Contemporary Music Review
ISSN: 0749-4467 (Print) 1477-2256 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20
Dwelling in Movement: Panorama, Tourism and
Performance
Charissa Granger
To cite this article: Charissa Granger (2015) Dwelling in Movement: Panorama, Tourism and
Performance, Contemporary Music Review, 34:1, 54-66, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2015.1077566
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1077566
Published online: 13 Oct 2015.
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Date: 23 March 2016, At: 14:54
Contemporary Music Review, 2015
Vol. 34, No. 1, 54–66, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1077566
Dwelling in Movement: Panorama,
Tourism and Performance†
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Charissa Granger
In this paper, I focus on the music tourist. Concentrating on the geographical movement
that takes place within steelpan music-making as players move to Trinidad and Tobago
to participate in the national panorama competition, I suggest that although these
players (music tourists) do not belong to the location that is visited, they are afforded a
sense of belonging through music-making. Following Nicholas Cook’s notion of music as
performance [(2003). Music as performance. In M. Clayton, T. Herbert, &
R. Middleton (Eds.), The cultural study of music: A critical introduction (pp. 204–
214). London: Routledge], I explore the notion of dwelling in geographical movement,
focusing on the concepts of the stranger and of home in order to draw out the ways in
which the steel-orchestra, panorama and the performed arrangements, negotiate and
compose identities musically. Discussing in particular the sociological accounts of the
stranger offered by Lawrence and Simmel [(1976). Georg Simmel: Sociologist and
European. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons.] and Zygmunt Bauman [(1996).
From pilgrim to tourist—or a short history on identity. In S. Hall & P. de Gay (Eds.),
Questions of cultural identity (pp. 18–36). London: Sage] I suggest that musical
performance allows another perspective of the stranger to emerge.
Keywords: Steelpan Movement; Music Tourism; Performance; Panorama; Stranger
‘Welcome Home’
During the 2012 panorama season, I stand behind my tenorpan in Phase II Pan
Groove’s panyard, located on Hamilton Street in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad
and Tobago. A player from Japan stands beside me with an audio recorder. She records
the arranger of the band, Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe, as he distributes new music to the
†
The research upon which this paper rests is based on personal performances in Trinidad and Tobago
in 2006, 2011 and 2012 where I performed with Skiffle Bunch, Starlift Steel-Orchestra and Phase II
Pan Groove, respectively. Personal conversations with players who for the past 25 years have returned
yearly and stayed for extended periods of time in Trinidad will be made reference to. Additionally,
what follows will also draw on lectures attended at U.W.I and NALIS in Trinidad. Pseudonyms will
ensure and maintain the anonymity of interlocutors and research participants.
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
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orchestra and drills a couple of measures of the chorus. He glances in our direction and
recognises the player standing beside me from previous panorama seasons. He briefly
addresses her, expressing himself in Japanese over the speaker which he uses to distribute music to the 100+ person ensemble; at the end of his address, he says in English
‘welcome home’, and repeats, ‘welcome home’.
Welcome home—this greeting is received upon arriving in the panyard for the first
night of rehearsals after being away for a year or more. There are many panorama competitions worldwide that have been fashioned according to the one in Trinidad and
Tobago, including the Labour Day panorama in New York, Virginia Beach panorama,
London’s Notting Hill panorama, Japan’s steelpan festival and other national panoramas spread throughout the English-speaking Caribbean. During the carnival season,
steelpan aficionados, players, tuners, builders, arrangers, educators, researchers and
archivists move to Trinidad and Tobago in order to engage in steelband musicmaking practices.1
In this paper I will focus on what I call the music tourist,2 by which I do not mean
the player who travels to a location for a week or two before continuing on her journey,
but the player who in some sense dwells in geographical movement. To explain, Panorama is a seasonal event, and those who perform with and arrange for steelbands in Trinidad and Tobago in January will often participate in Antigua during the last week of
July and the first week of August, in Kingstown, St. Vincent & the Grenadines during
the first week of July, Notting Hill Panorama London in the last week of August and
New York Labour Day in September. In this geographical movement, it is not the
locale as such that is of importance to the music tourist. Rather it is steelpan musicmaking which takes the player to different geographical places. The notion of the
music tourist will demonstrate how although players are strangers in the sense that
they do not ‘belong’ to the places that are visited they are able to feel ‘at home’
through steelband music-making.
I will concentrate on those music tourists who move especially to rehearse and
perform with one or more steelbands for panorama in Trinidad and Tobago. Following
Nicholas Cook’s notion of music as performance (2003), wherein performativity forms
an arena within which identity is negotiated, I will explore the notion of the music
tourist and dwelling in geographical movement by focusing on the concepts of the
stranger and of home. In doing so, I will outline how music creates and offers a different
means of discerning processes of identity formation, discussing in particular the sociological accounts of the stranger offered by Lawrence and Simmel (1976) and Bauman
(1996). I will suggest that an examination of the music tourist, highlighting as it does
the close interaction between the socio-cultural environment and steelpan music
through performance, allows another perspective of the stranger to emerge.
Interaction: Music and the Socio-Cultural
What is music performance? Cook (2003) draws our attention to music as performance, proposing that music is not simply that which is performed but that which
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performs. He offers a focus on the ‘intimate negotiations and conjunctions between
the performers, and the manner in which these inflect the performance’. Continuing
to say, ‘to call music a performing art, then, is not to say that we perform it; it is to say
that through it we perform social meaning’ (Cook, 2003, pp. 212–213). In line with
this, I will suggest that through panorama music-making, participants are enabled
to perform an identity, and that, accordingly, music facilitates inquiry into the construction of identities as they are informed by music, and as they continuously negotiate and contribute to immediate and broader socio-cultural environments.
Recognising music as performance, in what follows I am concerned with music as
an iterative force and action, and I will argue that in this action a sense of belonging
and home is created. As will become clear, there is a strong connection between identity formation and steelpan building, music-making and performance, that provides a
mode of self-making through which subjects become socially intelligible; panorama
arrangements reinforce and relate people to a collective musical experience which is
meaningful.
What is it about steelband music, panorama specifically, that makes it such an
important socio-cultural activity? The origins of steelband music-making, as well as
its practice in panorama, are bound up with communal playing, competition and
the assertion of group cohesion through music. The interaction between musicmaking and the socio-cultural environment involves an exchange between the two
in which each sets up a stage upon which the other is performed and in response to
which it re-stages itself. It is within this negotiation that the two are bound together.
This is the ground upon which steelband music-making and panorama arrangements
can be said to ‘compose’ participants. An example of the interaction between music
and the, at this time overtly colonial, socio-cultural environment is witnessed in the
development of the steelpan: at the inception of the steelband movement, those
involved in instrument building and experimentation were marginalised: they were
cast to the periphery of society, made foreign by the upper ruling class and made
strange within the socio-cultural environment. They negotiated this strangeness
through steelpan building and performance:
Clearly, sailors and their performances had assumed class significance. The grassroots class was using outrageous costume and behavior, crude percussion and
weapons, and lewd songs to produce a concerted attack on the middle and upper
classes and the values of respectability. The authorities responded with legislation
but the efforts to restrict sailor mas3 were not successful. It flourished in spite of
the 1930 regulations, and during the 1940s became attached to an even more assertive and powerful form of percussion—the steelband [ … ] A discourse on the
immorality of Carnival became established and legal restrictions were employed
in an effort to maintain the colonial social and cultural order. The Peace Preservation Ordinance of 1884 suppressed the elements of African culture which the
dominant classes found particularly disturbing such as drumming, torch processions, and stickfighting. Thus it became more difficult for African organizations
to display themselves in public. The upper and middle classes’ efforts at ‘improving’
Carnival at the end of the nineteenth century demonstrate how cultural hegemony is
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expanded and reaffirmed through the incorporation of oppositional cultural practices [ … ] The grass-roots class, however, refused to surrender the festival that
they had been cultivating for decades. (Stuempfle, 1995, pp. 30–31)
Replacing Tamboo Bamboo4 within the carnival procession, the steelband, developed during the 1930s and 1940s, inherited the socio-cultural disrepute of its predecessor. This environment, one of restriction and ordinances, nurtured the
emergence of this particular mode of music-making as it provided a space where
panmen were forced to be imaginative and experiment alongside changing socio-cultural restrictions. This gave rise to new ways of making music as panmen were able to
express their collective identity in response to the attempts made, on behalf of the colonial ruling class, to marginalise them. In doing so, players challenged their classification by the dominant rule as foreign and strange. That is, they were able to
negotiate the relationship between that which society cast as subject and object,
foreign and familiar, periphery and centre, self and other, inside and outside, destabilising such binary juxtapositions.
Essentially they re-created the Canboulay tradition in J’ouvert, Tamboo Bamboo,
and sailor mas, and through these new expressive forms continued to assert their
presence on the streets in resistance to the ‘improvement’ program. The development of Carnival in Trinidad was thus a process of ongoing negotiations in which
groups with differing positions and interests in the colony pursued their particular
agendas. The colliding of these agendas in the context of public festivity produced a
wide array of new performance practices. Innovations in music, dance, costumes,
and verbal art were a means by which the various groups examined, parodied,
and challenged each other. (1995, pp. 30–31)
The interaction between socio-cultural conditions and music enabled, among many
things, the re-creation of Canboulay in the practice of J’ouvert5 (1995, pp. 30–31). It
also opened a space where people could express themselves through experimentation
with instrument building and music-making, which led to the development and emergence of the steelpan. Panorama music-making facilitates a close examination of the
nature of this interaction. As will be discussed, the interaction relies upon the physical
impact of sound on players, thereby playing a role in shaping identities.
The first National Panorama competition was held a year after Trinidad’s independence from colonial British rule in 1963 and continues to take place yearly during the
carnival period, which starts after the New Year and gains momentum during the
months before its culmination, which occurs the week before Ash Wednesday. With
the exception of 1979, during which a boycott of the bands took place, panorama
has taken place every year. The competition comprises three rounds (preliminaries,
semi-finals and finals). The various steel-orchestras are divided into three categories
(large, medium and small). There is also a Junior Panorama directed towards providing a platform for school steel-orchestras to perform. A separate single pan, or pan
around the neck competition, which pays homage to historical steelband performance
practices occurs yearly. There are over 123 steel-orchestras in Trinidad and Tobago, all
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coming from different districts and neighbourhoods. The orchestras rehearse nightly
from the end of December until the final night in their respective panyards. (These
are spaces where the orchestras rehearse, and where instruments are built, tuned
and kept). The final night of the competition occurs on the Saturday before Ash
Wednesday.
In the panyard, music not only penetrates but also emanates from those engaged in
music-making. The arranger distributes the notes and rhythms to players as the eightminute arrangement takes form. The orchestra plays, and the distributed notes and
rhythms are returned to the arranger and all those in the panyard; the arranger
hears and feels it, making further adjustments as particular sections are repeatedly
played back to him during the course of each rehearsal. This back and forth, which
lasts for the entire season, makes the endeavour of arranging a panorama tune a collective one, for without the dynamic between the arranger and the orchestra there
would be no tune. The body remains an important aspect in both building and
playing the instrument. The extent of the physical nature of steelband performance
is especially apparent during preparation for panorama, where evening rehearsals,
starting between 7 pm and 8 pm6 may often lead into the early morning hours as
the final night of the competition approaches. It is also witnessed in the building of
new instruments for the season, in tuning and blending7 the instruments, and in
the painting, decorating and moving of approximately 80 instrument racks and
stands with over 500 instruments to the Savannah.8 In this last instance, on the final
night, all pans are packed up and transported to the Queen’s Park Savannah, where
the orchestra assembles the stands and arranges the racks on the drag (a strip of pavement that leads to the main stage where the judges are seated). As one ensemble assembles, many others are warming up or even learning new parts at different corners of the
park including the drag. During this time, one ensemble is performing on the actual
stage. Collectively assembling the orchestra whilst at the same time being surrounded
by other bands’ playing, players are immersed in panorama music-making; players
often stray away from their own band, during different phases of its construction, in
order to stand and listen to other bands. In this experience of final night, which
involves collectively setting up the band, rehearsing and moving around the space to
listen to others, participants experience and find a sense of home in panorama
music-making. In a similar vein to the interaction that took place between the
socio-cultural environment of marginalisation and restriction and steelpan musicmaking at the inception of the steelband movement, so the interaction involved in
making music within the orchestra and between the different competing orchestras
underpins music’s capacity to emplace listeners, to encourage a sense of belonging,
and to facilitate the construction of identity.
When players are asked to describe specifically what playing the instrument means,
rather than describing the instrument as such or what the qualities of its sound means
to them, they often describe the cultural qualities of the instrument, and the way in
which, as one Amsterdam-based steelband director noted, ‘pan has become a part
of my identity’.9 It is worth mentioning that this particular pan player has been to
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Trinidad over 20 times and each time stays there for 2–3 months on end. Statements
such as this support the idea that steelpan music has the capacity to become an integral
part of the self, and speaks towards the ability of music and music-making to envelop
players and, even, an entire city during this particular time of carnival in which music
is a fundamental part of all those involved: often those people who sit and listen to
nightly rehearsals for the entire season help push the racks upon which the instruments
are hung towards and onto the stage. These supporters are also able to sing the entire
arrangement, as they know each rhythm break, rest, repeat and key change.
Moreover, as evident from the opening example and the welcome received by
players, panorama music-making positions individuals within a ‘pan fraternity’,10
enabling a sense of belonging, a sense of home. This sense of friendship and mutual
support is evident in panorama performances, where the relation of one to another
within the collective ensemble is fundamental. For example, during repetitive sections
of the arrangement that are separated by two or more full measure rests, front-line
players switch instruments and play particular passages on each other’s instruments;
at other times the ensemble sings short lines during playing. Individuals are tuned
in to each other through music. Such dynamics of ensemble playing in steelband performances address how music can relate to identity and to ‘accepted’ interactions
across a social-cultural range. Thus, for example, in order to learn panorama tunes,
the panyard employs a method of ‘each one, teach one’. This brings the most unlikely
people into interaction and close proximity on a daily basis for two to three months of
the year. (In 2012 various people taught me different parts of an eight-minute panorama arrangement. At any point in rehearsing for the competition I was able to ask for
help.) Within panorama, foreignness, sex, gender, age, sexuality, racial boundaries,
social and class standing are non-issues. In music’s performance, these aspects are irrelevant, something that further brings the question of strangeness and the stranger into
focus.
In sum: the communality of panorama does not simply arise from performing
together but by connecting in and through the music. Here, identity evolves in relation
to music, movement, the self and other, as one is allowed a sense of belonging through
a musically composed interaction. To further explore the relational experiences that
panorama performances afford, I turn to some prominent characteristics that all
arrangements embody.
The steel-orchestra is composed of different instrument voices.11 Each voice has its
own distinct role and collectively these combine to create the orchestral voice. The
tenors are largely responsible for playing the melody line, as the cellos, guitar and
quadrophonic pans strum in order to contribute to the harmony. There is no struggle
for dominance within this performance, for no one voice eclipses another. The different instrument voices complement and complete each other as they perform different
roles and negotiate their individual positions within the arrangement. Although the
tenors are primarily responsible for the melody, it does not remain solely with
them. The melody travels throughout the orchestra. Herein, a different part of the
story told by the orchestral voice is presented as the melody is played by different
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voices in the orchestra such as the bass or cello; the melody is often re-harmonised
during this movement. The repetition of themes and rhythmic patterns across different
voices creates statement and response. Thus, the panorama arrangement12 sets in place
a communication between the voices of the orchestra. Moreover, because of the way in
which the tune is learned, all performers, regardless of their instrument voice, are intimately familiar with the lines of the other instrument voices. This familiarity serves the
purpose of indicating which voices are speaking and which ones are responding, for
instance in passages that heavily depend on antiphony. It also contributes to the
knowledge of the significance of one line in relation to others, and of how they both
contribute to the whole. Often the tenors can sing and even play the passages of the
cellos or basses on their instrument, sometimes to the annoyance of the arranger
since it can disrupt his thought process.
Panorama arrangements enable the music to envelop the individual and bind individual players as a collective in a shared experience of a panorama performance. The
arrangement’s story is told from every single angle as the first, second and third variations of the verse and chorus tell their own version. Modulations are crucial to panorama arrangements, and themes return as each voice has a chance to play the melody in
a different key.13 The familiar melody and rhythmic theme recur in different voices
and in some sense are predictable: this keeps the players constantly attuned, for
there is a tension between the predictability of the known and anticipation of its differently sounding reoccurrence.14 This is exactly what happens in the first and second
variation of an arrangement, as the melody finds itself in another voice and is heard
anew from a different voice of the orchestra.
The jam section (cf. Dudley, 2007, p. 164) presents an intended surprise in a clearly
defined section marked by a rhythmic ostinato, within which individual bodies as well
as the collective are able to ‘free up’. No particular voice plays the familiar theme.
Usually occurring right before the end of the arrangement, an arranged repetitive
pattern is looped, often by the entire orchestra, and players are locked into this repetition which provides an ideal basis for ‘breaking away’. There could be numerous
jam sections arranged throughout the piece. In these few measures, players temporarily
lose sight of the musical narrative, not knowing where it is taking them until they are
out of the section, returning to restatements of the melody. The emphasis of this
section is to relax, and this becomes apparent as collective dancing and physical movement become pronounced.
During the arranging process, players are often amazed by the contrast between
where they imagine the musical story will go and where it actually goes. This can be
witnessed in the conversations that float through the yard between participants who
anticipate where the tune will go next and imagine what the arranger has in mind,
often asking ‘you see what he did there, yuh hear that?—Boogsie is a boss’. The surprise
is intensified by the fact that the arrangement is never fixed. Sections are usually
changed from one night to the next. In this constant uncertainty, players and those
who attend the nightly rehearsals are left speculating as the music changes.
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The above analysis of steel-orchestral arrangements and panorama music-making
suggests that a distinct communal environment is produced, one that impacts upon
the identities of players and relates them closely to one another through a focus on
music. However, music’s capacity to provide an arena in which identity can be constructed extends further. Steelband music-making for panorama has an effect on the
socio-cultural environment beyond the various panyards; there is a change within
the whole city of Port of Spain not only as orchestras prepare for the competition
but as the city readies itself to host the competition and nightly rehearsals of all the
bands.15 This mutual interrelationship between local society and music is paid
witness to by the fact that particular street names and neighbourhoods in Port of
Spain are referenced in song.
The Stranger
In order to discuss the above analysis of how a sense of belonging and home is nurtured, and collective identity enabled, in steelpan music-making, and how this
differs from Simmel’s and Bauman’s conception of the stranger, I will now outline
how identity plays a role in the narrative of the stranger as conceived by both.
Simmel defines the stranger as someone who enters and is at once provisionally
accepted into a new group or society but remains detached from it. He says:
There is a sort of ‘strangeness’ in which this very connection on the basis of a general
quality embracing the parties is precluded [ … ] But here the expression ‘the
stranger’ no longer has any positive meaning. The relation with him is a non-relation
[ … ] As such, the stranger is near and far at the same time. (Levine, 1971, p. 148)
A person may be a part of a group in terms of physical location, but not an integral
member of it in terms of the socio-cultural milieu. Simmel states further, ‘the stranger
is an element of the group itself, [ … ] an element whose membership within the group
involves both being outside it and confronting it’ (1971, p. 144). Simmel thus posits
the stranger as one who embodies both nearness and remoteness. He says: ‘finally,
the proportion of nearness and remoteness which gives the stranger the character of
objectivity, also finds practical expression in the more abstract nature of the relation
to him’ (1971, p. 146). The stranger is not considered in conventional terms as ‘the
wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow’ (1971, p. 143), but is rather the
person ‘who comes today and stays tomorrow [ … ] the potential wanderer’ (1971,
p. 143: my italics). In terms of Simmel, the abstract relation between the stranger
and that which is other gives exceptional concentration to what the stranger is not,
expressly what the stranger does not have in common with the group within which
she is located: ‘Between these factors of nearness and distance, however, a peculiar
tension arises, since the consciousness of having only the absolutely general in
common has exactly the effect of putting a special emphasis on that which is not
common’ (1971, p. 148). In conclusion, Simmel understands the stranger as
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someone who is never perfectly absorbed into the group, but at the same time is never
completely removed from it.
For Bauman, the stranger emerges in response to a feeling of alienation from sociocultural norms:
One thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs; that is, one is
not sure how to place oneself among the evident variety of behavioural styles and
patters, and how to make sure that people around would accept this placement
as right and proper, so that both sides would know how to go on in each other’s
presence. ‘Identity’ is a name given to the escape sought from that uncertainty.
(Bauman, 1996, p. 19)
Particularly, Bauman positions the stranger as a member of a suffering class, a social
outcast, who is constantly kept at the periphery of a particular socio-cultural construction by the construction itself. The classification of the stranger is mobile and unstable
since the apprehension of the stranger as stranger varies from one socio-cultural frame
to another (cf. Bauman, 1988, 1995, 1996). In his work on the stranger, Bauman highlights the fact that we ignore our involvement in structuring the stranger. In what
follows I will examine the stranger in terms of the music tourist at panorama,
thereby offering a perspective different from both Simmel and Baumann.
If we conceive identity as that which is composed in relation to the other, then the
kind of tensions brought out by both Simmel and Baumann’s accounts of the stranger
indicate some of the ways in which the process of relating is prevented.16 In view of
this, the most important mechanism of identity construction is undermined.
However, as our analysis of panorama performance has indicated, the constraints
which both Simmel and Baumann use to construct the stranger are not absolute.
Indeed, the music tourist, although a ‘stranger in a strange land’, can and does feel
at home, can and does belong. For example, in contrast to Simmel’s construction of
the stranger as the person who is neither completely absorbed nor completely excluded
from a group, since they have no organic connection through ‘established ties of
kinship, locality, or occupation’ and only ‘incidental contact’ (1971, p. 145), the
music tourist is granted the opportunity to be completely integrated in a new place
through music (and in doing so, challenges the distinction between ‘incidental’ and
‘organic’). Indeed, when the steel-orchestras prepare for panorama, the simultaneous
‘nearness and remoteness’ (1971, p. 146) which constitute Simmel’s stranger are dispelled. This happens through the process of learning music, and the particular ways in
which musical dynamics are physically enunciated by the entire orchestra,17 as well as
through collective choreographed dances that develop in the panyard, uninitiated by
any one particular player, but collectively adopted. Likewise, whereas Bauman’s stranger is alienated by being situated on the socio-cultural margins, as we have seen, within
panorama performance the socio-cultural norms usually operative in society at large
recede to the background: individuals focus on the music, are drawn into close relation
and function collectively. Moreover, whereas Simmel’s construction of the stranger
uses movement in order to reinforce the impossibility of the stranger’s incorporation
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into a group, the steel-orchestra makes clear that even though the music tourist is a
potential wanderer in Simmel’s sense, she is able to find a home musically precisely
within the continuous movement from one panorama or steelpan festival to
another. In summary, steelband music defines its players: it is in and through steelband
music-making, through its seasonal characteristic and the human relationships it
facilitates throughout the ‘pan fraternity’, that participants, as music tourists, constitute themselves as both I and we, self and collective. In doing so, it opens up a
space in which one can feel a sense of belonging, a sense of at home; one that is for
most players constituted by the physical movement from one geographical location
to another.18 It is within this form of music-making that the stranger, conceived
here as a music tourist, no longer embodies the dual nature of Simmel’s stranger
and no longer has to negotiate their acceptance by the other in an unfamiliar socio-cultural environment. Nor must the music tourist be concerned with being set on the periphery, as in Bauman’s account. Rather the music tourist is a wanderer, moving from
steelpan festivals to panorama competitions, from university performances to workshops during particular times of the year. The music tourist is dislocated in terms of
geographical emplacement, but at home through music.
Conclusion: Who Are We in Music as Performance?—Who Am I in Performing
Music?
Ah tourist dame, I met her the night she came
Well she curiously asking about my country
She said I heard about bacchanal and Trinidad Carnival
So I come to jump in the fun
And I want you tell me how it begun
Miss Tourist, Lord Kitchener.
Considering music as performance allows an exploration of how, in music-making,
identity is performed. Musical performance is bound up with the social-cultural
frames in which it is located, both historically and as performed in contemporary contexts, as the origins of the steelpan and the continued use of the instrument in panorama music-making and arrangements makes clear. Steelpan music-making offers an
alternative way of conceiving the stranger from those accounts given by Simmel and
Bauman. Simmel and Bauman cast the stranger in negative terms: she is the temporary
resident, the marginalised figure, the person who is understood primarily in terms of
what she is not in relation to the governing norms of a particular society in a particular
geographic area. I have proposed that the music tourist provides an alternative to this
model since, although away from home, the steelpan player is completely part of the
music-making practices and musical performance in which she participates, and
through these she is granted a sense of belonging and feeling at home.
It seems pertinent to end my discussion of the steelband movement on a personal
note: at the age of eleven I fell madly and completely in love with steelpan, both as an
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instrument and as a movement. The movement has returned my affection. I have been
afforded a world of love provided by players and educators who have nurtured the ‘pan
fraternity’ and continue to do so. Life is only complete with and in this movement and
the music-making that generates it, as the movement is only complete with me/we/us,
the collective that constitutes it. Finally, out of need, I wholly surrender to the steelband movement. According to Simon Frith ‘we are only where the music takes us’
(Frith, 1996, p. 125). In respect to steelband, then, we can only dwell in that place
in which we are taken by music.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
[1] Playing music is the central feature of this particular form of geographical movement. There
are others who move explicitly to play mas in Trinidad as well as those who visit the island in
order to attend other carnival festivities such as the finals of the National Panorama, Calypso
and Soca Monarch, J’ouvert and the Carnival processions on Monday and Tuesday.
[2] The term music tourist is used in this paper, more so to describe the movement than to define
or describe those players who move from place to place. Most of my research participants do
not consider themselves as tourists. Instead they consider themselves as being at home.
[3] ‘Mas’ is a short form for masquerading. It involves costuming and parading in the carnival
procession (see Minshall, 1999). Music-making was and remains an integral part of these processions and carnival as a whole provided a space where, through performance, the negotiation of identity could take place (see Hill, 1972).
[4] Steel instruments proved more durable and practical, for during the course of the carnival
procession bamboo would split from the constant stomping and did not last for the entire
season.
[5] J’ouvert, Jouvé or Jouvert is a contraction of the French Jour ouvert or break of day, it is a carnival procession that takes place early Monday morning (before Ash Wednesday) at 4 am and
goes into day break. It serves as the opening event of carnival Monday for each carnival season.
[6] The panyard is never vacant, players are always around learning music and preparing for the
evening rehearsal. There is always movement in the panyard.
[7] The tonal quality and the pitches of individual pans are matched with that of the other instruments in the steel-orchestra.
[8] Orchestras whose panyards are situated closer to the panyard would usually push the pans to
the Savannah (the racks usually have wheels), others rented flatbed trucks and drive the instruments. Today, all orchestras load the instruments onto flatbed trucks and drive the instruments to the Savannah.
[9] E-mail questionnaire September, 2012.
[10] This term is casually used by some people within the steelband community. It serves to
describe the relationship between those who participate (in any capacity) within steelband.
The ‘pan fraternity’ consists of people who see each other and perform together at different
pan related events worldwide.
[11] Front line pans: Tenors, double tenors, double seconds; strumming pans, which are responsible for harmony: cellos, guitarpans, quadrophonics, and different basses ranging between 4,
6, 9 and 12 bass.
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[12] A panorama arrangement is usually a chosen calypso that is arranged for a particular steelorchestra. Often times the composer of these tunes are different from the arrangers. Orchestras such as Phase II Pan Groove usually compose and arrange their own tunes, this is done by
Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe, but this is not the status quo. Panorama arrangements are eight minutes
long and consist of an introduction, verse, chorus, numerous variations a jam section and an
outro. Traditionally, complete and final arrangements come into being through nightly
rehearsals and are subject to change at any point in the preparation for the competition.
Most arrangements are not written or scored until panorama season is over, there are
however some arrangers who choose to score their arrangements and depart from that
when making changes.
[13] Bands are judged on the creative use of variations and key modulations.
[14] These aspects need to be theatricalised in order to be audible to the judges. In 2011 Liam
Teague, who was the arranger for Starlift steel-orchestra assiduously explained the different
sections of the arrangement so that recognition of the sections would be second nature to
the players.
[15] This preparation remains one aspect of the carnival experience. As Port of Spain prepares for
panorama and various orchestras can be heard nightly throughout the city, there are also
parties, mas camps getting ready to parade, soca and calypso monarch semi-finals and
finals are prepared for. These events take place simultaneously, one is able to stand in the
panyard during rehearsal and listen to the preparations and sound checks for soca and
calypso monarch. The host of activities transforms the entire socio-cultural environment of
the city.
[16] The stranger may manifest in diverse ways. For example, someone within a socio-cultural
setting within which they ‘reside’ and to which they belong structurally can still feel and be
regarded as a stranger. Likewise, the resident, the expatriate, the migrant and the tourist
can all be considered as strangers since they all embody features of movement, of not being
of the space and place of which they are now a part. Bauman notes that there are distinct properties inherent to these different forms of stranger. He posits the ‘tourist’ as a voluntary traveller who at any time has the possibility of returning home, a luxury not shared by the other
types of strangers outlined above. The tourist, as it were, ‘stands as a stranger in a place of her
own choice’ (Bauman, 1998).
[17] Often times when playing soft, the players will physically bend into their instrument in order
to physically indicate the dynamic. The same is done for crescendos.
[18] Occasionally, home takes on a very literal sense. Pan players will spend hours on end in the
panyard, and some do take up a form of residence there.
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