My gosh, you're cultured!

02 Oct, 2000
MY dear friend from Tunapuna, who recently claimed publicly that no white person ever called him "black and ugly", found himself one day walking along one of the corridors of the university that he attended and as we of T&T are wont to do almost inadvertently, he began to whistle loudly the melodic lines of one of the well-known European classical pieces, "Eine Kline Natcht Muzik".

An old Canadian woman who had only then begun to attend to music appreciation courses and had been only recently exposed to the classics was indeed truly amazed to associate that piece of music with our dear friend from Tunapuna. "My gosh," she shouted to him, "you're cultured!"

There is really no cause to laugh at the irony. It is all a matter of two sides of the same coin. She might just as well have said to him: "Get away from here, you so and so!" Faced with such a situation the people of Quebec would say colloquially, it is the "same difference".

Be that as it may and putting to rest all our personal "demons", the point is that the lady existed in one of the supposed cultural metropolis of the advanced western world and yet, nevertheless, had to attend night classes at her own cost in the twilight of her years to become acquainted with the creative manifestations of her own world. And obviously in her normal view and scheme of things there had to be a class nature and bias to what she considered to be culture.

To her "culture" had to be acquired either by fortuitous birth or bought and purchased and exchanged as any other commodity with intrinsic use-value. Our friend from Tunapuna virtually destroyed her world by simply whistling "Eine Kline" as if it were the most natural act becoming of his non-European personae. And he could have done that only because of the existence of something called "steelband".

We created the steelband for ourselves and our living. It is the greatest manifestation of who we are and who we are not. The steelband is our most powerful defining and refining factor. And the course of creating it and developing it has taught us much more than we care to recognise and done more than anything else to shape and fashion this plantation civilisation and its progeny.

In local parlance it is said that "steelband have a jumbie". The "jumbie" is the spirit it nurtures, the community that it bounds and bonds around it and within it, the harmony and the unity and "togetherness" that it commands and demands of us if the "sound" and orchestration are to be any good. The steelband and its music provide a divine humbling for all and sundry who ever dares to participate in it.

What all the Europeans (there are hundreds of steelbands throughout the continent, even as far as Japan) and North Americans have come to realise is that the steelband as a focused community of interest and purpose is the best proven medium for the transforming of character. In their school system it is the single phenomenon that has had the greatest reforming impact on juvenile delinquents and social deviants of all types. It was even alleged at one time that the Boy Scout Movement of the USA, as a result of this redeeming nature of steelband, became enamoured of the idea of placing a pan ensemble within every Boy Scout unit from coast to coast.

In T&T we are quite aware about this "pan-jumbie" from raw experience, we lived it and witnessed first-hand the transformation of some of the most brutal and, as we would say, most "ignorant" characters.

Soon we shall be hosting the first World Steelband Festival. In October to be exact. Sad to say it has been set up as another competition. It should have been designed as a genuine festival with bands from around the world being invited, once they have attained a certain standard, to come to T&T to perform in Mecca with the proceeds from ticket sales, advertising, corporate endorsements and so on being divided up afterwards.

Such a festival, just as Reggae Sunsplash, could be made an annual or biennial affair with world players doing everything possible to make the pilgrimage. Instead we have a competition. "Dey coming to challenge our pan supremacy" the idiotic ad says.

Will we ever grow up and learn what the pan jumbie naturally teaches? And this competition has caused to emerge among us deception, subterfuge, trickery and asinine chicanery and collusion. Certain leaders have done everything possible, even threatening to file legal injunctions to keep out All Stars, Desperadoes, Phase II, Renegades, etc so they could possibly "win" the first world competition and make history. So who is defending our so-called "supremacy"? Exodus (is anyone surprised?), Parry Pan School, The Soldiers, and a Tobago band. And they want to know why there is no interest locally.

The pan lovers should boycott this farce and demand two things: (1) that the competition be transformed into a festival and the top bands be allowed to perform if they so desire and are available, and (2) that we as the Mecca begin to market the product we gave to the world.