Leah So­rias

Lo­cal pan­men want Gov­ern­ment to pass laws which would com­pel ra­dio sta­tions in T&T to play lo­cal mu­sic.

Up in arms by the lack of air­play giv­en to pan mu­sic, Pan Trin­ba­go's pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az said al­though there were more than 10,000 pan play­ers in T&T, it was on­ly dur­ing the Panora­ma sea­son their mu­sic was played. "Peo­ple are mak­ing CDs to present their work but they are not get­ting any ra­dio sta­tions to play it," he said. "We would like for Gov­ern­ment to change the law so that lo­cal sta­tions play lo­cal mu­sic," he added.

Di­az was speak­ing dur­ing the launch of ac­tiv­i­ties mark­ing Steel­pan Month, to be held in Au­gust. The launch took place at the La Fan­tasie Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, St Ann's. He said steel­bands trav­el world­wide and pan mu­sic is ac­cept­ed and ap­pre­ci­at­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but hard­ly in T&T. "Why are our peo­ple in ra­di­oland us­ing on­ly for­eign mu­sic and giv­ing roy­al­ties to for­eign­ers?" he asked.

"We have enough mu­sic in the pan fra­ter­ni­ty to be played and that doesn't on­ly in­clude Panora­ma mu­sic, but R&B mu­sic too," Di­az said. His sen­ti­ments were backed by Richard Forteau, Pan Trin­ba­go's sec­re­tary. "We have tonnes of pan mu­sic that could be played," he said. He not­ed that the pan fra­ter­ni­ty had moved from an era of play­ing "old time" mu­sic in­to play­ing new age mu­sic from in­ter­na­tion­al artistes such as Ali­cia Keys. He said Pan Trin­ba­go was on the verge of get­ting a ra­dio fre­quen­cy which would have al­lowed it to air "to­tal lo­cal" mu­sic. He said this op­por­tu­ni­ty fell through as "some­one with a buck more came along."

Steel­pan Month

Mean­while, Di­az said the steel­pan body had sought $1 mil­lion in as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment to fund the steel­pan events in Au­gust. He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion's en­tire ex­ec­u­tive met re­cent­ly with Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters and was ex­pect­ed to meet with him again to fi­nalise fund­ing. "Be­fore we could re­ceive the mon­ey, there are teething prob­lems that have to be sort­ed out since we are no longer un­der the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs," Di­az said.