Len “Boogsie” Sharpe played Yes­ter­day on the pan at about 6.35 pm on Sat­ur­day May 9, 2020.

This sto­ry could have end­ed right there. But then some­body post­ed in the com­ments sec­tion of the YouTube stream: “I am in tears. Is this nor­mal?” Fin­gers frozen, I could not type a re­sponse. We’d been bust­ed. Many of us, I pre­sumed. Some­one else chimed in with some­thing I can­not re­mem­ber.

It hap­pened so fast. Boogsie had been show­ing off on the dou­ble sec­onds with speed and an amaz­ing com­mand of com­plex riffs on The Mighty Spar­row’s Rose. Then, in­ex­plic­a­bly, he changed mood with a Bea­t­les/Lennon suite that even­tu­al­ly land­ed, near the end, on Yes­ter­day.

At that mo­ment, those of us who have been fol­low­ing what has been hap­pen­ing to pan, its play­ers and its mu­sic over this lock­down pe­ri­od, found in Boogsie, the ul­ti­mate re­sort to art as an­o­dyne.

It was Robert Greenidge’s turn on Sun­day be­fore a cam­era. The ap­plause com­prised three or four mut­ed pairs of hands and the com­pli­ments of on­line com­men­taries. Dit­to Dane Gul­ston a lit­tle ear­li­er. Aviel Scant­er­bury and pals have been hav­ing Tran­scrip­tion Tues­days.

The in­stru­ment, through these times, has in­deed been cap­tur­ing the role of mu­sic as supreme emo­tion­al ex­pres­sion. There are al­so hints that the end of the cur­rent phase of Coro­n­avirus lock­down would bring to pan—both as in­stru­ment and as a form of so­cial mo­bil­i­sa­tion and or­gan­i­sa­tion—in­cre­ments of change it had nev­er be­fore con­tem­plat­ed.

This is more, much more than a change of venue or a pro­gram­mat­ic in­no­va­tion. We might well be look­ing at change that presents the in­stru­ment and its mean­ing in ways we have nev­er be­fore en­vis­aged.

Yet, we had been re­ceiv­ing clues and tips. Be­fore Boogsie took to the WACK TV screen last Sat­ur­day, there was Bar­ba­dos-based Tri­ni Nevin Roach’s Panogra­ma 2020 com­pe­ti­tion (so we should have a 2021 ver­sion, I hope). All on­line. All so­lo. In­ter­na­tion­al – the fi­nal­ists came from An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Saint Maarten and T&T. Earl Brooks Jr topped the fi­nal 10.

But, that’s just the thinnest end of the wedge. For, these are the front­line in­stru­ments on­ly. There must be space for the mids and the bass­es and the per­cus­sions. Peo­ple like Roach et al will get there.

Then there were the glob­al col­lab­o­ra­tions that brought us BP Rene­gades’ pro­duc­tion of Heal the World with more than a dozen play­ers from the US, Japan, the UK, France and T&T.

Speak­ing of which, Du­vone Stew­art has been hav­ing a ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence through all of this and his home-based pro­mo of Boogsie’s one-man show was a show in its own right. Out on his porch (pre­sum­ably in To­ba­go), wav­ing to and greet­ing passers-by.

There was an­oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion called De Coali­tion you can still find on­line. These were the young bunch on a va­ri­ety of in­stru­ments.

The Just Flow Chal­lenge was host­ed by an­oth­er youth­ful group of ac­com­plished pan­nists bear­ing names such as Chu­ma Ak­il Jahi Wat­son, Tris­ton Mar­cano, An­dre White, Ham­mond Mitchell, Ste­fon West and Scant­er­bury.

There have al­so been sev­er­al on­line tu­to­ri­als ini­ti­at­ed by play­ers/in­struc­tors both in T&T and over­seas. I fol­low Ster­ling C Sem­ple Sr on Face­book for the lat­est.

What I am say­ing is that the pan­dem­ic has the po­ten­tial to rev­o­lu­tionise pan in ways we had nev­er be­fore en­vi­sioned.

True, to many peo­ple this means ab­solute­ly noth­ing. I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the ac­cor­dion, for in­stance. Oth­ers may not pre­fer the ukulele. So, it’s of­ten dif­fi­cult to dis­cuss pan with peo­ple who do not un­der­stand its mean­ing as some­thing more than a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment with­in the con­text of T&T de­vel­op­ment. That’s fine.

The cur­rent pe­ri­od is how­ev­er re­veal­ing that a tidal wave of change for pan is up­on us. Mu­si­cians, Pan Trin­ba­go, the Min­istry of Cul­ture, bankers, ed­u­ca­tors, man­u­fac­tur­ers, busi­ness­peo­ple take note.

Don’t be sur­prised if Panora­ma 2021 (if it hap­pens) does not look any­thing like what we have known in the past.

At the height of the re­cent WTI crash in oil prices, some­body memed the val­ue of an oil drum filled with oil and an­oth­er craft­ed as a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment. Book closed. Sto­ry done. Boogsie played Yes­ter­day, and to­mor­row will nev­er be the same.