Back in September 1999, during an interview with Colin Lucas, when at age 43, he became General Manager of the Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, the very popular singer/musician mentioned that he had written a pan song "Pan Is Mine" for release in the year 2000, since he realised that the only three areas which appeal to audiences in song are social and political commentaries and pan.
At the time neither of us thought that "Pan Is Mine" would win for him the Pan Trinbago Pan/Kaiso Monarch title on March 1, a beautiful trophy and fifty thousand dollars.
A soca bard for many years, Lucas opted out of the soca competitions for some years now, and admits that "were it not for Oba, I would not have entered this competition which was being held for the second year."
"The melody for Pan Is Mine just sort of dropped in my head and that's no lie" said Lucas "and although I didn't write it down or commit it to a recording device, it refused to leave, so having recognised it as a pan melody, I said: wait nuh I never wrote anything for pan. So I wrote the first line, saying to myself I wasn't really aiming to go here but here has come for me, and the rest of the song was not difficult to write, it was just my feelings coming out."
The first line which Lucas fitted to the melody was "Ah try not to jump in this pan thing, but each year the music get more inviting." And he continued "Then I take a tush on a pan, ping, and the next thing I know is steelband song I writing. Ah cry, never know pan was so sweet, the vibration knock me off my feet. So now with this sign, ah make up meh mind to let go the jam and wine because this great steelband music is mine."
In the chorus, "Pan is Mine, Pan Is Mine, Pan Is Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine" several people have asked why he repeated that "mine" so often because the repetition of a single note is very peculiar in a pan song.
Lucas repeated it for two reasons: "No 1, this is more than a chorus to me, this is an affirmation and one of the things that make affirmations work is repetition. I felt I needed to sink the idea in the listener's mind that pan is really mine, almost with childish tantrum- like repetition. And secondly, I wanted a dance-along, sing-along kind of thing in the song and repetition also works for that."
On the night of the competition Lucas joined a small band of pan- around-the-neck players at the end of his performance and led them off stage. This was certainly not his first time on pan, as he had been involved in playing pan as a student, on campus at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica many years ago.
Lucas is concerned that pan is part of the culture which he feels that we as Trinidadians are allowing to slip away, and soon other people will claim, and to the world their claim will have some kind of validity. Lucas is "most definitely satisfied with his first outing in the pan arena. I wasn't into the run of this whole thing, is Oba who said - you going into this pan kaiso, and kept calling to ask me "yuh enter yet" ,and was right behind me pushing me no matter I told him I aint into this competition thing, I had come out of the soca monarch with a certain amount of disillusionment, but Oba and a few others kept pushing me."
Lucas was one of eighty-four singers to have filled the entry forms, and one of twenty-one to qualify for the finals, along with last year's monarch, De Fosto.
He is also very proud that six or seven nationally coventional steelbands played Pan Is Mine in the preliminaries, and about seven traditional bands. In the finals, Caribbean Steel Mills Angel Harps, which placed ninth, played his tune.
Pan Is Mine has been included in a C.D. called "A Tribute to Pan 2000" , produced by Earl Crosby and Alvin Daniel. Right now, his intention is to write another pan song for next year but hopes it comes in much the same way this one came, "I don't want to have to labour to find a melody."
Some of the soca music composed and written by Lucas dating back to 1991 with the most popular Dollar Wine, which won the road march every other place but in Trinidad, so much so that the week after Carnival on his way to New York, "when I congratulated Super Blue who had won the road march with his "Get Something and Wave", Blue replied that he envied my position because although he had won the road march for the year, I had what he considered an everlasting, eternal song which would outlive us both and he actually anticipated that I would win everywhere else. In 1992, there was "Doh Wine"; 1993 "Bring yuh box and come"; 1995 "Do the Iwer butterfly shadow wave"; 1996, "In Time" which most people called "wavers"; 1997 "Slam bam thank you maam soca jam" was more a rapso kind of tempo; 1998 "Soca Conga line" did extremely well in Barbados and Jamaica but just fairly well here; and in 1999 "Up in the Sky" only did well in Barbados and a couple of the smaller islands. "It just never took off from Trinidad" says Lucas.
Lucas is pleased with Shadow's winning of the Calypso Monarch title 2000and thinks "Shadow's win is a sum total of all the years of hard work and genius. It is well deserved."