Preserve legacy of Anthony Williams

THE EDITOR: The steelpan lost one of its foremost pioneers/inventors/innovators with the December 2021 passing of Anthony Williams, a man who has done countless firsts for pan and led his band Pan Am North Stars to musical heights during the sixties.

Far too much of pan’s history is not properly documented and seems to be only kept alive in bars, rum shops and liming spots where positions are oftentimes vigorously taken depending on which cardinal points of Trinidad each participant originates.

We need to do much better than that and could take example from the Europeans who ensure their inventors/innovators are documented so as to ensure remembrance. The inventor of the saxophone Adolphe Sax being one such example.

I wish to single out Williams’s innovation of the order of notes on the tenor pan where notes are placed in a cycle of fourths and fifths.

It is on record where Williams introduced this formation together with his grooving of divisions on the steel drum in the pattern of a spider’s web.

He also explained the mathematical musical formulae he used to arrive at the cycle of fourths and fifths. This formation has given that style tenor pan universal musical appeal and has made it the most sought-after instrument in schools and universities wherever pan is taught.

I humbly appeal to Pan Trinbago, the Steelpan Tuners Guild and all the bands that use the fourth and fifths tenor pan to make a start to properly associate our innovators with their innovations. We should begin by calling tenor pans tuned in fourths and fifths formation Draw Tenors. By so doing we would be leading the way in acknowledging the great innovator Anthony Williams, thus ensuring that his name is preserved with that of the instrument.

DAVID MAUNDAY

Belmont