Pan Player, Arranger, Composer
Ray Holman has been one of the most exciting pannists this country has produced.
Ray, a school teacher by profession at Fatima College, started playing the steelpan at an early age. In fact, he started to arrange music at the early age of sixteen when he was a member of the Invaders Steelband.
To date, he has arranged music, particularly at Panorama time, for bands such as Starlift, Pandemonium, Exodus, Antillean All Stars, Tokyo and Phase II.
He is a player, arranger and composer [and composing] as far back as 1961 with the selection Ray's Saga. He is the one who pioneered composing and arranging their own music by pannists.
From a competitive angle; Ray won the soloist category of the 1964 Steelband Music Festival. His first victory at Panorama was in 1969 with the band Starlift [which] he repeated with the same band in 1971.
However, it was in 1972 that Ray Holman really became a pioneer, when he composed and arranged his own composition with the band Starlift, the selection Pan on the Move.
This single act broke the tradition where steelbands [normally] played composition by calypsonians for the Panorama Competition.
It is to his credit, as a pannist, that Ray Holman has led the way in showing that the pannist had come of age, from the point of not being able to read music, far less to compose music, for his instrument.
Ray has been the one to introduce the jazz element into [pan] music, making it more lyrical.
Ray, over the years, has composed many other songs for various steelbands. Selections such as Pan on the Run, Panyard Vibrations, Odyssey in Steel, Panyard Rhapsody, Musical Showdown, J'ouvert Bounce, to name a few.
Over the years, Merchant and Winston Devignes have done some of the lyrical work to his songs.
Ray was honoured in 1988 when he received the Silver Humming Bird Medal.
© 1997 Gideon Maxime: Pg 201; PAN THROUGH THE YEARS (1952 - 1996)
