Ray Funk

On Oc­to­ber 10, a group of bene­fac­tors, pa­trons and well wish­ers joined to the sound of sweet pan and more mu­sic at the Re­nais­sance in Glen­coe in cel­e­bra­tion of a decade of the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust (MLT). It was a look back at a decade of achieve­ments and a way for­ward with new plans and ini­tia­tives for the fu­ture.

MLT has spent a decade work­ing to have great pan arrange­ments scored for pos­ter­i­ty, en­cour­age the cre­ation of orig­i­nal mu­sic for pan, bring in­stru­ments and teach­ing to dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren, and of­fer vi­tal schol­ar­ships to some of T&T's most tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians so they can fur­ther their ed­u­ca­tion to be­come the bright stars of the fu­ture.

MLT is the vi­sion of its found­ing di­rec­tor Mark Lo­quan, who be­lieved that the won­der­ful, com­plex pan arrange­ments heard at Panora­ma and in the pa­n­yards need­ed to be pre­served. He felt that mu­sic lit­er­a­cy for young peo­ple was lack­ing and that the abil­i­ty to read mu­sic and by ex­ten­sion, adapt to a range of in­stru­ments, could in­crease op­por­tu­ni­ties for some of T&T's most tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians. His close friend, the late Dr Pat Bish­op nur­tured Mark's vi­sion from the be­gin­ning but she al­so told him it would be like push­ing mo­lasses up the hill with a rake.

Now based in Perth, Aus­tralia, Lo­quan at the time was head of en­er­gy com­pa­ny Yara Trinidad and he worked to get a board to­geth­er and to ap­proach a range of col­leagues in the en­er­gy sec­tor to jump start the fund­ing and make this dream a re­al­i­ty.

They ral­lied and gave the seed mon­ey that start­ed MLT and cor­po­rate spon­sors have con­tin­ued to be the ma­jor­i­ty of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's fi­nan­cial back­ers, who were thanked re­peat­ed­ly at Fri­day's cel­e­bra­tion. The event of­fered proof of the good use of their gen­er­ous sup­port.

Lo­quan's wor­ry that great pan arrange­ments would be lost for­ev­er, led him first to Jit Sama­roo who agreed and worked with the trust to have six of his tunes scored and made avail­able to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try. From Sama­roo, MLT worked with lead­ing arrangers Ray Hol­man and Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore for scor­ing their mu­sic. It looked for key pan arrange­ments from the past so those wouldn't be lost like the clas­sic arrange­ments of Cav­a­liers from the 1960s by Bob­by Mo­hammed.

For Sil­ver Stars 60th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion in 2008, MLT worked to pro­duce scored arrange­ments of clas­sic pieces in co­op­er­a­tion with both Ed­win and Ju­nior Pouchet. The sad pass­ing of these gi­ants of pan in the years since show how im­por­tant this work is so their mu­sic can be ac­cu­rate­ly per­formed for years to come.

At Fri­day's event, Lo­quan point­ed every­one's at­ten­tion to Ka­reem Brown who has since the be­gin­ning, been his first choice for scor­ing pan mu­sic and is now in de­mand in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Be­sides pre­serv­ing arrange­ments, MLT has com­mis­sioned new mu­sic for pan. Spon­sored con­certs like Beethoven to Boogsie and a recital fea­tur­ing Liam Teague and pi­anist Richard Tang Yuk are two ways to get new mu­sic out to the pub­lic.

Schol­ar­ships for tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians have been an im­por­tant pri­or­i­ty for MLT and 19 schol­ar­ships have been giv­en out to tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians to go to UWI (pri­or to Gate fund­ing), Berkelee Col­lege for Mu­sic in Boston, North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, and Unit­ed World Col­lege in Italy.

Ris­ing pan stars Am­rit Sama­roo, Seion Gomez, Bar­ry Man­nette, and Vanes­sa Headley have been among the re­cip­i­ents. Manette who just got his mas­ters in Mu­sic at North­ern Illi­nois is now the mu­sic di­rec­tor of the Ex­o­dus Steel­pan Acad­e­my. Sama­roo and Gomez arranged for the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Brook­lyn Panora­ma and be­tween them they have arranged for bands in the Unit­ed States, Eng­land, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia as well as Trinidad. Headley who arranges for South band Gold­en Hands, now has a pan ra­dio pro­gram Mon­day nights on the ra­dio sta­tion Wack FM.

Two young pan play­ers from To­ba­go were the first this sum­mer to go on a new ini­tia­tive to send stu­dents to the Birch Creek mu­sic sum­mer school in Wis­con­sin where Liam Teague runs the pan pro­gram. They both per­formed so­los at the Fri­day night cel­e­bra­tion. Dachelle Mor­ris­son with a clas­sic Kitch­en­er tune and Av­ery Attzs played a shim­mer­ing new com­po­si­tion by Dr Jean­nine Re­my.

Teague who is a cen­tral re­source per­son for the board was al­so on hand to per­form and con­tin­ues to work close­ly with MLT. The pro­gram con­clud­ed with a small en­sem­ble from the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra di­rect­ed by Dr Jes­sel Mur­ray, him­self a staunch ad­vo­cate of new mu­sic for pan.

Ed­u­cat­ing the youth in read­ing mu­sic, get­ting ac­cess to in­stru­ments–both pan and oth­er in­stru­ments–has been a cen­tral part of the MLT's ef­forts. This has in­clud­ed sup­port for var­i­ous pro­grams at the Bird­song Acad­e­my and oth­ers. Sup­port for ex­ams was giv­en to Bird­song Ju­nior Or­ches­tra, Star­lift Ju­nior Or­ches­tra and Gold­en Hands. MLT's ma­jor ef­fort in this area is the on­go­ing work of the Lit­tle An­gels pro­gram in south east Port-of-Spain.

Found­ed in 2009, the City An­gels pro­gram start­ed as a sum­mer in­sti­tute most­ly for pri­ma­ry school chil­dren to ed­u­cate them in pan and oth­er in­stru­ments. The ini­tia­tive has tak­en fire, it has now be­come an af­ter school pro­gram, and over 100 kids from 13 schools par­tic­i­pate. City An­gels formed its own steel­band in 2013 and par­tic­i­pat­ed in ju­nior panora­ma.

Di­rec­tor Jen­ny Lee and founder Mark Lo­quan seemed hap­pi­est to talk about the fu­ture. The Lit­tle An­gels pro­gram is now ex­pand­ing to To­ba­go. A Lit­tle An­gels or­ches­tra is go­ing to To­ba­go with the start of the Seren­i­ty An­gels pro­gram in To­ba­go, di­rect­ed by An­tho­ny Moore and in­stru­ments are on their way to get that go­ing. New schol­ar­ships were an­nounced. Mean­while, scor­ing of clas­sic High­landers and Fon­claire panora­ma tunes are in progress and dis­cus­sions have be­gun with Pan Trin­ba­go on scor­ing Panora­ma win­ners.

Hard as push­ing that mo­lasses up the hill may be, the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust has done so, and right­ly has many rea­sons to be proud with ex­cit­ing things to come.

�2 The Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust is lo­cat­ed at 18 Scott Bushe Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. �2 For more in­fo, vis­it their Face­book page, e-mail them at mu­si­clit­er­a­cytrust@gmail.com or call 625-6473.