According to Kendall Williams, Pan in Motion did everything right to prepare for its practice season. Since late July, the Brooklyn-based steel orchestra has been preparing to compete in Panorama, the annual steelband competition held at the Brooklyn Museum on the weekend of the West Indian Day Parade, for the third time. Williams, the NYU and Princeton professor who founded the musical education nonprofit behind the group, said that this year he took extra measures to reach out to the people living next to the Crown Heights high school parking lot where the band has been practicing, cognizant of the noise complaints that residents might have about the nighttime band practice.
Steel bands, composed of players with different types of steelpans, metal instruments fashioned out of steel drums, are a critical feature of the city's musical landscape, particularly for its Caribbean communities. The steelpan originated in Trinidad and Tobago, and the panyards where it gets played come into the spotlight every summer across the city with the arrival of J'Ouvert, the Caribbean diaspora's global Carnival celebration. In New York City, Crown Heights's Eastern Parkway has long been the center of the party, and Panorama has been a feature of the festivities since 1972.
In July, Pan in Motion applied for, and received, a practice permit from the Department of Education, authorizing them to use the parking lot of Prospect Heights International School from July 27 until September 5, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., and then from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. in the final week before the competition. But the outreach didn't stop there—the group also sent letters to people in neighboring buildings in order to create an avenue to field any noise-related complaints.
"This year, I actually went as far as to give my personal number out so people can reach out and say, 'Hey, maybe tonight went a little too late. Can we do something about it?'" Williams told Hell Gate. "We're not here to make your lives a living hell. We understand you go to work. So does everyone here—and they actually all come from work, which is why we have to rehearse in the night and not during the day."
But for at least one neighbor, those gestures were not enough.