Si­mon Lee

Nat­ur­al bird­song has ther­a­peu­tic qual­i­ties; we may hear pe­riph­er­al­ly but still ab­sorb some of those sweet im­pro­vi­sa­tions and calls. Sim­i­lar­ly, to judge by re­spons­es in the packed-out au­di­to­ri­um of Queen's Hall, last Thurs­day night, the bird­song tenth an­nu­al va­ca­tion camp clos­ing con­cert was a mov­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, for both per­form­ers and their mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional au­di­ence.

As Shad­ow sang in one of the many songs pre­sent­ed in a pro­gramme em­brac­ing first time and ac­com­plished mu­si­cians: "Old la­dy, young ba­by, any­body could din­go­lay!" Proud grand­par­ents, vo­cal in­fants and half of Tu­na­puna come to town, joined to ap­plaud a con­cert, which was about much more than the mu­sic.

The bird­song Acad­e­my, found­ed in 2004 out of the same name pa­n­yard in the East, start­ed as a mu­sic lit­er­a­cy and ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme for chil­dren aged 12-18. In the past nine years, be­sides the 700 who've grad­u­at­ed the pro­gramme, three gift­ed grad­u­ates have been fund­ed by bird­song schol­ar­ships to be­gin re­al­is­ing their po­ten­tial: vi­su­al­ly im­paired Ny­ol Man­swell is in his fi­nal se­mes­ter in Voice stud­ies at the pres­ti­gious Berklee School of Mu­sic; pan play­er Der­ri­ane Dyett has com­plet­ed two years study at the Prince Claus Con­ser­va­to­ry in Hol­land, while Al­isha Wal­lace is a third year med­ical stu­dent, at the Re­pub­lic of Geor­gia's Tbil­isi State Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty.

The bird­song Acad­e­my shows all the signs of a po­tent, pro­gres­sive an­ti­dote to the virus lodg­ing so des­per­ate­ly in new-mil­len­ni­um Trinidad's so­ci­ety. Just as the late Hugo Chavez's na­tion­al or­ches­tra project demon­strat­ed in Venezuela, young peo­ple and their el­ders in lo­cal, re­gion­al and then na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties can be mo­bilised through the dis­ci­pline, cre­ativ­i­ty and co­op­er­a­tion, which play­ing com­mu­nal mu­sic in­stils. So­cial co­he­sive­ness, rather than the ram­pant in­di­vid­u­al­ism and di­vi­sive­ness which char­ac­teris­es so much pub­lic life in T&T, is a bird­song re­al­i­ty.

But back to the con­cert, which cur­tain raised with com­po­si­tions fea­tur­ing ju­nior pan, brass, gui­tar, per­cus­sion and wood­wind per­form­ers, none of whom were fazed by ap­pear­ing on the big stage. The Acad­e­my Voic­es choir fol­lowed with John Lennon's Imag­ine (which might stand as a bird­song sig­na­ture tune for the ide­al­ism and com­pas­sion it evokes). On both their open­ing num­ber and the Spir­i­tu­al Ride on King Je­sus, the young singers demon­strat­ed con­trol and ex­cel­lent tim­ing with their con­tra­pun­tal har­monies.

The Acad­e­my Steel pan side, led by di­rec­tor Ter­rance Sealey, did them­selves proud with their crisp ren­di­tions of Wet­ting, Fog and Andy Narell's com­po­si­tion Sea of Sto­ries. Their de­liv­ery was en­hanced by sound en­gi­neer Yoichi Watan­abe's skil­ful mix. For once it was pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish bass lines in their rich colour­ful sonor­i­ty, from the bright peal of the tenors. Watan­abe's mix should be stud­ied as a tem­plate for am­pli­fy­ing steel­bands, as all too of­ten un­less we're deaf­ened by loy­al­ty what we hear is ca­coph­o­ny rather than the won­der­ful clar­i­ty Watan­abe gave us.

The mix was par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­ed to in­ter­pret­ing Narell's piece, with its slow-paced in­tro led by the bass pans, in­tro­duc­ing the melod­ic mo­tif which was de­vel­oped and em­bell­ished in the sec­ond move­ment. As the third part flowed, full of pass­ing ref­er­ences to well-known (Kitch) melodies, it was de­light­ful to see a small tenor boy in the front row, head lev­el with his pan, to­tal­ly ab­sorbed in the mu­sic.

Af­ter the in­ter­mis­sion Acad­e­my Brass blew off bright­ly with El Gato Gor­do and Cute be­fore the au­di­ence was treat­ed to a set by the Small En­sem­ble, fea­tur­ing Di­rec­tor Raf Robert­son on key­boards, Ny­ol Man­swell vo­cals, his Berklee room­mate Jonte Samuel from St Thomas on sax, Der­ri­ane Dyett on pan, Clint de Coteau on bass and David Richards on drums. The en­sem­ble, which with the ex­cep­tion of Richards, had played

a bril­liant Eman­ci­pa­tion gig at Trevor's Edge in St Au­gus­tine the week be­fore, was ably backed by young singers from the Acad­e­my Voic­es.

The clas­sic sam­ba Mas Que Na­da (penned by Jorge Ben and im­mor­talised by Ser­gio Mendes) proved a hot open­ing for bird­song alum­nus Ny­ol Man­swell to show­case the skills he's been hon­ing these past few years at Berklee. With Robert­son riff­ing off Dyett's pan, Man­swell de­liv­ered the vo­cals, usu­al­ly sung by a fe­male, with light sen­si­tiv­i­ty trad­ing off Samuel's lyri­cal sax, be­fore im­pro­vis­ing with the de­li­cious­ly sexy sibi­lant Brazil­ian lyrics and adding his own per­cus­sive boulad­jel (Guade­lou­pean-style voice drum) to the mix. This was a vir­tu­oso per­for­mance by any stan­dards.

As if to demon­strate that our own mu­si­cal her­itage pro­vides all the raw ma­te­r­i­al and in­spi­ra­tion for end­less im­pro­vi­sa­tion and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion, the En­sem­ble sur­prized with a jazz ren­di­tion of Roar­ing Li­on's clas­sic Trinidad is the Land of Ca­lyp­so and lat­er with their own ver­sion of Shad­ow's Din­go­lay. Edith Pi­af's Hymne a l'Amour was an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for Man­swell to show­case his range, this time with an ef­fort­less counter tenor (falset­to) de­liv­ery, again en­hanced by his room­mate Samuel's so­phis­ti­cat­ed sen­su­al sax so­lo.

Af­ter such rich­es it was left to the full Acad­e­my Or­ches­tra con­duct­ed by Richard Quar­less to con­clude a con­cert which will cer­tain­ly be fond­ly re­called for years, not on­ly by the young per­form­ers. Mar­shalling such a mixed, large group was nev­er go­ing to be easy and at points in their ren­di­tions of, En­try of the Glad­i­a­tors, Reg­gae Nights, Shame and Scan­dal and the Spar­row clas­sic, Mem­o­ries, the or­ches­tra seemed to sit pon­der­ous­ly on the beat. How­ev­er, they came good thanks to the brio of the pans, con­clud­ing to unan­i­mous ap­plause.

Now the va­ca­tion camp and con­cert is over it would be re­miss to let bird­song slip out of mind un­til Panora­ma time. The youth pro­gramme with in­stru­men­tal class­es through­out the year and mas­ter class work­shops with the likes of Andy Narell, Raf Robert­son, Earl Rod­ney and Eti­enne Charles, is the kind of ini­tia­tive in "sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment" that the State could do well to study. It has not on­ly been proac­tive in de­vel­op­ing our young hu­man re­source but al­so in pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ty em­ploy­ment and a sense of pride and achieve­ment. It seems in­con­ceiv­able that such a project, which could be used as a mod­el through­out T&T had its gov­ern­ment fund­ing (to pay teach­ers) cut back in June. We all need to raise our voic­es to en­sure that bird­song con­tin­ues to sing and help spread the wings of our fu­ture.

About bird­song

bird­song Steel Or­ches­tra was found­ed in 1973 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has since then grown to in­clude the bird­song Acad­e­my and bird­song En­ter­pris­es and the bird­song Small En­sem­ble in ad­di­tion to the or­ches­tra.

Since 2004, the bird­song Acad­e­my has fo­cused on pro­vid­ing youth in the Tu­na­puna and neigh­bour­ing ar­eas with struc­tured mu­sic lit­er­a­cy cours­es and re­lat­ed train­ing in ar­eas such as steel-pan tech­nol­o­gy and his­to­ry. The acad­e­my al­so has a schol­ar­ship pro­gramme for stu­dents pur­su­ing ca­reers in mu­sic.

Many bird­song schol­ar­ship stu­dents have con­tin­ued on to pres­ti­gious in­sti­tu­tions such as the Berklee Col­lege of Mu­sic and The Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of the Hague.

The band has toured both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and has com­pet­ed suc­cess­ful­ly in the J'Ou­vert Bomb Com­pe­ti­tion (four time win­ners) and Mu­sic Fes­ti­val (Test Piece win­ner 1980).