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The centrality of the Panorama competition to the steelband movement cannot be doubted. However, there are some downsides to it receiving paramount attention.
In the Newsday, early last week, Mark Lyndersay penetratingly labelled Carnival as “an entrenched competition economy” and summarised the deficiencies of Carnival in its current form as related to its ritual and cultural core.
Photo: TUCO
Nevertheless, Panorama is an earnings vehicle for pan players, most of whom are forced by our lopsided socio-economic system “to suck salt”. For now, therefore, we have to accept the entrenched presence of Panorama.
This acceptance might sound strange coming from a commentator who dislikes the oppressive status quo, much of which is ruining Trinidad and Tobago, especially the colonial and bigotry infested education system.
However, for me, keeping steelbands on the road for Carnival is an issue that is vital and cannot await wider change.
Let me first digress and remind readers that, outside of the Carnival season, there are much loved and well attended street parade events embracing steelbands such as Point Fortin Borough Day. One of those events is in jeopardy. I refer to Pan On The Avenue.
This was the concept of now deceased Councillor Cleveland Garcia, his wife and small team. It takes place on a Saturday on Ariapita Avenue (the Avenue) around Independence or Republic Day.
An account by Peter Ray Blood, reproduced in Pan Trinbago News, reported an attendance of 25,000 persons and a spirit of love and unity. It is strongly rumoured that the continuation of this event is in jeopardy.
I am confident that Cleveland Garcia’s family can readily find persons willing to volunteer to assist in the preparation and management of the event. What is required is stable sponsorship.
Photo: Consulate-general
The availability of an alternative “road make to walk” comfortable for everybody makes it important to keep this Avenue parade going.
It serves, in part, to redress the balance for those who have been pushed off the road on Carnival days by the conglomerate mas, which they cannot afford—and some of which permits its members to insult grassroots people.
The same reasoning applies with equal force to the Laventille Pan Parade, which has already perished for lack of funding support. My experience of this Emancipation event was described in a column entitled Dorata Street published on August 2010.
Photo: Pan Trinbago
Many may wonder whether ministries of government care about their credibility. The Ministry of Tourism and Culture has ceaselessly talked up the Avenue. Significant sums of money have been spent on a so-called upgrade of the Avenue as an entertainment hub and tourist destination. That objective is undermined if Pan on the Avenue is allowed to die.
Returning now to the issue of steelbands on the road on Carnival days. When Carnival was inclusive, an essential part of it was to be able to take jump with a band you support.
Alternatively, a band might simply be playing music that entices you when it is passing and into the back of which you can spontaneously go for five or six blocks and even take your children if they are with you.
(Copyright THA Info Dept)
Unless the Carnival calendar and routes are re-engineered, as I have repeatedly suggested, such spontaneous participation by spectators on the street cannot happen any longer because there is no route for steelbands to get past the juggernaut trucks and ropes deployed by conglomerate mas’.
The unregulated noise level of DJ music also drowns out a moderately amplified steelband playing on an open trailer.
As a powerful statement of authenticity, Trinidad All Stars nevertheless continues to present its thousands-strong annual sailor mas. All Stars has maintained a momentum, as well as some deference from DJs, that is unique.
The problem is that if other steelbands revive mas playing, despite the downsides of the exhaustion after Panorama and the lack of availability of players at that stage of the Carnival season, an insoluble jostle for space on the road will ensue once Jour Ouvert is over.
Before I am forced to return to topics arising out of the everyday shattering of our dreams, my exhortation for the enhancement of the current, but declining, presence of steelband on Jour Ouvert morning will be made next week.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
