If there is music in heaven, bet your last cent it is that of the steelpan.
However, not much attention is being paid to the all-round promotion of the country’s national instrument, according to one intimately involved in the development of this musical art form, Barry Yates.
To the uninitiated, Yates is the founder of Pan Development Unlimited (PDU) launched in 1976, to offer free courses in pan music, tuning and construction. Today, with more than 1,000 people having successfully undergone such training since then, PDU is still beating sweetly for those wishing to learn and play pan.
Yates can easily be termed a renegade. All for the positive reasons, this description has no bearing on the fact he has been associated with Renegades Steel Orchestra as a player, having been with them when the band won a hat-trick of victories in the Panorama competitions, the only steelband to score that notable milestone.
Noting with pride and satisfaction that other agencies, governmental organisations and NGOs had followed in the footsteps of PDU, Yates, who grew up in a musical family (remember his sister singer Charmaine Yates?) with the steelpan playing a large part, expressed gratitude to those who contributed and are still contributing their talents to the prospective students, adults and school children.
Former and present tutors who volunteered their services include; John “Jap” Chow, Mervyn “Bismarck” Rae, Norman James, Andy “Max” Neils, Denzil “Dimes” Fernandes, Bob Thomas, Curtis Rennie, George “Yo-Yo” Kalicharan, Musa Muhammad, Antony Prospect, former conductor of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Band, Desmond Waithe, of the T&T Regiment, Auburn Wiltshire, Merle Albino de Coteau, Brian “Bean” Griffith and Leiba Trotman.
Some of the new wave pan tuners who also imparted their knowledge at the various courses included Neils, Ronald Mathews, Muhammad, Winston Pascal, Quintin Skerrit and Edsel “Mario’’ Joseph.
The first ever sponsor of PDU in ’76, was former top travel agent and steelband impresario Amral Khan. Other sponsors over the years included bpTT (formerly Amoco); Berger Paints, National Petroleum, Petrotrin, Guardian Life of the Caribbean, Standard Grains Ltd. The current sponsor is RA Technologies.
Special mention is made of the principals of the Belmont Secondary School, whose current holder, Betty Adams-Skeete, is allowing the school’s compound to be used as the programme venue.
Explaining the concept for establishing PDU, Yates declared, “Running courses in making and tuning the steelpan came about through the realisation that without pan makers, pan tuners there would be no steelband movement.”
PDU’s first courses were conducted in the panyard of Sonic Harps in Chinatown, Upper St Francois Valley Road, Belmont, with Chow and Rae tutoring the initial basic pan-tuning course.
What’s Yates’ vision for the movement?
“My vision, musically I would quote my friend Fernandes who once said ‘If there is music in heaven it is pan music’.
“But more significant for me is that pan music represents a massive industry such as what is happening in the US and like the acorn it would grow into a massive tree with great potential; however we are not paying enough attention to that aspect of the pan.
“When you look at the amount of business that foreigners doing in pan, like the United States, it makes you realise that there is an international market that is not being properly tapped by us.
“However I am confident that in time to come—and very soon—we must see this upward thrust and one of the things I would like to see is that in each of our foreign-based embassies and high commissions there would be stationed a panman to advance that interest in those countries.
“That would make me a tremendously happy man then we can truly say that the pan and the panman and woman are moving to where they rightly belong.”