Pan reaches the White House
<W < DO'S p. g GEORGER JOHN
VIDIA NAIPAUL wrote in The Middle Pas-:
sage, published 37 years ago (how time flies!),
"is music - not the music played by well-known
bands and nowadays, in the modern way, tape-
recorded - but the steel band."
Our pan players, when they shout or plead,
depending on the circumstances, that "pan is
we culture" probably have never read Naipaul's
comment on the special place these instruments
and these orchestras enjoy in the hearts and
minds of our people, especially J'Ouvert morn-
ing. This appreciative response to something
Trinidadians created in their own backyards,
however, hardly extends to beyond noon Carni-
val Monday when the big trucks with amplified
music from standard instruments take over for
the rest of the festival. Nor does attendance at
the biennial Music Festivals, or the Normandie
"Under the Trees" concerts which without the
impressive presence of visiting "yachties" would
go bust, or any performance that is not a pan
yard freeness draw the sort of crowd that would
make the event profitable.
Fifteen thousand people will go listen to foul-
mouthed American singers, or the rubbish pur-
veyed by visiting dub, or reggae or so-called rap
artistes bearing names and accents that pro-
claim their ignorance of true lyrical content and
melody and harmony.
Pan is not so lucky. The only time steel bands
bring out the masses is for Panorama, the con-
cert that lets us know the annual Carnival is
just around the corner.
But these fans, especially those who favour
Carlos John's North Stand, go not so much to
listen as to cheer their favourite orchestras from
first note to last so that the only sounds an in-
dependent ear can savour are those from bands
somewhat down the line or the newcomers when
they reach the stage? Even then this is time for
pelau and a drink.
Twelve years ago in London I attended a
schools' pan festival. Young England joined the
descendants of migrants in a display of pan vir-
tuosity that indicated Trinidad would-have
some competition claiming the instrument as
our own.
And five years or so ago, I came across a Swiss
steel band pouncing away in arfbpen-air con-
cert outside a plaza in one of Bridgetown's ;more
popular locations during the Week before Kadbb-
ment.
Last week pan strolled through the doors of
the White House, the official home of American
Presidents, through the genius of Ellie Man-
nette, the septuagenarian from Tragarete Road,
Woodbrook, whose Invaders pan yard stands
right across the street from the Queen's Park
Oval, where cricket has ruled for so long.
"Nothing," Naipaul wrote in his entertaining
documentary which has angered so many peo-
ple of this country, "pleases Trinidadians so
much as to see their Culture being applauded by
white American tourists in night-clubs."
What happened in Washington last week was
no night-club act. It went much further. For the
words of somebody named Bill Ivey, described
as chairman of the Endowment of the Arts Com-
mittee, and of First Lady Hillary Clinton, placed
Mannette and pan in the hallowed pantheon
dedicated to the glory of American art.
Mannette was among the 13 Heritage Fellows
who heard Mrs Clinton say: "You are the great
American. You represent the traditions, the cul-
tures, the diversity of who we are as Americans."
To use an Americanism, we should put that
in our pipes and smoke it. For while we are sub-
ject ourselves to silly arguments by racial big-
ots that "pan is African," that it ought not to be
taught in schools, that tenor pan or the bass pan
is on the same level as the harmonium, the
Americans have come along and in tribute to
our own Ellie Mannette claimed it as their own.
Ellie Mannette fully deserves the recbgnition
the Americans have given him. Home, in
Trinidad he would have lived, as Naipaul put
it, in a society which denied itself heroes, a truth
that has remained steadfast in the nearly four
decades since he wrote the book.
We only have to look at the foolishness sur-
rounding the operations of Pan Trinbago, the
constant begging by panmen, for money they
claim the Government owes them, the disregard,
the scorn with which authority considers them,
the saving graces of sponsorship without which
pan sides would collapse and die and we see why
the Mannettes, the Boogsie Sh,arpes, the Rudy
Smiths, the Othello Mollineauxs and their fel-
low exiles prefer to show their talents abroad,
except for the occasional visit home.
My hope is that on J'Ouvert 2000 as all those
dedicated Invaders fans move on to the street
from the Tragarete Road panyard to dance down,
town and back, one of the panmen in that f e- "•
spected panside will be its Creator, Ellie Man-'
nette himself.
It would be the best tribute Trinidadians who
love and honour the tenor pans, the guitar pans, I
the bass pans, the double seconds and the men
and women who play them can'pay Mannette,r
a musical hero of his tune in much the same wayL
that Adolphe Sax, the Belgian-French inventor
of the saxophone, and Antonio Stradivari, the*
great violin maker, were heroes of their period,'
The death of Victor Stollmeyer, the Trinidad'
and West Indies cricketer, marks the end of av '
significant period in sport, a time when the /
cricket season lasted from January to June and j-
the soccer season from July to December. Vic-
tor played for Queen's Royal College that great
year, 1933, when the school won both the first'
class cricket and soccer championships in North *
Trinidad. He went on to play for Queen's Park j
at cricket and Casuals at soccer.
This was the time up to the 1930s and 1940s (
when club teams were colour-coded. Queen's,
Park those days was nearly all-white with the"
occasional brown skin. Someone of Stollrhey-
er's complexion played soccer for either Casu-1
als or Shamrock. The better educated brown'
skins, college graduates, played for Maple. '
The others represented Sporting Club or
Notre Dame. The blacks played for Everton krid)
later Colts. Times have changed. Casuals and'
Shamrock no longer exist, nor do Sporting Club
and Everton and Colts. Queen's Park sports'
players of different races and skin colours. '
Stollmeyer was a creature of his time. A fine
opening batsman, exceptionally strong on the!
leg side, though not as creative or as stylish as;
his brother Jeffrey. And at soccer he played left'
wing while Jeffrey was positioned on the right.'
Victor Humphrey Stollmeyer was a splendid"
sportsman and an honourable man. Those who'_
knew him will miss him. >