Pan Month goes on despite pandemic
EVERY August for the last 28 years Pan Trinbago has used the month of August to observe and celebrate pan.
This year despite challenges posed by covid19, is no different. Pan Month will honour the national instrument through various online activities. The organisation’s president Beverly Ramsey-Moore said in a phone interview with Newsday it has encouraged all the regions and pan organisations to do something effective for Pan Month.
She added that Pan Trinbago recognised that because of the pandemic, all of its events have been brought to a screeching halt as its members cannot gather. But while the organisation and bands need large groups and crowds for its events, its main business is preserving lives, she said. So the Pan Month calendar has been trimmed considerably this year.
Ramsey-Moore said the organisation has suffered a lot in terms of raising revenue, but the organisation’s members have been bonding.
“For me as president, I miss my member bands. I miss going to the panyards. I miss socialising. I really miss it. "Then on the verge of the entertainment industry being reopened, there we had a second phase with covid19. So, our industry has now been put back. "We don’t know when we will be able to have our events in panyards. "We don’t even know what is going to happen about Carnival and so on.”
For now Pan Trinbago plans to wait it out and hope “that one day glory will come.” One of the events people can look forward to for Pan Month is the Pan in Unity: International Virtual Steelband Project. The Pan In Unity team is composed of Dr Mia Gormandy-Benjamin, pannist Tracy Thornton and performer, arranger and educator Yuko Asada.
By Melissa Doughty
