David Cuffy

Gold­en Hands, a group of young vi­brant steel­pan mu­si­cians based in San Fer­nan­do, is cel­e­brat­ing its 21st an­niver­sary with the stag­ing of I Am Pan: The Na­tion­al Steel­pan Pageant, at the Sun­dar­lal Bo­ho­ra The­atre of the South­ern Acad­e­my for The Per­form­ing Arts, on Oc­to­ber 5, from 7.30 pm. The event, an ini­tia­tive of the young ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of Gold­en Hands, will ex­pose the in­nate mu­si­cal tal­ent of 12 steel pan play­ers, aged be­tween 16 to 25, who al­so have been pro­vid­ed with de­vel­op­men­tal tools de­signed to thrust them for­ward on their route to self-ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion.The par­tic­i­pants are the suc­cess­ful qual­i­fiers from au­di­tions for the Pageant held at the Na­pari­ma Girls' High School on Sep­tem­ber 6, in which the cri­te­ria was based on three com­po­nents: so­lo steel­pan per­for­mance, im­promp­tu im­pro­vi­sa­tion, and an I Am Pan pre­sen­ta­tion.

The par­tic­i­pat­ing pan­nists and their in­stru­ments of choice are: Lat­i­fah Sky De­Coteau, dou­ble tenor; Cathy-Ann Joseph, dou­ble sec­onds; Ion­naire Joseph, tenor; Ler­shaun De Ver­teuil, tenor; Jorder Lewis, four cel­lo; Joshua Gloud, dou­ble tenor; Ke­ston George, tenor; Keon James, tenor; Desree Seecha­ran, tenor; Cheriese Pierre, tenor; Sachelle Thomas, tenor; and Ma­likha Bish­op, tenor.

Fran­ka Hills-Headley, the or­gan­i­sa­tion's founder and di­rec­tor, in speak­ing of the event said: "It has been ob­served that not enough young peo­ple are lis­ten­ing to young pan­nists, so the Pan Pageant was de­signed to en­gage young peo­ple not on­ly in form­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the pan but in their over­all hu­man de­vel­op­ment."

Hills-Headley, act­ing vice-prin­ci­pal of San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary School and an ad­vanced lev­el Bi­ol­o­gy teacher, in­sti­tut­ed the Gold­en Hands' cur­ricu­lum. The main in­ten­tion was to de­vise a teach­ing mod­el that would es­tab­lish the steel­pan as a bona fide mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, and val­i­date our in­dige­nous mu­sic cul­ture."The val­ue of the steel­pan, the na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment of T&T, in the en­rich­ment of the youth­ful as­pect of our hu­man cap­i­tal is yet to be ful­ly ex­ploit­ed," she said."Young steel pan play­ers are some of our most gift­ed and tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians, yet they are among the most at-risk, as a group, in the fur­ther­ance of their mu­si­cal as­pi­ra­tions. Many are con­strained by lack of op­por­tu­ni­ties, fi­nances and the so­cial per­cep­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment."

Gold­en Hands is a reg­is­tered non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion. Us­ing mu­sic the­o­ry and per­for­mance prac­tice, the steel­pan has been used suc­cess­ful­ly in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the la­tent mu­si­cal tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty of hun­dreds of young per­sons aged three and up. All of these stu­dents have been re­quired to sit the UWI Steel­pan So­lo Per­for­mance Ex­am­i­na­tions (Pre­lim­i­nary-Grade VI­II) as well as the­o­ry of mu­sic ex­am­i­na­tions of British mu­sic col­leges, while main­tain­ing high aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards. Some of these stu­dents have pur­sued mu­sic at sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els.

In ad­di­tion, the cur­ricu­lum has en­gaged young peo­ple in so­cial and cre­ative ac­tiv­i­ties. They are al­so pro­vid­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op non-aca­d­e­m­ic skills, from weld­ing of steel­pan racks to de­sign and cre­ationA sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Gold­en Hands' en­ter­prise has been in the realm of mu­si­cal pro­duc­tions. From its in­cep­tion, the first of these The Ad­ven­ture Be­gins (1994), was staged at the band's fa­cil­i­ty–The Gold­en Hands Back­yard, al­so home of its founder/di­rec­tor. This pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the young steel­pan­nists to be in­volved in all as­pects of a stage pro­duc­tion. Col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er mu­si­cal en­ti­ties, such as the Na­pari­ma Girls' High School and Court Street Cham­ber En­sem­ble, Em­ba­cadre Trav­ellers and oth­ers, were a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion. The most sig­nif­i­cant al­liance emerged in 2007, out of a re­quest by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) for Gold­en Hands to per­form.

Hills- Headley, then a part­time lec­tur­er at the UWI Cre­ative Arts De­part­ment, au­thored the first steel­pan mu­si­cal of its kind, The Rain­mak­ers. This was staged by Gold­en Hands and fea­tured the mu­sic of Dr Jean­nine Re­my as well as the per­for­mance of the UWI Per­cus­sion En­sem­ble. Af­ter re­ceiv­ing a stand­ing ova­tion at UWI's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, the pro­duc­tion was staged, in 2008, in Austin, Texas, at The Per­cus­sive Arts In­ter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion. Next Sun­day's event is not con­fig­ured as a fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ty. Gold­en Hands has en­gaged the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in a cel­e­bra­tion and sup­port of the young steel­pan stars. To that end the or­gan­i­sa­tion has un­der­tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant part of the spon­sor­ship of the event and has co-opt­ed the as­sis­tance of many who have been its friends over the past 21 years. Most of these com­mu­ni­ty stake-hold­ers have been asked for ser­vice con­tri­bu­tions. Prizes for par­tic­i­pants will not be cash. They will be valu­ables that all pro­fes­sion­al mu­si­cians would de­sire.