Michelle Loubon

Michael Jack­son con­nois­seurs have been lap­ping up his hits like Thriller, Beat It, Dirty Di­ana and Man In The Mir­ror on CDs and DVDs. For the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ties will get a taste of the late King of Pop's reper­toire at the Pan In The Com­mu­ni­ty se­ries which was launched yes­ter­day.

Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Patrick Arnold said, "Steel­bands have been asked to play one of his songs in a med­ley...It is a trib­ute to Michael Jack­son." The world mourned Jack­son af­ter he suc­cumbed to car­diac ar­rest on June 25.

Arnold was joined by Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc Don­ald and the min­istry's par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary at the launch which took place at the Com­mu­ni­ty Ed­u­ca­tion In­for­ma­tion Train­ing and Re­source Cen­tre, La Fan­tasie Road, St Ann's.

Both Mc Don­ald and Re­grel­lo fo­cused on the im­por­tance of get­ting the youth in­volved in pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ties like the steel­band–T&T's na­tion­al in­stru­ment. They al­so tout­ed the ben­e­fits of bring­ing com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er via pan en­gage­ments. Re­grel­lo, who was laud­ed as the "brain" be­hind the pro­gramme said: "The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple play­ing pan are un­der 18...It is im­por­tant as a ve­hi­cle for so­cial change."

Mc Don­ald said: "With the grow­ing at­trac­tion of the youth, in par­tic­u­lar, to oth­er forms of mu­sic, there has been a marked de­cline in in­ter­est for steel­pan mu­sic. "This de­cline has to be ar­rest­ed if we are to safe­guard our im­age at the pin­na­cle of steel­pan mu­sic world­wide," she said. "The steel­pan con­certs are there­fore ex­pect­ed to stim­u­late a greater in­ter­est in our na­tion­al in­stru­ment."

Touch­ing on the ben­e­fits for rur­al com­mu­nites, Mc Don­ald said: "Steel­pan mu­sic came out of the bow­els of the com­mu­ni­ty (Laven­tille) and has brought pride and joy to our na­tion. "The con­certs will at­tract mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ties many of whom will be wit­ness­ing live per­for­mances by top steel­bands for the first time," she added.

About the project

It is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Pan Trin­ba­go. The pro­gramme which costs about $100,000 takes the form of a se­ries of steel­band con­certs in com­mu­ni­ties like Rio Claro, To­co, San­gre Grande, Bar­rack­pore and the rur­al ar­eas of To­ba­go.

The con­certs would be held on week­ends and fea­ture three steel­bands from dif­fer­ent re­gions, in­clud­ing high pro­file steel or­ches­tras.

The con­certs have been de­signed to rekin­dle the in­ter­est in steel­band mu­sic, ex­pose rur­al and dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties to live mu­sic of high pro­file steel­bands, pro­mote ca­ma­raderie among steel­bands and pro­mote do­mes­tic tourism. Res­i­dents of the host re­gion could al­so cap­i­talise on in­come earn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties through the sale of re­fresh­ments, craft and lo­cal prod­ucts like preser­v­a­tives and home made pep­per sauce.

To date, pan­nists like Len Boogsie Sharpe and Earl Brooks have per­formed in con­cert halls glob­al­ly. UWI Prof David Copeland, hold­er of the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and his team have in­vent­ed the G pan. The se­ries pre­mieres on Ju­ly 18 at San Fer­nan­do and fea­tures Des­per­a­does, Fon­claire, In­vaders and Skif­fle Bunch.