The busi­ness of main­tain­ing a steel or­ches­tra whether it be small, medi­um, or large is not an easy task and the over­head ex­pens­es can range from $1 mil­lion to $6 mil­lion a year.

The Busi­ness Guardian spoke to sev­er­al bands on what it takes to be sus­tain­able year­ly.

Pres­i­dent of bpTT Rene­gades, Col­in Greaves, said the Car­ni­val sea­son usu­al­ly costs be­tween $1.6 to $1.7 mil­lion a year and the or­gan­i­sa­tion can run in­to an ex­cess of $5 to $6 mil­lion a year.

Greaves said if one does the math in terms of how much the steel­band makes even if they win Panora­ma earn­ing $1 mil­lion, 10 per cent must be giv­en back to Pan Trin­ba­go, as that’s part of the agree­ment, so the band now ends up with $900,000.  

“Then by the time you look at pay­ing all the bills, you’re al­ways in a deficit. For in­stance, in the Car­ni­val sea­son alone the play­er’s bill is al­most $700,000, cater­ing is over $100,000, tun­ing is over $100,000, uni­forms are....you know it adds up quite quick­ly. Then there are spe­cial ef­fects, decor,  py­rotech­nics, and all those things are over $100,000,” he de­tailed.

Greaves not­ed that it is im­por­tant to find oth­er ways to off­set the cost through com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

 “We have a bar, we have a gift shop, so we gen­er­ate rev­enue and sales from the sale of mer­chan­dise for the sea­son. Of course, we have cor­po­rate spon­sor­ships and al­so have per­for­mances that the band will do through­out the sea­son as well as the year. All those things kind of come to­geth­er in one ecosys­tem to help cov­er the cost.”

Asked how much mon­ey the 125 play­ers earn for the panora­ma sea­son Greaves said it can be any­where be­tween $3,000 and $6,000, de­pend­ing on the place­ment of the band in the fi­nals.  

On the top­ic of self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty, which was dis­cussed at the Busi­ness of Pan pan­el dis­cus­sion at last week’s T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, the bp Rene­gades pres­i­dent said while it is not im­pos­si­ble, steel bands will have to change their or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and be­come more busi­ness-savvy and busi­ness-ori­ent­ed to achieve that.  

“It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prof­itable busi­ness, but there’s a move for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. You need mon­ey to op­er­ate, right? So in light of that, bands will have to start ex­plor­ing all sorts of dif­fer­ent ways that they could earn rev­enue, apart from per­for­mances and vir­tu­al lives and ways to mon­e­tise the mu­sic. Out­side of cor­po­rate, bands will have to be cre­ative. Now, luck­i­ly for bands who have spon­sors, like Rene­gades, a lot of em­pha­sis over the years has been placed on the hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment that man­ages the band. We’ve had a lot of train­ing, and al­so a lot of the peo­ple that are af­fil­i­at­ed with the band through dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees on the board, are trained pro­fes­sion­als,” Greaves said.

A strug­gle

Her­itage Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra man­ag­er Ju­nia Re­grel­lo said the band’s bill in trans­porta­tion from San Fer­nan­do to par­tic­i­pate in Panora­ma is $200,000, un­like the north bands, who are in close prox­im­i­ty to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

“Its an­oth­er cost when you have to break down pan racks and load them back up to head to their pa­n­yards in the South. This is why south bands have been suf­fer­ing over the years be­cause of that dras­tic gap be­tween north and south bands. This is why we can­not make any progress,” Re­grel­lo lament­ed.

He said Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra re­ceives $600,000 for Panora­ma from Her­itage, which is $200,000 more than their last spon­sor, who was Caribbean Air­lines Ltd.  

Re­grel­lo en­cour­aged cor­po­rate T&T to place monies in­to the un­spon­sored bands as there are many.

“ Look at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny: They are spon­sor­ing us and Siparia Del­tones, which is a good start, and oth­ers should fol­low, as up­keep ex­pens­es for a band year­ly is a lot. Cor­po­rate Trinidad gets a tax in­cen­tive of up to $200,000, so more can be sure­ly done”

He said to tune the pans in Her­itage Skif­fle alone costs $100,000, then uni­forms, and pur­chas­ing tenor pans, so the steel or­ches­tra bill a year can be $2 mil­lion.

“Luck­i­ly, we made it to the fi­nals, be­cause if the band just makes it to the semi­fi­nals, you get no mon­ey. We are still pay­ing bills from last year at Panora­ma.”

Cor­po­rate Trinidad can do bet­ter

 Phase II Pan Groove, is no longer spon­sored by Had­co and went in­to the Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals un­spon­sored. Speak­ing on this, arranger Len “Bo­ogise” Sharpe said every year it took $1.2 mil­lion for them to get ready to hit the Sa­van­nah stage but that changed this year.

“Had­co is no longer with Phase II, but I thank them im­mense­ly for their sup­port over the eight years. They have been good to me and the band.”

The drill mas­ter for the band, Dami­an Alexan­der, not­ed that con­trary to what is be­ing said by some, the band and Had­co are not en­e­mies.

“Phase II wants to thank HAD­CO for par­tic­i­pat­ing in our jour­ney. You know, like when a child gets big, and they have to leave the home? So, we are thank­ful for Had­co. We don’t have any qualms with Had­co. The nar­ra­tive that you may have been hear­ing for quite some time, is not our truth. Our truth is we are mov­ing on,” he ex­plained.

Alexan­der said that dif­fer­ent in­di­vid­u­als came to­geth­er for the band to make it to the se­mi-fi­nals on Sun­day.

Asked whether the band is look­ing for an­oth­er cor­po­rate spon­sor to help cov­er their over­heads es­pe­cial­ly when the band has in­ter­na­tion­al gigs, the drill mas­ter said, “When that hap­pens, we will know.  But for now, we’re go­ing from strength to strength.”

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Had­co Group, John Hadad, said the com­pa­ny and Phase II were in a com­ple­men­tary re­la­tion­ship, in­volv­ing both par­ties stand­ing by prin­ci­ples and hav­ing shared cul­tur­al val­ues, along with oth­er things.

“When that starts to di­vert is the time for us to start look­ing at sep­a­ra­tion. I would like to think that the sep­a­ra­tion be­tween Had­co and Phase II hap­pened quite am­i­ca­bly, we still have a very good re­la­tion­ship and who knows what the fu­ture might bring. For now, once there is a di­ver­sion in brand­ing, and oth­er things such as prin­ci­ples Had­co will not be a spon­sor. We have spon­sored the band for nine years,” Hadad dis­closed.

On the is­sue of steel bands be­ing self-sus­tain­able, he out­lined that it is very pos­si­ble for that to hap­pen as there can be events at the pa­n­yard through­out the year, and a band can start sell­ing mer­chan­dise such as T-shirts, cups, and oth­er brand­ed items.

Al­so com­ment­ing on self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Hi­ram Muril­lo, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Wit­co, which has been part­ner­ing with Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra for close to 60 years said, “The pos­si­bil­i­ty of self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the band is al­ready tak­ing shape. We view our re­la­tion­ship as a sym­bi­ot­ic part­ner­ship, where the fi­nan­cial sup­port we pro­vide al­lows the band the free­dom to ad­vance our cul­ture through mu­sic. Nonethe­less, the band con­tin­ues to make sig­nif­i­cant strides to­wards self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Re­cent­ly, Des­per­a­does com­plet­ed a se­ries of train­ing and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ini­tia­tives that di­rect­ly sup­port this pos­si­bil­i­ty. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co), com­pre­hen­sive class­es were de­signed to de­vel­op es­sen­tial skills for our pan play­ers. This ro­bust cur­ricu­lum fea­tured cours­es in lead­er­ship, an en­tre­pre­neur­ial mind­set, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment. Through these ini­tia­tives, the band mem­bers have been able to en­hance their tal­ents and pre­pare for a pros­per­ous fu­ture.”