Sean Nero

Stu­dents grad­u­at­ing from Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny Steel Or­ches­tra's Mu­sic School in the Com­mu­ni­ty project spon­sored by the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism on Sep­tem­ber 13, looked ready to take on the world.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny at the band's Up­per Sixth Av­enue, Mal­ick, Barataria fa­cil­i­ty, the 40 grad­u­ates–smart­ly dressed and fo­cused on the mis­sion–de­liv­ered their brand of in­stru­men­tal mag­ic.

The ap­plause from par­ents, guardians and well-wish­ers was much more than a mere show of kind­ness and sup­port for the young en­ter­tain­ers in the spot­light.

The au­di­ence was im­pressed by the stu­dents who not on­ly dis­played their abil­i­ty on the pan, but on a range of brass in­stru­ments too. Course fa­cil­i­ta­tors were equal­ly as ex­cit­ed, cit­ing that the end prod­uct was a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their in­put.

There were guest per­for­mances by mu­si­cians Kern Sumerville and 2013 Trin­ba­go Kids Got Tal­ent win­ners De­ja and De­jean Cain. They bol­stered the evening's pro­duc­tion.

The grad­u­a­tion fol­lowed 12 weeks of in­tense, but most times fun class­es in the sec­ond se­mes­ter of the project (be­tween June 10 and Au­gust 31), un­der the di­rec­tion of pro­gramme fa­cil­i­ta­tor Car­lon Hare­wood. In­struc­tors were Akua Lei­th, Jen­na James, In­come Alexan­der, Nicholas Jag­gasar, Nigel Smith and Joseph Ward.

Each camp had an icon-in-res­i­dence. Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny opt­ed for cel­e­brat­ed mu­si­cian Le­ston Paul.

But, it turned out that the camp and the sub­se­quent grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny and pre­sen­ta­tion of cer­tifi­cates, might have ac­tu­al­ly been the easy part of the project, judg­ing from the rev­e­la­tions of di­rec­tor of cul­ture In­grid Ryan Ruben.

"Those of us who work in Gov­ern­ment and who work in this par­tic­u­lar area of Gov­ern­ment–cul­ture...we strug­gle to get sup­port for our ideas and for the pro­grammes that we de­vel­op. We want to see schools in every sin­gle com­mu­ni­ty in T&T but in or­der for that to be­come a re­al­i­ty, the Gov­ern­ment, the peo­ple have to hear more than our voic­es.

"We have been work­ing hard. We thought that by this time we would have had 20 schools. Of course, we did all the work that was nec­es­sary, but we couldn't con­vince the pow­ers that be. So we have six schools," she said.

Ryan Ruben ap­pealed to par­ents and sup­port­ers to raise their voic­es in sup­port of the pro­gramme. She ad­vised Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny and oth­er stake­hold­ers to in­form the au­thor­i­ties of the pro­gramme's suc­cess.

"You don't have to write it on a plac­ard or block the road. All you need to do is write a note. Please tell Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny to write a re­port say­ing this has worked for us!"

Projects of this scope and hu­man im­pact, she said, could not be val­i­dat­ed by pub­lic ser­vants, but rather by the stake­hold­ers who ac­tu­al­ly at­tained the ben­e­fits.

It was with that tan­gi­ble sup­port that the ev­i­dence that com­mu­ni­ties want­ed such a pro­gramme that gave the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate the im­pe­tus to ad­vance and ex­pand it, she point­ed out.

Apart from Po­ten­tial's pro­gramme, ap­provals were re­ceived for on­ly five sim­i­lar projects this year. The oth­ers were: Casablan­ca (Bel­mont), Skif­fle (San Fer­nan­do), Ex­o­dus (St Au­gus­tine), Cordettes (San­gre Grande) and Joy­lan­ders (Cou­va).

Ryan Ruben laud­ed the vi­sion of for­mer cul­tur­al of­fi­cer Auburn Wilt­shire, point­ing out that the mu­sic school in pa­n­yard ini­tia­tive was "his ba­by" and when the project was be­ing re­alised, he en­sured it came to the place where it was birthed.

It took a lot of do­ing to start and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the first se­mes­ter Ryan-Ruben re­called. Im­ple­ment­ing the sec­ond se­mes­ter was not as oner­ous, she said, re­lieved.

"When we con­cep­tu­alised this pro­gramme, one of our ob­jec­tives was to bring lit­er­a­cy to the pa­n­yard. Af­ter we com­plet­ed the first se­mes­ter we were look­ing for how many pa­n­yards demon­strat­ed lit­er­a­cy with the steel­pan.

"We want­ed to see us do that from a mu­sic sheet. Some peo­ple rose to the oc­ca­sion. That was the chal­lenge we threw out to the schools when we come to the place where our young peo­ple who love to play mu­sic and par­tic­u­lar­ly love the steel­pan, can play any song from the lan­guage of the world, which is what mu­sic is. Then we are ready for the world."

Of the steel­band's ef­fort she said, "Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny Mu­sic School in the Com­mu­ni­ty is get­ting ready. They are get­ting all their chil­dren ready for be­ing ready to speak the lan­guage of the world. When this spreads in our com­mu­ni­ty, what we are spread­ing is some­thing that is pos­i­tive."