The steelband "own tune": nationalism, festivity, and musical strategies in Trinidad's Panorama competition.

Between its beginnings around 1940 and Trinidad and Tobago's independence from England in 1962, the steel pan developed from a rustic invention of the urban poor into an astonishingly versatile musical instrument, a transformation that for many Trinidadians symbolizes their progress from colony to independent nation (Stuempfle 1995, 235). Paradoxically, one of the most serious challenges to pan's continued progress, in the opinion of many, is also its most exuberant and popular expression, the annual Panorama competition. Since its founding in 1963, at the first carnival after independence, Panorama has become the most important steelband performance venue in Trinidad in terms of its prestige, prize money, and private sponsorship. Approximately sixty to eighty steelbands, each composed of a hundred players, compete in Panorama every year, and the major steelbands today expend most of their time, energy, and money on this competition. Panorama has thus come to exert a powerful effect on the trajectory of steelband music generally. (1)

Frustration with Panorama's constraints has become commonplace among steelband musicians, particularly since alternative performance opportunities such as carnival fetes and masquerade largely dried up in the 1970s and 1980s. (2) Musicians often direct criticism at Panorama judges. Arranger Ray Holman (1993) complains, for example: "We used to play pan because it's a pride you have you want to play this tune. It didn't have no judge, the people is the judge. You would know when you play well. But now you have to sit down in front of these five people and they pushing [their agenda]. I hate to hear this thing now." While the judges are an easy target, Holman's frustration also implicates broader institutional constraints. For example, Panorama's requirement that steelbands play arrangements of calypsos only (i.e., songs that are composed and recorded by professional calypsonians every year at carnival time) reflects an intellectual concern, particularly strong at the time of Panorama's founding, that carnival celebrations should integrate the "national arts" of calypso, steelband, and masquerade. This institutional priority has in turn fostered new musical models and audience expectations--often conceived of today as a "Panorama formula"--to which steelband musicians must respond.

Despite imposing certain restrictions, however, Panorama has greatly expanded the scope for steelband arranging and composition. Thus the frustrations of arrangers such as Ray Holman have to be measured against their new opportunities. The innovations of influential arrangers continually challenge (and even shape) the criteria of Panorama judges, and so their musical ambitions tend to work against the conservatism of the institution. One of the most obvious ways that arrangers have challenged Panorama's institutional constraints is through the composition of their own music or "own tunes," a practice that began in the early 1970s and reached a peak of popularity during the 1990s. Because of the way it pits individual creative ambitions against institutional ideologies, the own tune provides a particularly clear example of the political implications that result from thinking musically and challenges scholars to consider the agency of individual musicians as it relates to both musical and social change.

I begin with a consideration of the significance of individual musical strategies, both in relation to ethnomusicology in general and to the steelband literature in particular, I then provide some background on the significance of repertoire in the steelband's development and the sometimes contradictory values that were attached to "foreign" repertoires around the time of independence. Next, I sketch the contributions of particular arrangers to what has become regarded as a Panorama style or formula and identify the important pioneers of the own tune. In the final section, I present an analysis of form in Len "Boogsie" Sharpe's 1993 own tune "Birthday Party" and consider how his musical strategies respond to and influence both the constraints of the competition and broader aesthetic conventions.

The Ethnomusicology of "Great Men"

The idea that individual musicians may reshape collective notions of style and taste through their performance has become part of the common wisdom of ethnomusicology (Rice 1987). Ethnomusicologists have been encouraged in this view by a social sciences trend toward conceiving culture as a system of conventions that can only be grasped through their repeated reproduction in practice and which are subject to change and variation in every reproduction (see Ortner 1984). Christopher Waterman (1991, 53) has discussed the implications of such "practice theory" for the study of music and musical change: "[M]usical styles perdure when performers and other competent listeners reproduce through practice the understandings that guide their conventional expressive behavior, When confronted with contradictions generated by the unintended consequences of their actions or changes beyond their control in the material and social world, people may come to reinterpret traditional musical values, symbols, and methods."

As ethnomusicologists have embraced this social science paradigm, however, they have continued to mistrust the historical musicology paradigm that credits "great men" as the agents of such musical change (Shelemay 1987, 489). Thus, while they have made many important contributions to the understanding of "traditional musical values, symbols, and methods" and, more recently, to the understanding of how such tradition may be "reinterpreted" (see, for example, Guilbault 1993; Turino 1993; Barber and Waterman 1995), ethnomusicologists are less likely, compared to historical musicologists or even writers on popular music, to consider the idiosyncratic ways in which individual performers or composers make such reinterpretations--that is, the personal inspiration or genius that drives musical change.

I do not propose that ethnomusicologists rush to embrace the view of culture as a product of great men or great women; there are good reasons for our mistrust of this approach. There are also good reasons for us to lower our guard, however, in appropriate cases. Bruno Nettl (1983, 278) has noted, for example, that the tendency of ethnomusicologists to overlook individual genius and innovation reinforces a qualitative distinction between European art music and non-Western or folk music and also reinforces "the long-held assumption that music in non-Western and folk cultures is stable and unchanging until polluted by the West." To this list of pitfalls, I would add the tendency to view music as being overdetermined by social forces and thus to take for granted that important musical changes in the history of a particular culture were simply waiting to happen. The case of Panorama, in which a few top arrangers make many of the musical decisions (reminiscent, indeed, of a symphony orchestra's hierarchy), demands that we also consider what else might have happened had different individuals been involved and how the musicians of today may help to define the terms of tomorrow's cultural debates.

New Narratives of Steelband History

In relation to the existing literature on the steelband, my focus on the ambitions of individual musicians complements a tendency to stress the collective social and political struggle of the steelband's early development. Stephen Stuempfle (1995, 3) points out that this struggle, culminating in the steelband's dramatic status transformation, has become a "master narrative" that dominates "most oral and written discussions of the movement." Although such a narrative of social struggle seems consistent with the defiant efforts of Panorama arrangers to perform their own compositions, most writers construct the master narrative mainly in reference to the steelband's early history--from pan's invention around 1940 through the 1960s, when the most obvious aspects of the steelband's social transformation were complete (see, for example, Aho 1987; Blake 1995; Elder 1969; Hill 1997, 43-54; Thomas 1990).

The urgency of recording oral histories justifies in part the research on early steelband history: "I have desperately added to my stories of the men and the bands that comprised the steelband movement," writes journalist and anthropologist Kim Johnson (1996, 4), "in the hope of capturing as much as I can before it all disappears." That sense of mission contrasts, however, with a general lack of research and interpretive vigor concerning steelband developments of the past three decades or soma failing that belies Panorama's extraordinary creative energy. The abundant popular and journalistic discourse on contemporary steelbands is often characterized by nostalgia for the time when steelbands had a more varied entertainment role and by dismay at the creative stagnation or commercialization of Panorama (Thomas 1986; Dudley 1997, 233-281; Lovelace 1998). Some academic studies have observed and cataloged emerging new issues, such as the participation of women, steelbands in the schools, and corporate sponsorship (see, for example, Stuempfle 1995; Tarradath 1991). Nonetheless, scholars and other commentators have yet to find a compelling new narrative by which to make sense of the steelband's modern history.

Because Panorama's battles tend to be fought on musical ground, this lag in scholarship may be due in part to the specialized tools required for the music's analysis and interpretation. Writers commonly recount the master narrative of the steelband's earlier transformation in terms of political demands and pitched street battles (see, for example, Goddard 1991; Stuempfle 1995, 70-91), but Panorama's arguments are much harder to analyze without resort to a language of musical form, rhythm, texture, and harmony. This musical argument has always been a crucial part of the steelband movement, but it tends to be obscured in portrayals of the panman's determined and sometimes violent social struggle (see Aho 1987; Blake 1995, 86-95). Novelist Earl Lovelace (1998, 55), for example, writes about the importance of J'ouvert (the opening of carnival in the dark hours of Monday morning) as a commemoration of Emancipation:

   Steelband was the Emancipation-Jouvay movement's new force. It had
   arrived at the beginning of a new epoch. The colonialist movement
   was on its last legs. Self-government and independence were around
   the corner. The Jouvay characters that had maintained their
   expressions of rebellion and resistance for 120 years were now
   largely taken for granted, the social conditions out of which they
   had grown, ignored. The steelband provided a new focus and
   challenge, not only because of its music but also the violence that
   accompanied it. Where the violence of the Jouvay characters had
   become formalized into ritual, the steelband presented a violence
   that was naked, that could not be ignored, that recalled the first
   fierce Jouvay revelers coming onto the streets just after
   Emancipation.

Although they identify with the social struggle of the panman, most steelband musicians with whom I have talked remember the early days of the steelband movement as a time of exciting musical discoveries and innovations. They also see themselves, therefore, as "panists"--as creative musicians in the same league with guitarists, violinists, or pianists. (3) This artistic self-identification is particularly strong among Panorama arrangers, who compose complex, multipart music for one hundred players, not unlike the symphony composer. Thus Panorama, in part because it has so exalted the status of the arranger, challenges scholars to give the panist equal billing with the panman.

Attention paid to musical ideas need not obscure the sociopolitical dimensions of the steelband. On the contrary, compositional strategies bring into sharper focus the socially and historically constructed restraints within which musicians operate. As I will demonstrate, for example, Panorama arrangers have used the own tune to challenge conventions of musical form--conventions that have been shaped by the nationalist promotion of integration between the carnival arts, as well as the aesthetic preferences of audiences. The way that musicians make this challenge shows us where the priorities of intellectuals and Panorama audiences coincide or diverge, as well as the specific kinds of constraints they place on music. Choices about form also respond to the influence of colonial musical values; Panorama arrangers early appropriated European art music forms (theme and variation and sonata form) as models for "sophisticated" calypso arrangements. (4) The way that contemporary Panorama arrangers integrate these formal ideas or subvert them with cyclical and call-and-response structures suggests a negotiation between European and African musical aesthetics that is still being waged forty years after Trinidad and Tobago's independence. Such links between compositional strategy and social history make musical analysis particularly important and point to a steelband narrative centered on the ambitions and achievements of Panorama arrangers. My depiction here of the own tune and its significance is a part of that narrative.

Repertoire

One cannot grasp the full significance of the own tune without first understanding the role that repertoire has played in the steelband's development, as a means for aquiring both prestige and musical skills and as a bone of ideological contention. Prior to 1940, ensembles of bamboo stamping tubes called tamboo bamboo were the instrumentation of choice for the people's carnival, providing percussive accompaniment to call-and-response songs called lavways. In the late 1930s, many bamboo ensembles incorporated biscuit tins, paint cans, and trash cans, and by the early 1940s, some innovative young men had devised ways to tune different pitches on the surfaces of these metal containers. In an important sense, the ability of these early panmen to cross over into new repertoires marked the origin of the steelband as something new. Their innovations were publicly consecrated in Winston "Spree" Simon's 1946 performance before the English governor, where he played Schubert's "Ave Maria," "God Save the King," and a number of local calypsos on his metal ping pong (an onomatopoetic name for the early melody pans) (Stuempfle 1995, 58-59). In a colonial society that did not recognize drumming or call-and-response singing as music, the ability to play such recognizable melodies (i.e., the repertoires of other performers) conferred upon Simon and other panmen a status they had previously been denied: musician.

Although the steelbands' carnival repertoire in the 1940s and 1950s was weighted toward dance music (calypsos, mambos, and other popular tunes), steelband musicians took particular pride in their performances of European art music at more formal concert venues. The ambition to master the "classics," as they referred to this repertoire, drove the instrument's development. Pan tuners received advice from formally trained musicians on chromatic tuning patterns that could facilitate performance of the classics and strove for a more resonant tone in their instruments (Dudley 1997, 54-72). The classics also challenged players to learn dynamics, articulation, and other skills that were little needed in calypso performances. Beginning in 1952, Trinidad's biennial Music Festival, a venue dedicated mainly to the performance of European art music, added a steelband category. Since 1980, this has continued as a separate steelband event called Pan Is Beautiful. The festival and Pan Is Beautiful have continued to reinforce the connections between steelbands and formally trained middle-class musicians and have served as a proving ground for their skills. The ability to render the classics credibly has thus been a critical factor in transforming pan's status from nuisance to national instrument.

On the other hand, the discourse on the steelband's cultural significance has always reflected a tension between its international repertoire and its "traditional" role in Trinidad carnival. Pan's symbolic importance derives from the fact that it is indisputably "local." Hence, during the 1950s some cultural nationalists expressed concern that the steelbands' carnival repertoire was skewed toward "foreign" music--mambos, film songs, and other popular music from abroad (Rohlehr 1990, 437). This tension came to a head when the steelbands began to play classics in a calypso rhythm during carnival, beginning in 1958 with the Trinidad All Stars' rendition of Beethoven's Minuet in G. Prior to this, steelbands had played European art music only before seated audiences and in a style faithful to the original; but the All Stars' performance sparked an enthusiasm for danceable arrangements of the classics on the road. This competitive tradition became known as "dropping the Bomb." Although the reasons for the Bomb's popularity were complex, ranging from prowess and prestige to aesthetic pleasure (Dudley 2002), some intellectuals criticized it in narrow nationalist terms. Journalist Pete Simon (1970) wrote, for example: "Isn't this preference for the classics by steelbandsmen during this tempo-setting period of our National Festival a clearcut attempt to downgrade the calypso? To relegate it to second choice? To give it an inferior place?"

In 1963, these concerns found institutional expression in a steelband competition called Panorama, organized jointly by the National Association of Trinidad and Tobago Steelbandsmen (NATTS) and the government's Carnival Development Committee at the first postindependence carnival. As a corrective to the Bomb competition and to the diversity of the steelband's carnival repertoire generally, Panorama's rules required that steelbands perform arrangements of calypsos from the current year. NATTS president George Goddard soon came to view Panorama as an effort by the government and middle class to control steelbands, complaining that "the Bomb did not meet with the approval of certain people who felt that a similar cash prize should not be awarded for the non-calypso contest as that for the Panorama contest which was a calypso contest" ("Come Hell or High Water" 1969). Selwyn Griffith, the leader of Starland steelband, also remembers that "they brought the Panorama competition in 1963 to sort of put on a greater muzzle and guideline now on the ability of the steelbands" (Griffith and Griffith 1993). The financial incentives and prestige of Panorama were largely responsible for the decline of the Bomb tradition after around 1970 (5) and ultimately led to a narrowing of the steelband repertoire.

From the perspective of government organizers, however, Panorama successfully integrated the carnival arts (calypso, steelband, and masquerade) and framed them in a national showcase. The nationalist project of integrating the carnival arts is to this day institutionalized in the format and rules of Panorama, and the development of steelband music since 1963 has been defined in great part by the efforts of arrangers to stretch and redefine this frame in ways that accommodate their musical visions.

Panorama

Each year during the two weeks leading up to carnival, steelbands from throughout Trinidad and Tobago participate in a series of elimination rounds culminating in the Panorama finals on carnival Saturday night. Compared with other kinds of steelband performance, the vastly greater public interest, prestige, and remuneration (both from prizes and appearance incentives and from private sponsorship) associated with this event exert a dominant influence on steelband style, repertoire, and performance practices today. (6) Panorama has expanded the possibilities of the steelband in certain areas, most notably the scope of the arranger and the structural complexity of the music; but it has also restricted the steelbands significantly, placing a premium on speed and excitement, eliminating the possibility of improvisation, and narrowing the repertoire to calypso.

One of the earliest and most significant changes that Panorama brought about was the heightened importance of the arranger. Beginning in the 1950s, some bands imported formally trained musicians from outside the neighborhood to arrange the classics and some of the other more harmonically and texturally complex music. Most steelbands, however, drew their members and supporters from the neighborhoods in which they were located, and prior to Panorama, the role of the arranger was usually not as important as that of the tuner or even the best player. For dance music at carnival, especially, arranging was a fairly informal process. Carlton "Zigilee" Constantine (1993), who played with City Syncopators in the 1940s and 1950s, described how he and some other members of the band could "catch a tune" after hearing it just once on the radio and then teach it to the others. Double seconds player Kenny Hart would find the right chords to match the melody, and then the arrangement would take life from a shared sensibility of texture and rhythm: a battery of irons (vehicle brake drums struck with metal bolts) and offbeat chords strumming against a pulsing bass. Ray Holman (1993) also remembers the individual improvisation and collaborative arranging of Invaders in the 1950s: "You would come in the yard and Jack (7) would be playing, people playing informally then. I would go on the second pan, Roy and them fellas on the bass, so we backing Jack--Jack was the soloist then. Then in the night now, we're learning a tune and Ellie might come and he would call out.... Ellie might play it on the tenor pan, then go on the second and play something--nothing elaborate like it have now. He might do one or two tunes and Zephrine might do a couple of tunes."

This informal process contrasts sharply with contemporary steelbands, where the arranger tells everyone in the band exactly what they will play and is the single most important contributor to Panorama success. Tony Williams, the arranger, tuner, and leader of the North Stars, instigated the shift toward the arranger's contemporary role. In the first few Panoramas, bands still played on the move, and many played a variety of tunes, as they would normally do for carnival. At a certain point in their procession, however ("the straight"), a panel of formally trained adjudicators judged them on their calypso arrangement. Williams was the only arranger in the first Panorama to recognize that this new situation presented new musical opportunities. He mixed some of the rhythm and excitement of the road with conventions of more formal stage performances, such as introductions, codas, modulations, and counterpoint, as recalled by the late Eddie Odingi (1993): (8)

   The panmen didn't really take it that seriously, but North Stars
   did. Starlift played for the people, on the ground--'I Feel Pretty"
   and everybody ran over to the band, big favorite band, all right.
   Going down the straight, Starlift played a Sparrow calypso, "Spend
   Your Money Wise." North Stars played "Dan Is the Man in the Van,"
   another Sparrow calypso. But Tony, being the man that he was, had an
   arrangement of "Dan Is the Man in the Van" that was prepared for the
   competition, and he won.

   Everybody prepared, but they weren't expecting that standard. He did
   things that people hadn't thought of. Just the way he arranged.
   Those days calypso was just verse and chorus. You play your tune,
   you might put in a rev [fast run or some other lick], but just
   chords. Tony wouldn't play just chords. [Starlift's] second pans
   would be strumming, right? But he wouldn't do this, he was running
   up and down, countermelody and thing. So they won, and everybody sat
   up and took note....

   By the following year, 1964, he won with "Mama Dis Is Mas." ... Tony
   changed three keys! First time ever in a Panorama competition.
   Before that they used to change keys in festival. Because we used to
   do calypsos in music festivals. We used to change keys in music
   festival, but not on the road, because on the road is something you
   dance to, you just moving and dancing. But Tony changed three keys
   in "Mama Dis Is Mas." Gone again. So he set the pattern. By then
   Panorama took a kind of classical outlook, because Tony was a sort
   of classical man.

North Stars' success with the Panorama judges in 1963 and 1964 served notice to other bands that they would have to develop more elaborate arrangements. Form in particular became more complex, with variations on the original melody and key modulations. The importance of the arranger continued to increase in proportion to the amount of precomposition and textural and formal complexity that Panorama required. Some steelbands met this new musical challenge by grooming gifted arrangers from their own ranks, and others recruited brass-band arrangers to help them. (9)

The first steelband to unseat North Stars, in the 1965 Panorama, was the Cavaliers (from San Fernando in South Trinidad), whose arranger, Bobby Mohammed, learned music in a steelband. Mohammed is remembered as the antithesis of Tony Williams' classical orientation, relying on a powerful sound with exciting rhythmic breaks and changes in texture (e.g., the bass section dropping out and coming back in dramatically). This dramatic style played so successfully with the crowd that the judges had to follow. In 1966, Desperadoes won Panorama with an arrangement by bass player and brass-band arranger Beverly Griffith. After the Cavaliers won again in 1967, the Harmonites won in 1968, led by arranger Earl Rodney. Rodney learned his craft as a pan player but supplemented it with experience as a bassist and arranger for brass bands. He is remembered especially for his use of Latin-style montunos (10) and melodic phrasing. In 1969, Starlift won with an arrangement by Ray Holman, who learned to arrange coming up in the steelband, but who was also known for a jazz sensibility gained playing in small combos with local jazz musician Pilgrim Scofield.

As a result of the unpredictable innovations that each of these arrangers made, what is sometimes regarded as an all-too-predictable Panorama "formula" emerged. The essence of this formula is a balance between Bobby Mohammed's excitement and crowd appeal and Tony Williams' formal idea: theme and variation with key changes. Theme and variation appeals to both audience and judges as a way of staying connected to the original calypso. Sometimes this connection is implied through chord progression alone, as in a jazz solo, but it is not uncommon for an arranger to put the whole melody in the basses or one of the other low pans while performing variations above it (a device first employed by Ray Holman in his 1966 arrangement of the Lord Kitchener's "Mas in South"). The occasional introduction of new material balances the principle of variation, most often in cyclical "jam" sections that are composed to generate the excitement of a call-and-response improvisation. Mohammed achieved this kind of exitement with textural changes and breaks, in which the rhythm section drops out suddenly then comes back in. Later arrangers began to compose extended vamps--cyclical chord progressions that often have a call-and-response structure--in which the emphasis is on riffs and rhythmic figures that will excite the crowd. Clive Bradley's 1970 arrangement of Lord Kitchener's "Margie" (which earned Desperadoes the Panorama title again) became a memorable precedent for this kind of jam and marked the virtual completion of the Panorama formula.

This formula--including introduction and coda, verse and chorus followed by variations, modulations to new keys, a rendition of the original melody in minor mode, and an exciting jam or two--is cataloged in Godwin Bowen's 1993 song "Raising Dust":

   First they start off with the intro
   Then the rhythm start to leggo (11)
   Then the verse and chorus follow
   Then the variation come so
   Now we go into the minor
   Then they raise the key up higher
   By this time the stage on fire
   Dust fuh so in the Savannah.

Once arrangers had created a new kind of steelband music to fit the new context, the exciting innovations of Panorama's early years became mere conventions. As these conventions became more standard, so did audience expectations, so that both the crowd and the judges held Panorama arrangers to these new standards. Nonetheless, despite increasingly rigid audience expectations, some Panorama arrangers sought ways to continue innovating. Ray Holman in particular tested the boundaries of Panorama's new conformity by writing his own song for Starlift in 1972, titled "Pan on the Move."

The Own Tune

Given the concerns about repertoire that gave rise to Panorama in the first place, it was predictable that integrationists (those intellectuals and government functionaries who sought to reinforce the connection between calypso and steelband) would take a stand against Holman's effort to arrange his "own tune," as the practice came to be known. But many Panorama enthusiasts took a similar stand on grounds that were more aesthetic than ideological. Specifically, audiences had come to enjoy the way arrangers accentuated or commented on the meanings of familiar calypsos. As a genre, calypso is distinguished by the importance of lyrical content and word play (Hill 1971; Dudley 1996); and singing had in fact been common in earlier forms of steelband music: metal instruments first replaced bamboo to play percussive accompaniment for call-and-response singing, and even when pans came to play melody in the late 1940s and 1950s, masqueraders commonly enjoyed singing along at the chorus. (12) Although singing is less integral to Panorama performance, people still listen to Panorama arrangements with the lyrics of the original calypso in mind, and they expect the arranger to interpret these lyrics inventively. (13)

To accommodate this expectation of text interpretation, Holman wrote "Pan on the Move" as a song with lyrics before he arranged it for steelband. He made both a recording and a sheet-music version to distribute to the Panorama judges. The fact that his song was not composed and performed by a calypsonian still caused concern, however. More important, since the recording got virtually no radio play and no exposure in the calypso tents, the lyrics and melody of "Pan on the Move" were unfamiliar to Panorama's audience. Holman's own tune therefore ran counter both to the nationalist ideology of integrating the carnival arts and to the Panorama aesthetic of song interpretation, exposing him to accusations of selfishness and of detracting from the "carnival spirit."

Journalist John Babb's criticism of Holman's 1973 own tune "Pan on the Run," for example, reflects both the nationalist notion of suitable repertoire (appropriate "time and place") and the importance of audience familiarity (difficulty of relating to "a strange tune"):

   First and foremost of the recommended changes is CIBC Starlift, (14)
   Which played its leader's own composition--Ray Holman's "Pan on the
   Run." Starlift did not click as their many supporters hoped they
   would have done. Starlift must learn that they start at a
   disadvantage playing a strange tune. This has its bad psychological
   effects. There is a time and a place for everything. And this should
   not be taken as a criticism of Holman. He deserves high praise. But
   I say Festival time--yes; Carnival time--no. (Babb 1973)

While also expressing respect for Holman's achievements, Desperadoes' arranger Clive Bradley (1977) made a textbook argument for the integration of carnival arts as he evaluated the significance of the own tune several years later:

   Something would be lost between the calypsonian and the panman.... I
   don't like the idea of going to the Panorama with your own tune. I
   like to go to Panorama with something that belong to [the
   calypsonians] because that is carnival. I think that is carnival.
   The whole thing--masqueraders, calypsonians, the panmen, brass
   people, the bats (15)--everybody. It should be a golden link going
   through everybody for the carnival, you know? Let we just live so,
   even if it's just for two days; because the rest of the year we only
   eating up one another and bad-talking one another.

Another important constituency was the calypsonians. The Mighty Sparrow, for example, was paraphrased in an interview published after the 1972 carnival: "[Sparrow] said this effort by Ray was 'too exclusive.' 'Carnival is not an exclusive thing,' he said, pointing out that it was like a singer coming with a 'brand new Calypso' for the finals, which on the surface, appeared an achievement, but which was unfair to the spirit of Carnival which is to 'generate feelings of involvement'" ("Three Heads Better" 1972). Sparrow, of course, had a professional stake in the matter since steelbands helped to popularize his songs. While his appeal to the carnival spirit mirrored those of Babb and Bradley, Holman (1993) saw Sparrow's idealism as a transparent disguise for the professional self-interest of calypsonians. In Holman's view, "Kitchener and Sparrow and these people used to kind of instigate these things," and opposition from calypsonians only hardened his determination to play his own music.

Holman's decision to write his own tune was more than an act of defiance, however; it allowed him to arrange music suited to his own vision of what a steelband could sound like. At the time, an exceedingly narrow choice of repertoire hampered the creative fulfillment that he sought. Not only did steelband arrangers have to play calypsos for Panorama, but their choices were effectively limited to the songs of just two extremely popular calypsonians: the Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow. Between 1963 and 1979, in fact, only one other singer--Lord Melody in 1965--succeeded in penning a Panorama winner. Starlift won Panorama in 1969 with Holman's arrangement of Lord Kitchener's "The Bull." But after it won its second Panorama title in 1971 with the Mighty Sparrow's "Queen of the Bands," Holman (1999) remembers feeling, "That was the last for me. It was too much, to make something out of that song." He had achieved sufficient levels of both confidence and frustration to try his hand at composing.

The strength of Ray Holman's aesthetic vision enabled him to persist in arranging original compositions for Panorama even while own tunes appeared to hurt his chances of winning. Many members of Starlift who did not share his vision soured on the own tune, though, and Holman left Starlift after 1973. He went on to arrange for a new band, Pandemonium, where he continued to write his own tunes, and later for Exodus, Tokyo, Hummingbird Pan Groove, and other steelbands. During most of these years, Holman received little encouragement from the judges, although he established a reputation for artistic integrity and beautiful music, eventually receiving the Humming Bird Silver Medal (a prestigious government award) for his lifetime achievements. It was left to a prodigiously talented panist who played under Holman in Starlift to finally win Panorama with an own tune.

In 1973, the same year Ray Holman left, several of Starlift's younger players also decided to go their own way, forming Phase II Pan Groove. Their young arranger, Boogsie Sharpe, took up the torch of the own tune in 1975 and eventually became its most prominent and successful advocate. Phase II attracted a progressive-minded following of people who were attracted to Sharpe's unconventional and exciting arrangements, which featured daring harmonies and dissonances, creative sound effects such as chromatic glissandi, and a "roughness" and funky rhythmic groove. Phase II had early success, winning the North Zone regional competition in 1977, but it had to wait thirteen years to win in the national finals of Panorama, in 1987 becoming the first band to take the crown with an own tune, "This Feelin' Nice." They repeated their win in 1988 with "Woman Is Boss." (16)

Following Phase II's Panorama victories, the own tune became commonplace in the 1990s, reaching a peak of popularity in 1993, when seven of the twelve steelbands in the finals played original compositions. Other bands have now won Panorama with own tunes: Desperadoes, with arranger Robert Greenidge's own tunes in 1991 and 1994, and Exodus, with Pelham Goddard's own tunes in 1992 and 2001. It is unclear, however, if the own tune will ever supplant arrangements of popular calypsos. Indeed, when I attended the carnival in 2000, the talk was of how many good pan tunes the calypsonians had put out. This was due in part to a Pan Kaiso (pan calypso) competition staged by Pan Trinbago, as well as a compilation compact disc of pan calypsos produced by Alvin Daniell. (17) Such promotion of pan calypsos in turn should be seen as a reaction to the own tune's popularity; that is, calypsonians have resorted to new strategies precisely because steelband arrangers have refused to content themselves with the existing fare of carnival road marches (which since the 1980s have increasingly stressed rhythm and electronic effects over harmony and melody and are intended for reproduction on massive sound systems).

Although the number of steelbands playing own tunes has diminished somewhat in recent years, the viability of the own tune in Panorama is no longer in question. On the other hand, steelband own tunes have become increasingly hard to distinguish from other calypso and soca (18) songs, since steelband arrangers often have them recorded by popular singers such as Super Blue, Denise Plummer, David Rudder, or the Mighty Sparrow. In a sense, then, the own tune is still an arrangement of a calypso (albeit one composed by a steelband arranger), so what new possibilities does it really offer? Comparing three arrangements from the 1993 Panorama, I will make the case that Boogsie Sharpe's own tunes, at least, facilitate an arranging strategy that challenges the Panorama formula--and the ideologies and aesthetics to which it corresponds--in significant ways.

A Battle of Forms

In the 1993 Panorama finals, Phase II played "Birthday Party" and lost by a mere half a point, out of five hundred, to the Renegades. Renegades played the Lord Kitchener's "Mystery Band," arranged by Jit Samaroo, the most dominant Panorama arranger of the 1980s and 1990s. (Renegades won Panorama nine times with Samaroo between 1982 and 1997.) As much as any arranger's work, Samaroo's music is normative for Panorama, and the stark differences between Samaroo's "Mystery Band" and Sharpe's "Birthday Party" suggest that this was a conflict not just between rival steelbands but between whole musical paradigms. While a detailed exploration of these arrangements is beyond the scope of this article, a comparison with respect to form alone raises intriguing questions about the own tune's potential for innovation. In particular, I contend that Boogsie Sharpe composed "Birthday Party" in such a way that he could effectively disrupt the theme-and-variation formal convention of Panorama by expanding his jams.

My choice of "Birthday Party" is influenced by several factors. First, it is one of my personal favorite Panorama arrangements. (19) It was also a radical experiment with form, and the fact that Phase II came close to winning with such an arrangement in 1993--the year of the own tune's greatest popularity--raised the possibility of an exciting new approach to Panorama arranging. (20) Unfortunately, Boogsie Sharpe was absent from Panorama in the following two years and was unable to capitalize on this momentum. (21) Thus I cannot claim that "Birthday Party" precipitated a new trend in arranging. Even considered as an isolated event, however, its success gives compelling evidence of the efficacy of individual musical strategies.

Figure 1 shows Samaroo's and Sharpe's formal strategies, as well as the strategy of another arranger, Godwin Bowen. This diagram demonstrates two ideas: first, the distinction between newly composed material (N) and material from the original calypso (A, B, C ...) or its variations (a, b, c ...); and second, a contrast between two different experiences of musical time, linear and cyclical. The triangles and diamonds represent linear time parts of the arrangement in which the listener is oriented toward what is coming, anticipating the next in a sequence of sections or variations. The perception of a linear advance "forward" in time is represented by the stringing together of these sections in the vertical dimension of the figure. Circles represent cyclical--time parts of the arrangement that are characterized by recurring patterns and simple repeating harmonies. The extension of these circles into horizontal ovals represents the expansion into a different dimension of time experience, where the listener is oriented less toward what is coming next and more toward what is happening now.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The practice of theme and variation in Panorama tends to produce arrangements that are dominated by the linear experience of time. Samaroo's "Mystery Band" is an example of a Panorama arrangement that keeps the original constantly in sight through a regular series of variations. The dominance of the vertical dimension and the regular recurrence of the song's sections in sequence (a, b, c, d, e) constantly reward the listener's expectations of what will come next, a predictability balanced by inventive melodic variations, breaks, changes of key and mode, and various other devices. Variations on the verse and chorus are gratifying to the audience, who are attentive to the arranger's interpretation of the song's lyrics and sentiment. They also satisfy the judges, who sometimes fault arrangers for "straying" too far from the original (Dudley 1997, 308-309).

Arrangers often complain about this requirement and express a desire for a freer hand to compose new material in their steelband arrangements. Calypso judge and media commentator Alvin Daniell (1993) expresses the hope that the own tune may help bring this about: "Eventually I think it may be possible, especially with the own tune kind of approach now, for a guy to come and say 'I have created ten minutes of music, this is what I'm going to present for Panorama 1993. I don't have to give you a verse and chorus. This is my offering for 1993. I have ten minutes of music that I have created.'"

The arranger who has come closest to this approach is Godwin Bowen, whose 1993 own tune, "Raisin' Dust," performed by Pamberi, is also represented in Figure 1. After one set of variations on the original four sections of the melody, Bowen essentially abandons the sequential repetition of those sections and creates long jams using motives from the song's B and C sections. Despite praise from progressive quarters, Bowen has never come close to winning in the Panorama finals, which suggests that his strategy has not successfully addressed the needs of Panorama audiences and judges. The lesson one might take from the relative success of Samaroo and Bowen is that theme and variation wins out over a more through-composed approach to Panorama arranging.

Sharpe's arrangement of "Birthday Party," however, represents a more successful alternative to Samaroo's theme-and-variation strategy. Like Bowen, Sharpe disrupts the pattern of sequential variations for much longer stretches than Samaroo. An important difference, however, is in the structure of the original song and the way Sharpe's jams relate to it. According to Sharpe (1993), he designed the melody of "Birthday Party" to provide him with flexibility in his steelband arrangement: "I try and make it more simple, like I leave a lot of space.... You're telling a story, but you give a person a chance for it to soak into his head, to hear what he saying. Even with the arrangement, now, I tried a different type, you know? I could do plenty stuff and different ideas." The relative simplicity of the original's harmony and melody, then, gave Sharpe more room for development.

In particular, the extensive use of call and response in the original complicates the perception of variation in Sharpe's steelband arrangement. Of the five sections in "Birthday Party," three have call-and-response structures (short, regularly repeated choral refrains, interspersed with vocal or instrumental answering phrases that tend to sound spontaneous and varied, often improvised by a singer). A simple repeated chord sequence accompanies the cycling of the refrain and answer. Variations on a call-and-response structure like this, whose character seems rather unfixed even in its initial statement (one might describe them as "variations on variations"), do not evoke the original song so strongly as do variations on more harmonically and melodically distinctive sections. Sharpe takes advantage of the ambiguous identity of his call-and-response melodies to draw the listener's focus away from the music's linear progress, slipping seamlessly into long cyclical jams that seem naturally related to the original song and yet unconcerned with its sectional structure. He thus makes his challenge to the formal conventions of Panorama by invoking an African aesthetic of time that is pervasive in Trinidadian carnival music and dance, from the first steelbands that accompanied call-and-response lavways to modern road marches that blare from the massive speakers of DJ trucks. The use of cyclical call-and-response structures in all this music encourages listeners to join in a rhythmic and melodic conversation, inviting a greater level of both physical

and verbal participation from the audience that is especially appropriate to carnival.

While challenging the linear model of form, Sharpe still manages to accommodate the Panorama aesthetic of interpretation or variation by building his jams on distinctive motives from the song's original melody. For example, the melody of the E section, with the lyrics "Birthday Party!" becomes a bass line in the longest jam of the steelband arrangement (Ex. 1). As a bass line, functioning harmonically, it creates a new effect, but it still evokes the song's signature phrase, anchoring the listener in something familiar, perhaps at a subconscious level. Most of Sharpe's own tune, in fact, is composed in short phrases or motives that, in the steelband arrangement, are isolated and manipulated to create a sense of connection and variation without reproducing entire chord progressions or melodies. These motivic hooks, along with the extensive use of call and response, are compositional techniques in the original song that facilitate Sharpe's steelband arranging strategy--and which contrast starkly with the abundant variety of melody and harmony in a more conventional "pan" calypso, like Lord Kitchener's "Mystery Band." (22) The case of "Birthday Party" demonstrates clearly, therefore, how Boogsie Sharpe's ability to write his own tune facilitates his arranging innovations.

Conclusion

Many outside forces have impacted the trajectory of steelband music since 1962: the expectation that steelbands should play calypso at carnival, the financial incentives to concentrate on Panorama, and the competition from DJ sound systems, which has squeezed steelbands out of other entertainment roles. It is hard to imagine that certain kinds of progress (e.g., the development of small ensembles with improvisation or commercial recording success) would ever be nurtured in Panorama, where the atmosphere favors size, volume, and excitement. Nonetheless, my analysis of Boogsie Sharpe's compositional strategy suggests that steelband musicians retain an important say in the future of their art form and that considerable scope for innovation exists in Panorama.

The innovations that I have discussed--motivic development and the extensive integration of cyclical time represent strategies by which Sharpe has successfully put forth his creative vision, while at the same time competing with other steelbands for reputation and meeting the expectations of audiences and judges. Moreover, as they embrace this music, Trinidadians also embrace much-broader ideas about their culture and society. Indeed, the present study suggests some answers to the question posed by Hollis Liverpool (1994, 195): "What is the impact on the musical consciousness of Caribbean people as thousands of them devote thousands of hours to making [steelband] music?" In celebrating Phase II's music specifically, musicians and audiences acknowledge their comfort with a more African way of experiencing musical time (a significant change particularly for middle- and upper-class Trinidadians (23)), moving further away from the symphonic formal models that inspired early Panorama innovators such as Tony Williams. Sharpe's hard-won identity as a composer also defuses the nationalist ideology of carnival arts integration that Panorama originally served and further confirms the status of steelband musicians as panists.

One can argue, of course, that these are changes whose time has come. Just as Tony Williams' "classical" approach struck a chord in 1963 with a newly independent and culturally insecure nation, Sharpe's style appeals to audiences who have become accustomed since the 1980s to rhythmically conceived two-chord soca road marches. It is all too easy in hindsight, however, to explain musical developments as the product of their times. Williams' model of arranging was influential in part simply because he was the first to really conceive of Panorama as an opportunity for something new. Had Bobby Mohammed been ready with his exciting style in 1963, or if Ray Holman had just a little more maturity and confidence than his nineteen years afforded at the time, a significantly different kind of music could have become the "obvious" model for the new competition. Or to take the case of modern Panorama, the innovations of "Birthday Party" might have taken deeper root after 1993 if Sharpe had returned to build on his success in the following year.

Thus, the ideas and actions of individual artists may matter as much as the social and political climate of a given era. And while some of the consequences of the own tune are political (e.g., its challenge to colonial models of musical form or to the nationalist integration of calypso and steelband), the struggles of Sharpe, Holman, and other Panorama innovators have been largely motivated by artistic concerns. Their genius lies in their visions of new musical possibilities for the steelband and in their ability to put across new ideas to a public that holds them to standards of tradition. In the pursuit of alternatives that inspire and delight this public, steelband arrangers continue to push the boundaries of Panorama.

I am grateful to the University of Washington's Royalty Research Fund and Simpson Humanities Center for funding my fieldwork in January through March 2000. I am also indebted to many organizations in Trinidad that facilitated my research, including Pan Trinbago, the National Carnival Commission, the University of the West Indies (UWI), and UWI's Festival Center for the Performing Arts and its faculty. Among the innumerable musicians who shared their time, knowledge, and talents with me, I am particularly indebted to Ray Holman, who served as visiting artist at the University of Washington School of Music for two years (1998-2000). Thanks to Kim Carter-Munoz for her help with graphics and to Richard Will, Marisol Berrios-Miranda, and the reviewers for this journal for their careful reading and feedback.

(1.) This article is based on observations of contemporary steelband performance during the carnivals of 1989, 1993, 1994, and 2000, as well as interviews, published opinions, and recordings. It both draws from and builds upon my dissertation, researched in Trinidad between 1992 and 1994 (Dudley 1997).

(2.) This has been due in large part to competition from recorded music played on large sound systems, although some blame the steelbands themselves for abandoning their repertoire of dance music in favor of complicated competition pieces (Dudley 1997, 240-243).

(3.) The term panist is perhaps most frequently applied to steel pan musicians who aspire to perform as soloists or in small ensembles; it also has the advantage of gender neutrality, and its usage has increased with the significant participation of women in steelbands since the 1980s.

(4.) While Panorama arrangements are basically theme and variation, they sometimes contain passages that could be described as developmental. Formally trained judges sometimes use the terminology of sonata form to describe the different parts of a Panorama arrangement: introduction, coda, statement of the theme, recapitulation.

(5.) Although it is still a tradition at the opening of carnival, J'ouvert Monday morning, the Bomb now draws relatively little attention or effort on the part of the steelbands.

(6.) Alternative venues still exist for the steelbands, including fetes and playing on the road at carnival time, parties, functions, and concerts throughout the year, and noncarnival competitions such as Pan Is Beautiful or the Pan Ramajay competition, which features small ensembles with improvisation. However, they do not constitute substantial opportunities for steelbands, largely because competition from DJs and amplified bands usurped the steelbands' role in fetes and masquerade beginning in the late 1970s (Thomas 1986).

(7.) Emmanuel "Corbeau Jack" Riley was Invaders' most famous player, Ellie Mannette was its tuner and leader, Errol Zephrine played seconds, and Roy Rollock was a teenage friend of Holman's.

(8.) A member of Starlift in the 1950s and 1960s, Odingi had the most phenomenal memory for musical detail that I have ever encountered.

(9.) The term brass band in Trinidad refers to the kind of band that plays for dances or backs up a calypsonian, with a horn section of trumpets and saxophones, as well as keyboard, bass, guitar, and drums.

(10.) Montuno refers to a particular style of rhythmic arpeggiation that the pianist plays in Latin dance styles such as mambo and salsa and is the sense in which I use it here. In relation to the older style of Cuban son montuno, it refers to the call-and-response section in which the singer improvises. I have heard arranger Clive Bradley and a few other Trinidadians use the term montuno to refer to the jam or vamp section of a steelband arrangement, closer to this original Cuban usage.

(11.)The term leggo is sometimes used to refer to calypsos or carnival songs that used to be sung in the street at carnival. More generally, it refers to the spirit of shedding restraint, "freeing up" and being carried away by the music.

(12.) This can be heard, for example, in the 1956 recordings by Emory Cook of steelbands playing Sparrow's "Jean and Dinah" on the road (Jump up carnival in Trinidad).

(13.) Examples of this that I have seen include Clive Bradley's 1988 arrangement of the Mighty Triru's "Sailing" for Pandemonium steelband, in which he evokes a reference to rainfall in the text by instructing the players to tap on the sides of their pans. In his 1993 arrangement of David Rudder's "Dus' in Yuh Face" for Potential Symphony, Ken Philmore inserted the theme of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" to evoke a cowboy shoot-out. Leon Edwards' 2000 arrangement of Super Bhie's "Jump for Joy" contained numerous rhythmic passages that got the players and the audience literally jumping.

(14.) CIBC is a bank that sponsored Starlift.

(15.) The bats are one of the traditional masquerades referred to as "old mas," which are associated with the lower class carnival, predating the "fancy" masquerade bands of the middle class that began to dominate carnival in the 1950s.

(16.) A videotape of Phase II playing "Woman Is Boss" is included in The Caribbean (1995).

(17.) The promotion of pan calypsos as a marketing category increasingly blurs the distinction between own tunes and calypsos. Pelham Goddard's 2001 own tune for Exodus, for example, has lyrics written by Alvin Daniell and is available on Daniell's compact disc collection of pan calypsos, which also includes other own tunes as well as songs composed by calypsonians. As is the case with calypsos, listeners may tend to identify such a song more by the singer, Roger George, than by the composer.

(18.) Soca is a modern variant of calypso, dating from the late 1970s, generally distinguished by its function as dance and party music, as opposed to calypso's function as listening music with narrative lyrics. The modern distinction between calypso and soca is similar to the older distinction between tent calypsos (for performance before a seated audience in the calypso tent) and road marches (to accompany dancing and masquerade on carnival day), but the boundaries in both these pairings are rather indistinct (see Dudley 1996 for a more detailed comparison).

(19.) In addition to attending four Panoramas (1989, 1993, 1994, and 2000), I have listened to and analyzed recordings of the winning arrangements for almost every year since 1963, as well as many other Panorama recordings. I have also played with half a dozen bands in Trinidad for Panorama (four in 1993 alone), including Phase II when they did "Birthday Party," and have played a few other Panorama arrangements from written scores with steelbands in the United States.

(20.) I am assuming for the present argument that winning Panorama is above all an index of the arranger's success, even though steelband competitions may also be won or lost on the strength of the players' execution.

(21.) Sharpe was assigned to a drug treatment program in New York, which prevented him from traveling to Trinidad.

(22.) A genre of calypso for pan, or "pan tune," has evolved to provide steelband arrangers the harmonic, melodic, and formal material they need for interesting instrumental arrangements. The Lord Kitchener, whose compositions won eighteen of the thirty-seven Panoramas before his death in 2000, is the obvious model for the composition of pan tunes.

(23.) African musical traditions have a long and unbroken history in Trinidad carnival. However, they have also been stigmatized, and middle- and upper-class Trinidadians who enjoyed the street music of the "people's" carnival have historically been seen as transgressors: for example, the middle-class "jacket men" who participated in stick fighting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, "college boys" from respectable families who got involved with steelbands in the 1950s, or the ritual of carnival J'ouvert morning generally, in which people from all walks of life cover themselves in mud and oil and "get on bad." The approbration of African musical aesthetics in a formal institutional setting such as Panorama, however, removes them from the category of transgression.

DISCOGRAPHY / VIDEOGRAPHY 

Daniell, Alvin. 2001 Calypso compilation. Major and Minor Productions (2001). Jump up carnival in Trinidad. Smithsonian Institution Cook Cassette Series CK1072 (1994 [1956?]).

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SHANNON DUDLEY is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. He researches and teaches music of the Caribbean and Latin America, the African musical diaspora, popular music, nationalism, and festival studies. His publications include "Judging by the Beat: Calypso vs. Soca" (Ethnomusicology 40, no. 2, 1996), "Dropping the Bomb: Steelband Performance and Meaning in 1960s Trinidad (Ethnomusicology 46, no. 1, 2002), Carnival Music of Trinidad (Oxford University Press, 2003), and other articles and books.