The Launch of Pan In Education

The international music community has already begun to express keen interest in the innovative Pan In Education dual compact disc, the product of a successful collaboration between Mark Loquan, Composer and Simeon L. Sandiford, Managing Director, Sanch Electronix Limited. The project was launched locally on October11, 2005 at Queen’s Hall, St. Ann’s. This is the first of a series of unique, innovative, feature-packed, cost-effective and timeless cultural products that will contribute to preserving and ensuring sustainability of our National Musical Instrument, the Steelpan.

Armed with a vision and sheer tenacity, Mark Loquan set out to show that there are opportunities and avenues outside of the competitive arena for composers, arrangers, bands, recording producers and transcribers to produce digitally documented musical arrangements of performances that highlight and showcase globally the creative talent that exists in Trinidad and Tobago.

The methodology was to garner the industry specialists to collaborate on a project that would benefit early users – the students. Loquan recognised that there exists limited documentation of musical arrangements for pan. As such, students of music are not easily able to reproduce what may have been forgotten, analyse various arranging techniques and the like. He hypothesized that if students at primary and secondary school levels start to use the double CD as an educational tool to study the scores, learn the arranging techniques applied and link such music with social studies, drama, and academic subjects, there would be a solid foundation upon which a music industry could evolve.

The first CD is a series of on-location recorded arrangements of thirteen songs composed by Mark, ranging from four to six minutes, and performed by various steel orchestras from Trinidad and Tobago and Finland. The second CD includes musical scores computerized using Finale Music Program 2002 format, showing individual parts to be played by various steelpan instruments. The use of Microsoft’s proprietary HDCD® technology has enhanced the recordings by Sanch Electronix and has led to an incomparable product to date.

The benefits of this collaboration are many: Within the school system, these arrangements may be used for the CXC Examinations and also as test pieces for School Festivals. Opportunities may be created outside of Trinidad and Tobago for participating steel orchestras and others involved in our local music industry. Further documentation of our indigenous musical arrangements will be encouraged. Potential exists for future projects to involve more regional and international participation with a view to developing an industry that could become a net foreign exchange earner. Numerous opportunities for cross-fertilisation of cultures will thus be created through the availability of a larger, diversified universal repertoire to students.

When interviewed, Loquan voiced that when he first started this project it was, and still is, pioneering and risky, since as a nation we have mainly focused on selling our music in traditional shops. A target market for documented musical arrangements for schools and universities is yet to be developed. The project was conceptualised in early 2003, the first recording done in June 2003 and the final one in August 2004. The next year was spent finalizing the scores, building and testing the interactive links for the second CD.

As he held the crisply sealed double CD, Loquan reflected on his personal challenges. He says that he overcame every hurdle imaginable: having to convince some bands of the merit of the project, putting off recordings due to rain, financial input from his own pocket, doing the project in limited spare time, postponement due to work related issues outside of Trinidad and Tobago, technical difficulties and delays in building the second CD. Despite these challenges, he is very satisfied with this labour of love. His vision is that this production and similar ventures from Trinidad and Tobago find themselves in a new global environment - the educational market, for schools and universities that have a music curriculum.

Mark pays special tribute to three special people. Kareem Brown for his patience and commitment is transcribing many of the musical arrangements, and his involvement in building the interactive links on the second CD, which required many long hours and appreciable erosion of his spare time. Satanand Sharma lecturer at the UWI Centre for Creative and Festival Arts, proof-edited the many scores. He also categorized the arrangements according to levels of difficulty and proposed a comparison between the ranges of instruments of the classical symphony orchestra and those of a steel orchestra.

Finally, Mark acknowledges the invaluable contribution by joint executive producer Simeon L. Sandiford, Managing Director of Sanch Electronix Limited, who engineered twelve of the recordings, gave the project its name and wrote many of the technical articles presented as digital files on the second CD. Simeon is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), USA, a publisher member of the Copyright Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) and a life member of the UWI Alumni Association (Trinidad and Tobago Chapter).

For further information please contact Simeon L. Sandiford, Sanch Electronix Limited, 23 King Street, St. Joseph, telephone 868. 663.1384 or email: sanch@carib-link.net

OCTOBER 11, 2005