I am thinking amphitheatre for pan and for a place into which to throw those who damage the institutional integrity of our supposedly independent constitutional bodies to be subjected to public heckling.
Unlawful and deeply troubling actions such as those taken by the Judicial and Legal Service Commission against Marcia Ayers-Caesar should attract sanctions. A session of live heckling is not as gruesome as the fate of those thrown for public spectacle into the Colosseum, the amphitheatre of ancient Rome, which has remained standing throughout the centuries.
The limitations of the National Academy for Performing Arts (NAPA) as a pan theatre are greater than the uncertainty of the operational state of its moving stage mentioned last week.
Wider criticisms of NAPA are grounded on the constrained spaces within which to manage drums of the size and configuration used in a steel orchestra. The logistical pain increases when more than one band with 40 to 60 players is to perform without areas that can properly accommodate them outside of a Panorama setting.
Over the decades we have seen pan and other entertainment make do with the now condemned Jean Pierre Complex—originally an outdoor netball centre with some provisions for indoor sports—as well as the Grandstand Queen’s Park Savannah, the perennial stand-by for large scale entertainment and fete, despite horseracing having been the primary purpose of that venue.
Reference to these venues underlines how pan and large-scale entertainment were never considered as the primary purpose of the locations where they were held. That is extraordinary considering that the pan is the declared national instrument and Carnival is the subject of the continuing but now bombastic claim of “the greatest show on earth”.
(Courtesy Allan V Crane/Wired868)
Our rulers talk up these things but they have so lacked vision that there is an admitted need for a public consultation next year on “the elevation of pan”.
Going forward, what is required is an amphitheatre with a revolving stage for large scale pan and mas’ related productions with more than one performers entrance into the arena and with an outer road around the amphitheatre to accommodate waiting bands, drums, equipment and costumes.
An outdoor space does have limitations in the rainy season. Insightful planning might have envisioned space capable of being used as an indoor pan theatre with the appropriate door and floor specifications compatible with performing space for indoor sport in the rebuilding of the Jean Pierre Complex.
I describe the “greatest” claim for Carnival as bombastic because the visual impact of our Carnival has diminished and our steelbands are mostly off the road on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. The fading validity of that claim was the subject of my post-Carnival commentaries from 2015.
Earlier this year I asked about the older authentic aspects of Carnival and commented: “The authorities were content to let these be shoved aside by the growing conglomerate power of Mardi Gras type bands and excessive DJ volume. The Calypso art form is acknowledged to be struggling and it seems that much of the soca product cannot be consolidated or find a venue base.
“Prominent Soca artiste and event manager, Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez, was driven by the cancellation of Soca Monarch openly to say Carnival is ailing and to wonder in five years who knows if we will even have a Carnival?”
I have advocated repeatedly for the inestimable value of the panyards and “the product of the labour of the descendants of slavery and indenture and the disadvantaged, who invented and refined this unique musical instrument and a significant number of our youthful sons and daughters who keep playing it”.
Nevertheless, some discerning persons in the pan world are well aware that, although pan has reached great places all over the world, it may eventually decline here at home by comparison—particularly for want of attention to the use of updated tools and work stations located other than under starch mango and breadfruit trees for pan tuning.
Our situation in pan tuning was the subject of my feature remarks at Pan Trinbago headquarters to the World Steelpan Thrust in August 2020.
Photo: Pan Trinbago
The glory of our invention has turned into enterprise for others abroad. We must not be left behind.