On Au­gust 1, Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, Bird­song will pay mu­si­cal trib­ute to Ian "Ted­dy" Bel­grave, the band's found­ing cap­tain, who passed away on Ju­ly 19.The func­tion will af­ford the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty a fo­rum to record its ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the five decades of ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice Bel­grave gave to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment as play­er, or­gan­is­er, ad­min­is­tra­tor, ed­u­ca­tor, his­to­ri­an and ac­tivist.In ad­di­tion to his role in the for­ma­tion of Bird­song in 1973 at the UWI St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, Bel­grave was in­volved as play­er and or­gan­is­er with the High­landers in his Laven­tille home­town, Mel­lo Tones in Cana­da and Ari­ma-based Nu­tones.

He lat­er went on to serve as man­ag­er of the OW­TU Free French Steel Or­ches­tra in San Fer­nan­do and the WoodTrin and Ari­ma Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School steel­bands, both of which he found­ed while he was a Math­e­mat­ics teacher. As an ad­min­is­tra­tor, he func­tioned on the ex­ec­u­tive of Pan Trin­ba­go's east­ern re­gion and played a ma­jor lead­er­ship role in the Pan in the Class­room pro­gramme which pro­vid­ed the plat­form for the teach­ing of steel­band mu­sic to be for­mal­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the school cur­ricu­lum.

The pro­gramme will fea­ture per­for­mances by Bird­song's stage side, the Bird­song Acad­e­my and pan soloists. The pro­gramme will al­so fea­ture oral trib­utes from mem­bers of Bird­song, the steel­band move­ment and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to which Bel­grave gave a life­time of ser­vice and ac­tivism in the fields of mu­sic, trade union­ism and ed­u­ca­tion. This event is free to the pub­lic and it be­gins prompt­ly at 6 pm at the Bird­song pa­n­yard on St Vin­cent Street, Tu­na­puna.All past and present mem­bers of Bird­song, Free French, Nu­tones, Ari­ma An­gel Harps, Ari­ma Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive Steel­band and Woodtrin are asked to at­tend.