USA - Many can talk the talk - but few can walk the walk. Panist Jonathan Scales without a doubt is ‘walking the walk.’  On his sophomore release called Plot/Scheme, Scales takes the listener not only into unexpected territory, but clearly uncharted real-estate. The fact that he takes us there with the steelpan instrument navigating the journey - is all the more fascinating.

All notions of an island-like, ‘smiley, smiley’ facade are dashed from the onset.
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Antigua & Barbuda- The late Keva Margetson of Antigua was an avid supporter of all the historical and cultural things that make people of the Caribbean both unique and great. There are those people whose mark and contributions continue to live on long after they have left us because of what they left us with physically, mentally and spiritually. Keva Margetson is one of those people. No tribute to women could be complete without acknowledging Keva’s role and importance. Antigua & Barbuda’s CARICOM Youth Ambassador and Radio personality Cleveroy Thomas, in an interview with When Steel Talks, tells us why Keva Margetson is and will remain so important to us, the Caribbean, and beyond.
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United Kingdom  - Debra Romain is a dedicated pan player in the UK. A classically trained musician, Debra has been teaching pan in schools and within different bands she has spent time with, for over fifteen years.

As a child, her first playing days started with Stardust Steel Orchestra, then under the direction of its founder, Randolph Baptiste. Since those early days she has since played with Stardust, Ebony, Mangrove and Trinidad’s Phase II Pan Groove... to name but a few.

In 1994 Debra became the first female band manager/arranger in the National Panorama competition in London, with her own band called New Creation Steel Band.
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Trinidad, WI - Led by captain Edwin Pouchet, Silver Stars Steel Orchestra celebrated its 2009 Panorama victory on February 21. But, on February 16, another Woodbrook steelband was being celebrated—via the written word. Cultural researcher and Sunday Guardian columnist Andre Mc Eachnie launched the publication From Oval Boys to Invaders: Anecdotes of the Invaders Steelband, in honour o­f the steelband.

....The book consists of ten chapters like The Genesis of The Oval Boys, Crazy Days of Steelband Violence and Panorama Blues. Chapter Six is especially dedicated to The Ellie Mannette Era. An excerpt said, “Ellie Mannette was named the father of the modern steelpan. He revolutionised the method of tuning the pans, as he introduced the very progressive idea of using the concave method of tuning the steeldrums instead of the convex manner that the other pan tuners commonly used during the initial developmental stages.”
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Texas, USA - A sea of tropical-themed shirts and sunglasses floated into the Kemah Lighthouse District on Saturday to celebrate the sixth annual Kemah Pan Jam Steel Drum Festival.

The event, which took place at the corner of 6th Street and Bradford Avenue, is the first in the Lighthouse District since Hurricane Ike.

Pan Jam featured steel drum, calypso and reggae musicians throughout the day and a number of arts and crafts booths. Cold drinks and food made the festival a great reason to stay and enjoy the music.

Steel drum musician Coconut Dave Waugh of Biloxi, Miss., couldn’t have been happier with the turnout and the warm weather.
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Chicago, USA - NIU professors Liam Teague and Robert Chappell astounded the audience at Boutell Hall Wednesday with original pieces and the imaginative sounds of many percussion instruments.

The first piece of the two-hour concert was the long-winded “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.” With Chappell on piano and Teague on the steel pan drums, the two performed the song very well.

Both were able to match each other’s tempo while climbing up and down the scale. This multi-movement piece was a great way to start off the night; it was exhilarating yet, at times, peaceful.

Although the two played this piece wonderfully, the later pieces were able to showcase the originality of all the musicians that night.
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Barbados - When I was conducting research for my thesis on The Development Of Steelpan In Barbados, someone said to me, what development?

Although this comment seemed a bit harsh, this is the stark reality of the state of the steel pan movement in Barbados.

As the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) announces its intention to reintroduce steel pan competition in Barbados, I want to state that this is indeed music to my ears, as I have longed for the return of a competitive element to the art form .

For too long this exciting art form has been relegated to stepchild status in Barbados, and we have therefore not reached the standard seen in most of the other islands.
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A Woman of Gold
Mrs. Franka Hills-Headley
    by Dr .Jeannine 'J9' Remy,
lecturer in music, CCFA, UWI.

Trinidad - With its entrepreneurial skills at the forefront, Pan Trinbago continues in showcasing year three of cutting edge Pan Jazz performances in Tobago, Trinidad’s sister isle. What started off as a “niche” concert program within the Plymouth Jazz Festival is now a major event in the Tobago Jazz Experience 2009.

In its third year, Pan Jazz in De Yard can hold its own as the premiere pan jazz festival showcasing the versatility of Trinidad and Tobago’s national instrument alongside some of the smoothest jazz exponents in T&T.

In 2008 audiences were treated to two nights of the best pan and jazz from artistes hailing from London, Copenhagen, Illinois and Chicago.  ....Pan Jazz in de Yard 2009 will be grander, with a fantastic line up of world-acclaimed Pan and Jazz artistes, including USA’s Andy Narell who these days is Paris-based, Rudy ‘Two Lef’ Smith from Copenhagen and many others.
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Jamettes...
    Steelband Essentials
    By Barbara Sealy Rhoden

Trinidad - Single Pan Bands and Conventional Bands participating in the 2009 edition of Pan Down Memory Lane and Pan in the 21^st Century respectively are reminded that registration closes on Friday 20^th March.

Forms are still available from Pan Trinbago’s Regional offices in the North, South/Central, East and Tobago.

...Conventional Bands of not more than 50 performing members taking part in the Pan in the 21^st Century competition are required to play tunes selected from the 21^st Century world beat repertoire.
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Kristen Jones
Musical Director, Pan Masters Steel Orchestra

Maryland - Kristen Jones grew up near Albany, NY in a musical family.  She studied piano and cello up through high school, and was principal cellist in the prestigious Empire State Youth Orchestra.  She attended summer music studies at the Tanglewood Institute, Hartwick College, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  She always assumed she would eventually become a professional cellist--until she discovered pan!  That was at Oberlin College, in Ohio. Since 1980, Oberlin has had a student-run steelband--first called the Can Consortium, now called Oberlin Steel.  Kristen took the "Introduction to Steel Drums" class that the band offered, and subsequently joined the band. In her sophomore year (1997), she and three other students went to Trinidad. They played with the Renegades Steel Orchestra for Panorama, and that experience pretty much sealed the deal for Kristen (this was the year of Renegades' historic "three-peat" win). The pan jumbie was born!
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Guyana - “There was a time when Steel Pan music dominated the music scene in Guyana. It was exceptional to be heard and felt.” Those were the words of Steel Pan artist and enthusiast Mr. Oliver Pross.

This steel band technologist, teacher, enthusiast and loyal companion of this once dying craft has made some valuables investment in his own way to see and allow this venture to flourish.

It has been over three weeks now since the Mashramani Pan-O-Rama, hosted by Republic Bank on February 21, 2009 at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall. And Pross is still on a high given the success of the pan from Plaisance Community High.

Mr. Pross has been exposed to steel pan music since he was a child growing up in Georgetown right next door to the Campbellville Community Centre, but according to him, ever since the ‘Administration of the Nation’ changed back in the 60s, the art and love of the art form has diminished somewhat.
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United Kingdom - Mitcham has formed its first steel band but there’s just one problem facing the musicians - none of them have any instruments.

A plethora of bespoke steel drums and pans are on order from Trinidad and Tobago yet it will be up to six months until they arrive at the New Horizon Centre in Pollards Hill.

With more than 70 people aged between six and 60 ready to join the group, its leader Jason Butcher has launched an appeal for local schools to loan some instruments.

He said: “People have been saying that there are steel instruments that just aren’t being used so that’s why we’re launching this appeal.

“This is something new to the area and we’ve already had a fantastic response from people who want to try something different. They’re all just desperate for us to get started.”
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California, USA - Kenny Williams has been renowned in steel drum music for 35 years, from his days as a prodigy in his native Trinidad, where he learned to play in the streets, to his current renown in Los Angeles, where he leads a band called "Steel Fusion Music."

Steel Fusion Music can be heard at local events and functions around the city, and Williams serves as an ambassador for the musical genre, traveling everywhere from Italy, Japan and Korea to Barbados to play and teach. He started a steel drum school in Long Beach, California in 2007. The steel drum program last three months and includes instructions on pans three days each week. In 2008, his students' performed at the Pan African film festival in Los Angeles.

"A lot of people still need to be exposed to the art of steel drums," Williams says, adding that the music is part of who he is and the drums are his destiny.
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Trinidad -  Artist, pan maestro, arranger, conductor, singer, teacher, environmentalist - Pat Bishop is one of those rare creatures who have somehow defied a social mindset of mediocrity and fear to become a superlative. Her latest exhibition, The Pan is a Star, is a requiem for the national instrument, she says. Pan is dead, killed off by bureaucrats and an addiction to consumerism. But the panmen who took a discarded oil drum and beat it until music came out of it are the ones we must follow if we are to survive, she says.

Q. I spent half an hour with your exhibition and it was very relaxing. The paintings quiet your soul. Which is what art is supposed to do, I guess.

A. “Not necessarily, but if it does, you're lucky. I was just talking to a friend about the Panorama. I didn't follow the Panorama [this year]. You know, music is in the air all the time, it's everywhere. But in Trinidad today, it sounds like - you know that song, The Day The Music Died, Bye Bye Miss American Pie? Sold my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. And so I had to paint this. It is a requiem really (mass, or music, for the repose of the souls of the dead]. It's a requiem for the pan. After the big brouhaha about the new arrangements (for Panorama), the new instrument, the new institution, I thought, what is going to happen to all those panyards in all those communities? What is going to happen to the fact that we are no longer recycling?....”

“....Now the pan is the only area where we were not colonists. We were not slaves. We were free people. And the men who took those old pans and hammered them until they got music - something nobody wanted - and we managed to push those pans until I could take 50 Desperadoes and get three standing ovations in Carnegie Hall, playing together with the conventional orchestra. Well, that to me is stardom. I don't suppose anybody here knew or cared. They wouldn't. It meant that we pushed the resource really far. I feel that if we're now going to substitute brand-new steel, something is not right. I said if the old, recycled drum is to die then let me give it a decent burial....”

Q. You seem so at ease in the panyard. How did you fit in with all those men?

A. “I didn't know I was to fit it. I knew music and they wanted somebody who knew music. And it was what it's always been about. I went into the pan really to sing eh. Because there was a bet in Esso Tripoli that a girl couldn't sing accompanied by a steelband without a mike because they thought the pan was loud. And the fellas in Esso Tripoli said they could beat real soft. So on to the Queen's Hall stage I went and I sang. And there was no mike and everybody heard - After that I didn't really want to sing anymore - I wanted to know how to play this thing.”
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Dr. Dawn Batson
Associate Professor
Florida Memorial University

Florida  caught Dr. Dawn Batson for a candid interview about the steelpan artform, her involvement and hohe instrument.

Ms. Batson remembers her earliest experience with the steelpan about the age of four with Desperadoes Steel Orchestra. She was fascinated by the sound of Desperadoes and lost her family at that point but they eventually found her - within the basses in the steel orchestra. Dr. Batson who plays a few other instruments, says that "there is something about the sound of the steel orchestra that is like no other instrument" - and there lies her fascination with the instrument. "It is just a connection - I don't know if it is an ancestral connection or just the beauty of the steel... there is just a connection."
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Trinidad - Carnival 2009 has become a time to remember for peripatetic pan tutor - Trinidadian Ian “Cokie” Beckles, and the nineteen members of the Luton Music Service (LMS) for whom he arranges.

In an interview with Hollis Clifton of WACK90.1FM - Beckles revealed that it was in 2007 following a concert in the UK, he expressed to the audience that his dream was to take the kids to Trinidad “the Home of the Steelpan” to experience carnival “the Greatest Show on Earth” and of course the steelband culture, in full swing during that period.

According to Ian, his boss, Stephen Beaven, head of the Luton Music Service promised 100% support on the venture. The rest is now history.
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The pride of the Southland - the Southern Steelbands of San Fernando, Trinidad are featured exclusively on a CD showcasing their 2009 Panorama semi-finals performances.

Shades In Steel, Self Help Marines, San City Symphony, Tornadoes, Panasonic Connection, Couva Joylanders, Skiffle Bunch, Tropical Angel Harps, Fonclaire and Siparia Deltones are the ten steel orchestras appearing on the production.  Entitled The Best of the South Land, the CD has recently been released in Trinidad. Look out for wider distribution.

Trinidad - Courts Sound Specialists of Laventille playing Benjai’s “Carnival Time Come Again” won Pan Trinbago’s Pan on The Road 2009 competition and the associated TT$30,000 first prize. The 2007 and 2008 National Panorama (Medium category) champs scored 253 points in the Carnival Tuesday contest at Victoria Square, Port of Spain.

Bands were required to play any 2009 calypso - excluding the band’s Panorama tune. Overall, six (6) Conventional bands performed before judges Ms. Merle Albino-De Coteau, Ms. Joselynne Sealey and Ms. Jeanette Johnson.
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Barbados - Efforts are under way to have a steel band competition in Barbados. Noting there were about 12 bands in Barbados, chairman of the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) Ken Knight said the winner could be performing at this year's Pan Pun De Sand.

The competition will not yet form a part of the Crop-Over celebrations, but Knight told the WEEKEND NATION the art form needed to be developed and a competition would be a good place to start.

"We hope that in a year or two they reach a level where we can actually have it on the Crop-Over programme," he said.
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Laie, Hawaii - Shaka Steel, Brigham Young University Hawaii's steel drum band is scheduled to perform at several locations on Maui between March 12–15. Performances will include both high school exchanges as well as community concerts.

Directed by Dr. Darren Duerden, percussion professor and founder of the University ensemble formed fall of 2001, the 20 member ensemble will treat listeners to the lively, fast-paced music of the Caribbean and Latin America on steel drums, native instruments of Trinidad also known as "pans.” Audiences are often found dancing in their seats or in the aisles to the authentic sounds of calypso, soca, and samba.
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When Steel Talks Full Coverage

The flip side of the attention to all the great pan availability on the internet and mobi devices, is that when something stinks, it is a global stinker and moreover, it is instantaneous.  Is there anyone who has not heard or seen what went down at the finals of the large band panorama, in relation to the removal of able pan men, women and youth - from the Trinidad and Tobago flagship steel orchestras/organizations - at this competition??!!  Even if we didn’t want to know, we are WST are getting an earful!!
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Trinidad - Pan Trinbago and the NCC have once again conspired to destroy the most valuable activity related to our Carnival—the annual Panorama competition. Try as they might, though, the will of steelbands and pan lovers stands strong. Maybe I should start with how difficult it was to get a proper seat at the Queen’s Park Savannah. This would lead me to the fact that Carnival organisers have succeeded in completely obliterating North Stand support for Panorama. Where are those people now? Certainly not at Panorama. Well done, guys. You never wanted those middle class mischief-makers there, did you?

Then there is the ordeal to purchase a ticket. I noticed that previous incompetent attempts to use online measures were abandoned. There was no pretense about it. Pan Trinbago “officials” and their friends and family and that category of Trinidadian we refer to as “VIPs” occupied all centre aisle seats.
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