Silver Stars of St James February 4
On Tragarete, the Silver Stars Steel Pan Orchestra has been practicing its 10-minute set for 29 days, and the college boy on the baritone drums has not yet mastered his part. This is a problem for the dread-locked conductor, who stops the Soca instrumental, then proceeds, on mike, to recite the notes for his unprepared student—A, B, G, D, E, C#m, in complex syncopation. The muscular baritone has a lead in the melody, and he needs to get it right before anyone plays on. A hushed silence fits Carnegie Hall. The players, almost four dozen of them tonight, are disciplined, attentive, professional, in a ritualistic way. Before they commence the racket, the pannists circle the band pit, holding hands, chanting the Lord’s Prayer, with devoted heads bowed and nodding.
Most are young, mixed with some older, which is an encouraging demographic trend. The orchestra and panyard are sponsored by the agri-corporation Nutrien —“Feeding Our Culture to Grow Our Nation.“ Steel pans are expensive, their players are poor. So the government pledges support for her national treasure, but most of the allotted public funds have evidently been embezzled into the void. At least the violence has ebbed this year, following a concerted effort to rid the venues of gangsters. In recent years, fans of one pan band attacked another in a gated parking lot, like a cage match, filling Woodbrook with gunfire and eventually cops. Despite the bloodshed, not one steel drum was damaged in the melee.
“Twenty-nine days!“ shouts the conductor in mock exasperation. Fortunately, the wayward player finally finds his groove, tenuously harmonizing two hanging drums above his head. The convex bottoms resemble woks in an army kitchen. Next to him, a gangly girl employs the deft technique of a stick fighter. The old maestro starts to gyrate to the aria.
Everything is on wheels. This orchestra is mobile and ready to hit the Maraval Road. Ten sopranos and ten tenors, each with two swinging shallow-drums, are attached to the mesh deck of a white-washed trailer. There are four of these weathered contraptions, which link together in a train. Bass parts are provided by full-size barrels, requiring large hammered pits to reach low frequencies. As a result, each pan has just two indentations, two notes, rather than the six or seven found on short-skirted pans. Bottom-enders must play seven drums to cover the full scale, thus each of the 12 pannists gets a wagon to one’s self. The collective rolls shoulders in easy unison, like a Baptist choir—I think they want 7 drums in a semi-oval just as an excuse to dance without obstruction.
Although tonight is merely rehearsal, an audience of a few dozen is captivated. Left or right, in front or behind, inside or out—depending on where you stand—the soundscape changes. Outside the wooden Queen’s Park Oval, the oil drums sound like a string section. At Mr. Chow’s rib joint, they sound like church organs. During breaks in an empty parking lot, two young fellows belt out the licks of a bluegrass banjo with rapid-fire tom toms. No genre is exempt from the pounding beats.
Pan players come from all over the world to play Carnival, but it is not easy for outsiders to join the bands. Indeed, one prodigy from Japan was strangled on the Savannah in 2016, sometime between the revelry of Carnival Tuesday and the penance of Ash Wednesday. The foreigners may be allowed to apprentice with these ensembles, but the exotic urban vibe is elusive, and preternaturally dangerous. It is baked into the form. These drums were originally stolen from the oil barons. They occupy a renegade tradition, a resistance to the occupation and subjugation, a defiant declaration of independence. For a people escaping oppression, playing the steel pan becomes a patriotic act. It provides the national anthem.
The Silver Stars will soon join the parade of bands—sixty players and a 150 oil drums on wheels, sticks flying, surrounded by wining dancers, and followed by the naughty “Sailors,“ who put the mas' in masquerade and the soak in Soca. They will cover everyone they meet with white-face baby powder, or something worse, and you must partake, for the fetes of steel bands are necessarily messy affairs. As Ferdy always likes to say, “Yuh can’t play mas if yuh ‘fraid of dee powda.“