SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

“Don’t judge each day by the har­vest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

That quote by Scot­tish writer and po­et Robert Louis Steven­son is post­ed on the crowd­fund­ing donor wall of three T&T schol­ars, at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty (NIU) Joshua Be­deau, Jalen Charles and Roshun­da Dorset-Headley, who are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to raise funds to cov­er their tu­ition.

All three are pur­su­ing de­grees with spe­cial­i­sa­tion in steel­pan per­for­mance at NIU.

The pro­gramme is one of the most renowned and re­spect­ed in the world but the trio, who are in their first se­mes­ter has al­ready racked up late-pay­ment fees and are strug­gling to raise US$10,000 to cov­er health in­sur­ance, liv­ing ex­pens­es and oth­er costs for the two-year pro­gramme.

The uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts launched a crowd­fund­ing ini­tia­tive, JJR Steel­pan Re­lief Fund (SRF), on Oc­to­ber 18 but are still well short of the tar­get. In keep­ing with this cam­paign’s stip­u­la­tions, do­na­tions can be made via the plat­form up to No­vem­ber.

Al­though faced with fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, Be­deau, lead for JJR SRF, said they are wear­ing their T&T colours with pride and think­ing pos­i­tive­ly, hop­ing that donors will come for­ward to help them con­tin­ue their aca­d­e­m­ic dreams.

Joshua Bedeau

Be­deau and Charles, grad­u­ates of the UWI, St Au­gus­tine, and Dorset-Headley, who did her first de­gree at UTT, have al­ready ac­com­plished quite a lot, in­clud­ing their bach­e­lor de­grees in mu­sic, with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in steel­pan per­for­mance. Dorset-Headley grad­u­at­ed from her pro­gramme with ho­n­ours.

“We were all aware that the jour­ney to the US and the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, would be ex­pen­sive, but we be­lieve that it’s all worth­while,” Be­deau said.

“On this jour­ney, we can­not do it alone, We need your help! The three of us com­bined are com­posers, tran­scribers, arrangers, tu­tors and mul­ti-in­stru­men­tal­ists.”

They say the NIU post-grad­u­ate de­gree will help them sur­pass what they thought was their fullest po­ten­tial. All three say their main goals is to com­plete the pro­gramme and dili­gent­ly pur­sue their dreams to “im­prove the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty in T&T and wider world.

The steel­pan stud­ies pro­gramme at NIU, which at­tracts stu­dents from across the globe, was cre­at­ed by the late G Al­lan O’Con­nor, who in 1973 the first per­son to es­tab­lish an ac­tive­ly per­form­ing steel­band in an Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty.

In 1987, he cre­at­ed a steel­pan ma­jor field of study with­in the NIU School of Mu­sic. O’Con­nor was ap­point­ed NIU’s head of per­cus­sion stud­ies in 1968 and served as as­so­ciate dean of the Col­lege of Vi­su­al and Per­form­ing Arts from 1989 to 2000. He re­tired from NIU in 2002.

Roshunda Dorset-Headley

The pro­gramme is now un­der the di­rec­tion of T&T-born Pro­fes­sor Liam Teague, pres­i­den­tial re­search, schol­ar­ship and artistry pro­fes­sor, pro­fes­sor of mu­sic and head of steel­band stud­ies at NIU. Steel­pan ma­jors re­ceive one-on-one in­struc­tion from Pro­fes­sor Teague and al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of steel­pan, build­ing and tun­ing from Yuko Asa­da mu­sic in­stru­ment tech­ni­cian and an alum­nus of the NIU steel­pan pro­gramme.

The over­all cost of the pro­gramme for Be­deau, Charles, and Dorset-Headley in­cludes US$51,288 plus health in­sur­ance of US$14,688, US$3,000 for liv­ing ex­pens­es.