Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) has provided quality coverage of this season’s Panorama competitions, particularly through the engagement of knowledgeable commentators. In the course of her closing remarks last Sunday morning when the medium and large band semi-finals concluded after midnight, Michelle Huggins-Watts, musicologist and formidable pan practitioner, commented on …
Read More »Daly Bread: Deny, deflect, denigrate; T&T damaged by political default mode
The arts and culture milieu is my ground and grounding. By that I mean it is both my happy place and helps to keep me “reel”—best translated, I suppose, as the opposite of becoming a blinged-out, undiscerning and indifferent poser. And so it was that, on the first Saturday of …
Read More »Daly Bread: The Carnival beyond 2022 discussion and calypso’s changing context
Views reportedly expressed by the well-qualified presenters at a webinar, entitled ‘Hosting and managing the Carnival Experience in Trinidad and Tobago in 2022 and Beyond’, converged with much of what I have been writing concerning Carnival and cultural development matters over several years, including last Sunday. The Trinidad Express newspaper …
Read More »Daly Bread: ‘The silence of the panyards’; needing Boy Boy to rescue our ‘desolate Carnival Land’
No pelau is cooking for a semi-final Panorama Sunday, in which we should be revelling today. No coolers and food baskets readied for the Savannah. The magic drums are silent. My soul’s feeling like it get planasse! The silence in the panyards sent me back to a brilliant Phase …
Read More »‘T&T still mecca for pan’; Author Kim Johnson campaigns to reprint work on steelpan
Author Kim Johnson is on a mission to reprint his 2011 work, The Illustrated Story of Pan. Drawn from more than 600 interviews with pan pioneers, and filled with historical photos, the book documents the history of the steelband movement. Wired868 spoke with author Kim Johnson about his crowdfunding campaign …
Read More »Daly Bread: Swallowing the Carnival wrecker and other camels
Carnival post-mortems are usually futile because the vested interests in Carnival are so strong that those with the power to make changes will not attempt to solve congestion on the parade route, the marginalisation of traditional mas and other problems. Nevertheless, all praise to Pan Trinbago, under the presidency of …
Read More »Tobago’s turn to party: Daly on Panorama’s Presidential delay and THA bacchanal
The late ‘De Fosto’ opened his 1993 Carnival song Is My Turn with words: “For too long I have been knocking on the door. Now I fed up, I don’t intend to knock no more. This time I going to break it down.” He then launched into ‘now is my …
Read More »Daly Bread: Prime bands in prime time; we may be at a new beginning in pan
Everything is set for a thrilling indigenous musical contest at next Saturday’s Panorama Finals and I open this column with an appeal to anyone who loves pan and our country’s youth to put aside their bad experiences with previous ridiculously lengthy Panorama Finals and attend the event. This appeal is …
Read More »Daly Bread: Trying endless bramble on we; on narco ‘big fish’ and medium steel bands
We now have belated confirmation—we knew it already—that, in addition to private capital, the source of which might be swanky neighbourhoods, funds for criminal enterprise are also drawn from linkages with public officials and the largesse of Government contracts. These funds are tools used to put or keep competing political …
Read More »Daly Bread: Trinidad and Tobago’s dangerously intertwined worlds
The Judiciary remains in an unstable state but the Attorney General has stayed in denial and keeps making dangerously short-sighted statements. In its recent decision, the Privy Council expressly reserved its position on whether quorum provisions in legislation outside of the Constitution could save all acts of an improperly constituted …
Read More »Walkable Panorama City; POS Mayor and Works Minister have great opportunity for Panorama
There is a kind of positive energy associated with Carnival and particularly with the steelband movement. Players survive on less sleep and exhibit discipline and high levels of productivity in order to learn their Panorama tune. This is something we need to understand about Carnival, pan and panyards and their …
Read More »Daly Bread: Stubbornness that hurts; why climbing murder rate and Panorama issues persist
Readers have surely noticed that each time the police high command claim credit for a temporary decrease in murders, the murderers mock them with a quick spike in killings. We refuse to accept that there are degrading social conditions which fuel gun and domestic violence. Such stubbornness is more than …
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