News

Taken from "Caribbean Beat"
Pan Sweet Pan
May/June 2000
page 14

"We want to raise half a million dollars for pan," Simeon Sandiford says.

He might do it, too. After all, half a million Trinidad and Tobago dollars is less than US$80,000. Sandiford aims to raise this money with a special CD - Pan Sweet Pan: Steel Orchestras of the Caribbean - which features Renegades, Exodus, All Stars, Starlift, Birdsong, Fonclaire, and Rising Stars from St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. He says he's going to sell 30,000 copies.

Things are stirring in the Trinidad and Tobago pan community. Although the steel pan was invented in Trinidad around 60 years ago, and is the country's national musical instrument, it's been clear for some time that the centre of gravity has been shifting away, to North America and Europe. There's a growing recognition that Trinidad and Tobago has to take back the lead in research and development, marketing, promotion, organisation, making sure that the world knows about pan music and where it really came from.

Two new organisations are at the centre of the current planning by the Pan Trinbago Foundation Board. A Pan Development Foundation will channel money into research and development, training, awareness building, etc., and a private-sector Pan Company will invest in commercial projects - recordings, merchandising, retailing, intellectual property etc. The air has been humming with new ideas and projects. A magazine for the global pan community; a Steelband Development Centre at the University; special "pan wagon" trucks for steel orchestras with full amplification facilities, to get pan back on the road for Carnival; a massive sculpture of the legendary Desperadoes leader Rudolph Charles on top of Laventille Hill . . .

Sanch, the record label run by Simeon Sandiford out of his Curepe music centre near Port of Spain, released the new fund-raising CD just before Carnival, and has been asking the corporate world to buy it in quantities, to use as gifts and giveaways. It contains some of the best 1999 music, at a nice slow chipping pace, clear and easy. Not that Sanch doesn't relish the Panorama frenzy too: last year and this year, the label released compilations recorded live at Panorama finals, with all the pace and decibels that the occasion requires.

"But we will continue with the Pan Sweet Pan series too, as a fund-raiser," Sandiford says. "There are big plans for pan in the air these days, and what we want to do is going to cost money."

If you'd like a copy of Pan Sweet Pan - and add a few precious dollars to the campaign to give pan the global marketing thrust it so badly needs - you can order it from eCaroh Caribbean Music in Boston (www.eCaroh.com, or e-mail EeCarohcom@aol.com), or from Carolyn Chan's new Caribbean marketing site in Trinidad (www.stellarmark.com).

PAN SWEET PAN Steel Orchestras of the Caribbean (Sanch CD0001, 78.51 mins)

* Woman on the Bass (Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars) * Play my Music (Exodus)
* Pan in a Rage (Amoco Renegades) * Toco Band (Rising Stars) * In my House
(PCS Nitrogen Starlift) * Trini Know How (Birdsong) * Carnival is We (Fonclaire)