About seven years ago, Colin Lucas, retired from eighteen years of big band performances with Sound Revolution, a band he had founded in 1976.
Because of job and family commitments, Lucas, has had no time to miss the limelight, although he does admit "if I sit back and reflect, I really do miss performing for people, but it is not a tabanca as there is no time to reflect too often."
However, a passionate love of music has led the 45 year old General Manager of the Port Authority of Trinidad & Tobago, into the arena of pan music, where he won the Pan Trinbago /Pan Kaiso Monarch title in 2000 with his own composition "Pan Is Mine" and again copped the title this year with "Real Pan Jumbie", which he again wrote and composed. The prize was a Suzuki vehicle and Lucas took the station wagon as it was more suitable for his family of four children, ages six to eighteen.
The Monarch's collaborator in the arrangements for both years was Pelham Goddard, making it two victories for the well-known arranger in 2001, having arranged "A Happy Song" for Exodus Steelband, winners of this year's Panorama.
"We work well together" says Lucas "apart from the final result, the process is quite enjoyable. I normally write the song in pieces, but even when I put the song together I keep making improvements to the lyrics until the final mix. I will say 'oh I could say this better' so it really becomes a process of writing the song and organising the melody. Then I go to Pelham with a song that I can sing and play because as a musician I can also chord my own songs. He allows me to put down the keyboard rhythm and bass tracks and then he starts to put in all the pan moves, some of the brass licks and so on, so together we start to build a song from its basic format into its fully arranged format."
The recording is done at Goddard's Agra9 Studio at St James, with a combination of trumpeters and saxophonist from Roots, a trombone player from Roy Cape, guitarist Tony Voisin and the same horns from 2000, which pleases Lucas: "When you get guys who are good studio cutters, it means they can come in a studio, read the music, get your vibes and understand your interpretation, and you waste less time in the studio."
This year's song is basically a follow on from last year's when Lucas came to the realisation that "Pan was Mine, as a Trinidadian" so what happened this year says this all-round musician "because of my late found love and passion for it, I have become a pan jumbie, and just can't let it go, it is a sort of addiction."
Pan Jumbie's opening lines tell of his recent involvement: "Because I greet the year 2000 with a pan melody. Can you repeat for next season, that's how they challenge me." Lucas accepted the challenge, and as another line says: "So every night I down in the panyard. Until Daylight, I jamming pan hard."
Everything about the instrument now enthralls Lucas, although he had played in Jamaica for about a year at age twenty, but on his return home "got into the brassband thing and really didn't have any ongoing connection with pan per se. I liked it yes, but was not personally involved. I suppose what has happened to me can be likened to when a sinner turns religious and becomes the most devout christian in the world."
Having been bitten by the pan bug really made a jumbie of Lucas, and the second verse carries him through the transformation: "It took a while, yes, for me to capture the real pan touch. And unique style of those pannists who shared with me so much. Now I can smile as I run my sticks on the tenor pan. And the next mile on the road to be a great tenor man."
Again this year, he played a pan with his accompanying pannists, which he feels gave him the edge in both competitions being the only singer who plays pan himself. And although next year, for sure, he plans to enter the Pan Monarch competition, Lucas is also looking at the possibility of playing pan in a band for Panorama.
Lucas is very dissatisfied with the lack of airplay given his tune this year. "With the exception of Power 102 and Sharon Pitt on 100 the radio play was abysmal. Imagine when I went to the rehearsal for the show, except for the fellas who backed me up in the recording, the band didn't know the song at all and had to learn an unfamiliar song from scratch to play in a competition next day."