pan is merely an instrument of hustle (eat-ah-food), especially at Panorama time.
At this year's rounds of competition, a media colleague and I observed four young women plying their pan hopping trade right under the nose of pan officials and stage management.
We also recognised an easily recognisable pan player hopping from bands of the west and east with the fluid motion and skin change of a chameleon.
Pan Trinbago secretary Richard Forteau, admitting that he is aware of the challenge to curb band hopping, said: "Pan Trinbago is addressing this immediately after this Carnival, especially as the deadline for bands to register for Panorama 2016 is March 20, 2015."
Forteau added that Pan Trinbago and the executive committee for the International Conference and Panorama, headed by Roslyn Khan-Cummings and scheduled for August 4-9, is working around the clock to perfect this event. He said planning will gain momentum from Ash Wednesday.
Pan hopping smacks of dishonesty, especially as pan hoppers displace hard-working musicians who labour nightly in pan yards in the lead up to Panorama learning a band's tune of choice.
It also prevents a steelband from having a solid core of players that will make the band efficient in terms of developing a repertoire at Carnival time.
Without a repertoire of tunes of the season, steelbands cannot attract promoters to hire them to play alongside the conventional calypso and soca music bands.
A check revealed that a crackshot/pan hopper can command as much as $1,500 to $2,000 per competition.