Mark Loquan
With Carnival 2009 due to climax in just five weeks, a Trini musical genius with a flair for coming up with compositions perfect for pan is going into voluntary exile in far-off Angola. Mark Loquan, whose reputation as a pan composer has been soaring ever higher in the last ten years, has no idea when he will be back home to continue his march to the top in this elite field, alongside the likes of the already legendary Len “Boogsie” Sharpe.
This year, Loquan has hit the road running with three catchy compositions, which pan aficionados believe will be lapped up by Panorama contestants. But the outgoing chairman of the Music Literacy Trust, founded in 2004, and based at UWI, St Augustine, won’t be there to hear his melodious work ringing out on the steel band.
In fact, as he put it, his close colleagues in the local musical world, like Ken “Professor” Philmore, Pat Bishop, Destra Garcia, Colin Lucas and Anslem Douglas, feel he needs to have his head examined. “They tell me I am leaving a hole here,” said Loquan, who is yet another Trini of Chinese descent to have wholeheartedly embraced the country’s musical culture.
Loquan, 48, is also a shrewd business manager. A UWI-trained chemical engineer who graduated in 1982, he was, up to the end of December, serving as president of Yara Trinidad Ltd, which churns out fertiliser by the tonnes at its Point Lisas headquarters. Loquan was due to fly out this weekend to Angola, on the African continent, arriving in two weeks’ time after making several whistle stops in Europe, including one in Norway at multinational Yara’s headquarters, to get final instructions in person for his new role.
Loquan has accepted Yara’s offer to set up a branch of the firm in Angola, and he says he took the decision after extensive consultations with his family, who include his wife and son. They expect to join him there after he has set up shop. For 2009, Loquan’s musical wares include: Brazilian Flag Woman, composed with Amrit Samaroo and sung by Anslem Douglas; Dangerous, composed with Philmore and sung by Colin Lucas and Anslem Douglas—which he believes is the first-ever pan duet—and D Trini Way, composed with Philmore, lyrics by Destra, as well as sung by her.
Loquan, who was born in Petit Valley, is the fourth of five siblings. He started composing for the pan in 1998 while a tenor-playing member of Silver Stars Steel Orchestra of Woodbrook . In 2000, when Skiffle Bunch won the World Music Festival, he was a member of that band, and he has also played in several Panorama competitions. Loquan says he composes his music with the aid of the tenor pan, guitar and keyboard. In the pan world, aside from Boogsie, the late Lord Kitchener is seen by Loquan as having done a lot to raise the image of the steel band.
In terms of arranging, he has installed Clive Bradley on a pedestal and has great respect for Robbie Greenidge; for individual performance on the pan. Liam Teague is Loquan’s favourite. He wants to see pan more firmly entrenched in the school curriculum here in T&T, and is convinced that it is one of the plausible answers to curbing the crime upsurge. The non-profit trust he chaired up to recently has given grants to Birdsong Academy from St Augustine, as well as Golden Hands from south Trinidad, and Loquan says he has seen the positive results their respective musical outreach programmes have done for their communities.
He says he is taking his trusty tenor pan to Angola, and while his energies will be concentrated on setting up the Yara plant, if the opportunity arises to start a steel orchestra there, he will not hesitate to do the needful.
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