Check The Facts, Rennie

19, Jan 1999
By RICHARD AFONG, Chairman, National Carnival Bands Association

In the January 12 Trinidad Guardian, your columnist, Bukka Rennie, attempted to savage a plan recently proposed by the National Carnival Bands Association (NCBA) to have a day exclusive to pan music.

After reading the piece, it is clear to us that Rennie felt no responsibility to check the facts before proceeding with his attack.

As NCBA chairman and one of the many thousands of people in this country who would like to see the return of steelbands to mainstream mas, I am grateful for the opportunity to the set the record straight. Firstly, had Rennie done even minimal research on the genesis of the Pan Day concept, he would have found that the original proposal came from the inaugural National Carnival Commission (NCC) in 1988.

That commission was chaired by Roy Augustus, with Arnim Smith as his deputy and the concept received full support from Owen Serrette as the pan representative. All three gentlemen, you may remember, are former presidents of Pan Trinbago and would be quite hurt, I am sure, if your writer's graphic description of a middle-class conspiracy against the steelband movement was intended to include them.

The original concept for a Pan Day was part of a plan for five days of Carnival that, quite unfortunately, did not take root at first attempt and was subsequently shelved.

The 1988 NCC went as far as meeting with the Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) and getting approval for the project, but the larger plan having been scuttled while still in its infancy, Pan Day was thrown out with the bath-water.

The attempt to revive this aspect is only being driven by the NCBA at this time because we hope to play a role in guiding and encouraging steelbands to return to making mas and money, at which (by Rennie's admission) we have some expertise.

To see this initiative as a middle-class conspiracy is to concede a serious weakness in comprehension of the plan, probably brought about by Rennie's not reading the project details properly or at all.

Pan Day is designed to have more not less pan, by affording the national musical instrument a day of absolute exclusivity.

What we propose is not to reduce or confine steelband participation on Carnival Monday and Tuesday in exchange, but to add Sunday and quiet the DJs and brass bands at that time so that the pan music can be fully enjoyed, without overwhelming intrusions from these other sound-sources.

But Rennie, it appears, sees only class arguments at every sequence. Even his attempts to trace the history of mas introduces some sinister motive in masquerade bands of an earlier time "roping themselves off from the plebs."

At the same time he records this move, he seems to have missed a similar effect in the steelband movement, which cleverly kept uncostumed revellers out of sailor bands through the use of military police (MP) as part of the masquerade.

If Rennie ever attempted to jump in a sailor band as it approached a competition venue, without paying a band fee or having a scar to show in lieu, he should count himself lucky.

Rennie supplies a number of emotive arguments, all completely without the benefit of statistics. The number of people who played mas in the nostalgic period to which he frequently referred is a dot, compared to the tens of thousands that participate in costume today.

The average skills-level in the society then also allowed people to make their own mas. Many even made their own working clothes, but everyone except Rennie seems aware that both situations have changed. In fact, so carried away with the old concept was he that Rennie even appeared to be endorsing unlawful behaviour, by calmly noting that in acquiring materials for preparing their own costumes, "not all these ways were legal."

His articles also scampers through history like a playful child, in one instance taking a giant leap from the period of lorry mas to the present tense, without so much as a pause to salute the great bandleaders who did not suit his argument.

The likes of Jack Brathwaite, Poui and Bobby Ammon, Stephen Lee Heung, Irwin Mc Williams, Edmond Hart, George Bailey, Max Awon and Harold Saldenah all of whom operated alongside and co-existed with Dem Fortunates, Desperadoes, Renegades and Silver Stars did not even rank for mention.

Then there is his other misconception that "the decibel levels to which people have become attuned has set back the steelbands."

What Rennie should check is that in the mid-sixties, early experiments at music amplification were largely pioneered by the steelband, most notably the work of Bertie Marshall's Forsyth Hylanders. Indeed, Marshall was able, on occasion, to rent his amplifier to the brass bands, until the uniformed majority stoned his pioneering efforts off the road, calling it "Chinee music".

That action, Rennie should note, put a major halt to the research and development that today could have had pan achieving the same levels of clean volume and pure power that electronic systems now boast.

In another sequence, Rennie again leaps at the throats of mas bandleaders (who are an equally legitimate component of Carnival), when he declares: "As the middle-class bands by sheer force of money and commercialisation, assumed gargantuan proportions, the steelbands have found themselves fighting to maintain pride of place and space in the Carnival process."

Again, his argument does not contemplate other social and evolutionary factors, not the least of which was the growing independence of women who, by his own admission (although wildly exaggerated) now comprise the clear majority of masqueraders.

As a person involved at the top end of Carnival administration over the past two decades, I am completely unaware of any approaches by mas band leaders to the Carnival authorities, to curtail or confine steelbands, on the premise that they caused Carnival day congestion, or any call to limit pan to defined areas; as suggested by Rennie.

This is clearly a figment of his imagination and perhaps a persecution complex rearing its head, since checks with several chairmen of Carnival revealed no such conspiracies.

His closing argument included fighting talk about "we shall blow down all attempts to stifle and limit" a level of aggression that somehow seems misplaced in this discussion.

He then proceeded to swiftly defeat his own theory, by suggesting that "the enhanced involvement of the steelbands (in Carnival) will restore the lost creativity with which only Minshall of the middle-class lot seems to have affinity."

Ironically, we strongly believe that the very Pan Day initiative, which he is seeking to pillory, is a significant step toward that restoration process.