De­siree McEachrane

"You see that piece of wood that you put un­der your chin," said lit­tle Joshua. "I want that for Christ­mas." A vi­o­lin is not the kind of gift re­quest you ex­pect to hear from a sev­en-year-old from Preysal. But the 2008 Na­tion­al Mu­sic Fes­ti­val made a big im­pact on Joshua and his friends, said the cam­era-shy Di­ane Duprey. The 72-year-old Duprey has been the fes­ti­val's ad­min­is­tra­tor since 2007, and this will be her last year. But lit­tle things like this re­mind her how im­por­tant the fes­ti­val is to T&T's youth. "Joshua and his class­mates made my fes­ti­val." The 2010 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val may well be­come a wa­ter­shed mo­ment. The fes­ti­val's or­gan­is­ers had to hold more pre­lims than usu­al be­cause of the vol­ume of peo­ple that en­tered this year. Reg­is­tra­tion in Port-of- Spain alone topped out at over 2000 per­sons; ap­prox­i­mate­ly 800 par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered in San Fer­nan­do and over 100 in To­ba­go. "The fes­ti­val is very ex­cit­ing this year and I think it will make a mark. I made a re­al­ly con­cert­ed ef­fort to in­vite over 600 schools in T&T, then I fol­lowed up," Duprey ex­plained.

"I have schools from Long­denville, Va­len­cia, Preysal. For the Girls Vo­cal So­lo 8 -12 class, we have 209 lit­tle girls com­ing to sing. We have 27 pri­ma­ry school choirs." The syl­labus has changed as well. The T&T Mu­sic As­so­ci­a­tion, un­der Duprey's en­cour­age­ment, has added sev­er­al new class­es, many with a dis­tinct­ly lo­cal flavour. For ex­am­ple, they set An­dr� Tanker's Steel­band Times as the test piece for the new Pan Song So­lo. In­stead of a uni­sex Broad­way cat­e­go­ry, par­tic­i­pants now fall in­to ei­ther Broad­way (Fe­male) or Broad­way (Male) class­es. And there is even a Clas­sic In­di­an In­stru­men­tal En­sem­ble and an Asian or African Clas­si­cal En­sem­ble class, where the en­sem­bles use in­stru­ments and mu­sic in­dige­nous to those re­gions. At least two groups from Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do have en­tered each cat­e­go­ry. "The tal­ent and dri­ve is there, you just have to en­cour­age it and give them the ex­po­sure," Duprey said. "If all I knew was choco­late ice cream, that's all I would eat. But hel­lo, Baskin Rob­bins!"

And the Fes­ti­val is not on­ly an in­te­gral part of T&T cul­ture, she added, but it's vi­tal to our youth's de­vel­op­ment as well. Many per­sons who passed through the Fes­ti­val have gone on to have il­lus­tri­ous mu­si­cal ca­reers, in­clud­ing Pat Bish­op, Gre­ta Tay­lor and for­mer Fes­ti­val ad­min­is­tra­tor Joslynne Pierre. And mu­sic calms chil­dren, Duprey said, and gives them a new per­spec­tive. "If all you lis­ten to is a con­stant bom­bard­ment of bumpers and cro­chets in­stead of a lul­la­by, or Frank Sina­tra, or Ce­line Dion or Dionne War­rick, you won't get far in life," she said. "Chil­dren need to learn that there are dif­fer­ent types of mu­sic, dif­fer­ent ways of ex­press­ing them­selves. And it's a nice change to hear the young peo­ple who are so of­ten mis­aligned putting down pos­i­tive mu­sic in Queens Hall. The world out there is so loud. But mu­sic can soothe them." Duprey her­self sings "ab­solute­ly fan­tas­tic in the bath­room," she said, laugh­ing wicked­ly.

But she got an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for mu­sic from her aunt Marie Duprey, who with a group of oth­er "gen­teel" women had the au­dac­i­ty to hold mu­si­cal evenings in pris­ons like Car­erra Is­land in the Gulf of Paria. Maybe it was that mix of gen­teel mu­sic ap­pre­ci­a­tion and dar­ing that gave her the dri­ve to push for such change in the Fes­ti­val syl­labus. She's an afi­ciona­do of lo­cal mu­sic, from Black Stal­in to steel pan mu­sic. And now that she's leav­ing the Mu­sic As­so­ci­a­tion to work with at-risk chil­dren, Duprey would like to see that blend of lo­cal and clas­si­cal mu­sic con­tin­ued, along with an in­fu­sion of younger peo­ple who can take the As­so­ci­a­tion and the Fes­ti­val from strength to strength. "Peo­ple take part in the fes­ti­val but don't join the or­gan­i­sa­tion. The or­gan­i­sa­tion needs new blood. It needs peo­ple to come in and not sit on the out­side and crit­i­cise. I have made many mis­takes; but if you eh make a mis­take it means you eh do noth­ing."

Mu­sic Fes­ti­val gold spon­sors Sco­tia­bank and bptt help not on­ly through fi­nance, but by con­tribut­ing ex­per­tise and staff. Sil­ver spon­sors T&TEC and Petrotrin, as well as TSTT and NP al­so con­tribute and sup­port the Fes­ti­val in un­told ways, Duprey said. But more cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship is al­ways need­ed. Things like tents, medals for all par­tic­i­pants, even get­ting pho­to­copies done can be a do­na­tion. "I just wish that more peo­ple would get on board," Duprey said.