Tag Archives: steelpan

The following letter, designed to ‘offer a few thoughts on the recent Big Five pan concert, staged at the Queen’s Park Savannah last Saturday evening’, was submitted to Wired868 by Earl Best, who asked that we stress that pan music is emphatically NOT one of the several areas in which …

When our politicians fail us, rather than responding on the issues, they commonly pursue attacks on critics and angry dismissals of so-called negativity. They are however so blinded by their own rhetoric and the flattery of their satellites that they do not know where to look for—let alone properly to …

“Let me tell you the honest truth. It’s a 24 hour job. When you work in the panyard for 12 hours and go to sleep, you dream about things for the band and the players… “Ideas are always popping up in my mind. I’m never satisfied with something. I always …

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 …

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 …

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 …

A photograph by Maria Nunes stirred emotions in me that I thought I had quelled. I cry for Laventille when I remember the beauty of the people and the ambition and the sense of striving I grew up with. The callous may say, “Nostalgia!” But it was real. The memories …

“Professor Ken Philmore should have been one of our immortal monarchs and champions… Without assistance, without adulation, without even our cursory attention, Professor went about spreading the gospel of our sound and our instrument. “He would continue to push the international profile of pan further appearing with giants: Tito Puente, …

The second edition of the Big 5 concert, comprising prime bands in prime time, took place on the eve of Republic Day. This column is about what such an event demonstrates regarding leadership, management, positive development and self esteem. The event was promoted as We Comin’ Again. The Big 5 …

“Stay in tong!” I shouted those words on Sunday last, in appreciation of the scintillating performance of Coffee Street, San Fernando band, Skiffle, in Adam Smith Square, Woodbrook, Port of Spain, at the second event put on by the Music in the Districts programme. This event confirmed that other pan …

Sheku Kanneh-Mason, aged 19, was the cellist at the royal wedding Saturday before last. Just about the time he was playing Schubert’s Ave Maria, in a setting of style and civility, two things happened. The first was my train of thought that we had artistes of high calibre, who could …

As is the norm in our Republic, when something outrageous happens, it is condemned only by whispers in cliques and in the chambers and domes of elites, except for a few brave souls who speak out. And so it was with last week’s front page banner headline, “I am not …