The gift of pan

The results of round 1 of this year’s pan judging in the Panorama competition are bound to have upset a few people. Among the small busload of pan enthusiasts I joined last Sunday to follow the judges as they moved from panyard to panyard around Port of Spain, the views on the merits of each band were strongly held.

The confidence with which the differing personal opinions are expressed reveals how carefully people listen to and care about the pan. The observations of my bus mates and those of the various acquaintances I bounced up along the way ranged over the quality of the pan tuning, the effect of the comparative number of overall pans and section sizes, which tunes are new, played by another band, where the balance was off, the middle section messy, the playing too fast, slow, loud or soft, who should be front-line players, and many other passionate insights.

Hardly anyone agreed about the final ranking of the six large town bands we heard but the sheer exhilaration we felt on hearing the bands play was unanimous. There was much to admire in the dedication to the Panorama cause among the many young players, the innumerable females and the outnumbered old fellas with their rasta locks wrapped like turbans around their slender heads, not least because, as usual, not everything went to plan.

The judging of the bands was supposed to start at 7pm. It did not. At 6 pm when we arrived at the Starlift panyard the players were already well rehearsed and when we left, just before the judges were due to arrive, they had played their hearts out repeatedly. We headed across town to hear Desperadoes, All Stars and Renegades, then back west to hear Silver Stars, Invaders and end at Phase 2 Pan Groove. When I crawled to my car at about 11.30pm at Phase 2 there was no sign of the judges. Some pannists in all the bands were visibly tired but their energies were kept up by constantly replaying their test tune, or sections of it. One has to wonder how fresh the music can really feel for them the 10th or 15th time around. In one panyard a player’s shoulder was in real pain but she rose to each replay, animating herself to jump and shout at intervals while awaiting the clutch of real experts.

Having been caught in the post-judging maelstrom last year, on Sunday we moved ahead of the judges, and wisely so because later at Renegades on Charlotte Street thousands of people spilled out of the panyard as far as the eye could see in every direction, clogging roadways and pavements, standing tens deep, patiently waiting for the band to play for the tardy judges. A DJ playing some excellent Carnival music very loudly failed to maintain our energy after an hour, while the musicians rested. Eventually, we heard the reigning champions do a practice run of DNA, with its clever national anthem chords, and we set off to Tragarete Road.

Apart from the great pan music and the patiently happy, safe vibe all over the city, the highlight of the evening was the chance to enter a no-go city street.

George Street is not a place one visits. Once the heart of the city, which has shifted west, east Port of Spain is now in tatters, the centre of dire poverty, social and personal ruin. The once charming colonial style buildings with their overhanging wrought iron balconies are haphazardly boarded up, the dimly lit burglar-proof rooms below them evidence not of abandonment but of misfortune. A frontier-like Chinese food outlet in one such building had a single hole through which food and, hopefully, some cash could pass.

Block after block, the pavements stank of weeks/months/years of unwashed urine and neglect. As I avoided the destitute lying there I tried not to stare at the young residents of the probably drug-ridden housing estate looking out over the walls at the flow of pan aficionados moving between All Stars panyard on Duke Street and Desperadoes'. Them and us, each a separate species. I understand how people come to be in such a situation for generations but I also know it need not be like that. Other capitals have turned their derelict inner city slums into treasures for the residents and a place visitors flock to.

Desperadoes’ new “pan theatre,” a block wide between George and Nelson Streets, is a $14million gleaming oasis in the midst of urban neglect. It includes commercial space, revenue-generating car park space, pan storage, staging area with seating, and meeting/conference rooms. When it opened last year the 12-times Panorama champions were encouraged to treat the space as a haven for the young of the downtown community. It’s early days but it is a model for the future and everyone interested in our capital and country should take advantage of this exceptional period to go downtown to Despers and feel buoyed up by both possibility and unforgettable music.