David Cuffy

Per­form­ing in 20 ma­jor cities in 21 days. That is the hec­tic sched­ule for the up­com­ing tour of Japan by reign­ing World Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val and four-time Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on–Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra.

"We have done this be­fore but it is a re­al­ly huge un­der­tak­ing," con­ced­ed Ex­o­dus man­ag­er Ainsworth Mo­hammed, re­fer­ring to pre­vi­ous tours to Japan on which the or­ches­tra played in as many as 35 cities do­ing con­sec­u­tive con­firmed full-length con­certs at a va­ri­ety of venues.

Trav­el in­side Japan will in­volve move­ment of play­ers and in­stru­ments over thou­sands of kilo­me­tres, from Os­a­ka in the south to Sap­poro in the Hokkai­do pre­fec­ture (in the Sea of Okhot­sk); of­fer­ing ac­cess to pan mu­sic to a broad cross-sec­tion of the coun­try's 127 mil­lion in­hab­i­tants.

The band leaves Trinidad on Au­gust 31 and re­turns on Oc­to­ber 9, two days of that pe­ri­od set aside for trav­el to and from Tokyo, the city in which Ex­o­dus will per­form its fi­nal two con­certs im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore leav­ing Japan to re­turn home.

The tour cal­en­dar shows the Ex­o­dus con­tin­gent play­ing two-hour con­certs in pres­ti­gious mu­sic halls of Sendai, Hakodote, Asahikawa, Sap­poro, Muro­ran, Takao­ka, Kouchi, Nagoya, Fukuya­ma, Os­a­ka, Nobeo­ka, Ka­maku­ra, Kobe, Kawasa­ki and Narashino.

And for the Tu­na­puna-based or­ches­tra, which al­so has the Caribbean Panora­ma ti­tle un­der its belt, there is no rest be­tween now and de­par­ture time, as mem­bers are re­hears­ing dai­ly at its pan the­atre on the East­ern Main Road, St Au­gus­tine.

Work­ing un­der the aegis of the cel­e­brat­ed Min-On Con­cert As­so­ci­a­tion, through an on­go­ing link with Japan­ese mu­sic pro­duc­er Yoichi Watan­abe (record­ing en­gi­neer/mu­sic tech­nol­o­gy in­struc­tor at the Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, UTT), Ex­o­dus will ben­e­fit from ex­pert show or­gan­i­sa­tion, which in­volves tremen­dous lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges; some venues be­ing up to 500 kilo­me­tres away from the one played on the pre­vi­ous night.

None of that is new to Min(shu)-On(gaku), whose name lit­er­al­ly means "the peo­ple's mu­sic," which has or­gan­ised cul­tur­al ex­changes with more than 90 coun­tries since it was launched in 1963, its core mis­sion one built on the hope that the pow­er of the mu­si­cal arts can tran­scend cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and unite peo­ple through shared emo­tion; cre­at­ing an ever-ex­pand­ing cir­cle of friend­ship.

"We ful­ly un­der­stand the se­ri­ous­ness of this project," Mo­hammed said. "This is not one of those hasti­ly put to­geth­er jun­kets where prob­lems are like­ly to arise. The sense of or­gan­i­sa­tion is over­whelm­ing at every turn. Down to the ac­tu­al time at which we ar­rive at the var­i­ous venues and de­tails like when in­ter­mis­sion will be tak­en is in­for­ma­tion that has al­ready been sup­plied to us."

Each con­cert is pre­cise­ly two hours of mu­sic, in which the band will in­clude six Japan­ese songs–Yasashi sa ni, Tsut­sumare­ta nara, Koi su­ru for­tune cook­ie, Ari­ga­to, Hana wa saku, Otoko Wa Tsuari Yo, and Ano Sub­rarashi I Wo Moulchi­do–in its reper­toire.

The full Ex­o­dus reper­toire, be­ing pre­pared by house-arranger Pel­ham God­dard, in­cludes sev­er­al re­quests from the Japan­ese pro­duc­ers. On tap are se­lec­tions from the mu­sic cat­a­logues of Paul Si­mon, Bar­ry White, George Ben­son, John Lennon, Phar­rell Williams, An­tho­ny Prospect, David Rud­der, Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts), Baron (Tim­o­thy Watkins), and Machel Mon­tano and Dru­patee.

Vo­cal­ist with the or­ches­tra Na­tal­ie Yorke will give voice to two spe­cial­ly learned Japan­ese se­lec­tions, while shar­ing du­ties of show hosts in the Japan­ese lan­guage will be four mem­bers of the ag­gre­ga­tion.

"Apart from prepar­ing the mu­sic, what we al­ways have to con­cen­trate on is the psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenge of match­ing the leg­endary Japan­ese ef­fi­cien­cy with our own readi­ness to re­spond," Mo­hammed said. "Hap­pi­ly, our band mem­bers have done this hec­tic and gru­elling cir­cuit-work be­fore, so the pres­sure in that re­gard is re­duced."

Mu­si­cal in­stru­ments have been in Japan since Ju­ly, but mem­bers have been re­hears­ing and putting it to­geth­er at the pa­n­yard for the past two months to en­sure the band gives high­ly pro­fes­sion­al per­for­mances in all 20 cities.

"Our mis­sion is to leave an im­pres­sion of T&T in gen­er­al and pan mu­sic in par­tic­u­lar that will serve as a mar­ket­ing piece on both counts and hope­ful­ly pave the way for oth­er acts from our coun­try to en­joy this lev­el of or­gan­i­sa­tion and hos­pi­tal­i­ty," Mo­hammed said.

He said he in­tends to in­vite the Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism to trav­el to Tokyo to at­tend one of the con­certs in or­der to gain a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what the steel­band is do­ing to pro­mote T&T.

When the band re­turns home, Mo­hammed is plan­ning to stage the same con­cert, and will be invit­ing the Japan­ese Em­bassy and rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment min­istries to be­come part­ners of the event.