Car­ol Quash

"The hills are alive with the sound of mu­sic," is a fa­mil­iar and en­dear­ing line from the movie The Sound of Mu­sic, and one which Com­mu­ni­ty Work­er Her­bert Sam Desuze wants to be as­so­ci­at­ed with Laven­tille. Desuze is one of the many Laven­til­lians who is work­ing fever­ish­ly to re­store his com­mu­ni­ty to its for­mer glo­ry, by plan­ning a se­ries of events to try to up­lift the im­age of what is now la­belled a "crime hotspot." Ac­cord­ing to Desuze, one of the more im­me­di­ate projects was the re­brand­ing of the Tokyo Youth Or­ches­tra. "We are plan­ning to in­tro­duce con­ven­tion­al in­stru­ments to the band. "In­stead of just hav­ing the steel pan, we want to teach the chil­dren to play things like the gui­tar and the or­gan," Desuze said.

He said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was invit­ing the chil­dren from the com­mu­ni­ty to vis­it the pa­n­yard, which is lo­cat­ed in John John, to dis­cov­er and make use of their tal­ents. "There are chil­dren in Laven­tille who are very tal­ent­ed. Whether it is to sing, dance or play an in­stru­ment, we want the par­ents to part­ner with us and send their chil­dren to the pa­n­yard so we could re­build a strong com­mu­ni­ty." De Suze said a lot of the young peo­ple knew what they want­ed but they just did not know how to go about get­ting it.

"A nor­mal way to pull chil­dren to you is to give them guid­ance. We want them to get on board be­cause we want to see how many chil­dren we can help," he said. Tak­ing a trip down mem­o­ry lane, Desuze said Laven­tille had al­ways been a good com­mu­ni­ty and many promi­nent peo­ple had come out of it. "Leroy Clarke, the mas­ter painter, he came from be­hind the bridge and he found­ed the St Phillips Ex Pupil Sports and Cul­tur­al club. "Mavis John came out of the Laven­tille Prodi­gals pan group. There are good things that came out of Laven­tille."

He re­called 1946, when Win­ston Spree Si­mon played four tunes on a 40 note ping pong, and he high­light­ed the mu­si­cal tal­ents of drum­mer An­drew Bed­doe and tuner An­tho­ny Williams, who he said was cap­tain of the then Pan Am North Stars. With­out hav­ing to think twice, De Suze boast­ed of how the John John com­mu­ni­ty raised funds in 1956 to send sprint­er Michael Agos­ti­ni to Cana­da to com­pete at the Olympics. "We want to high­light that type of love and at­ten­tion for our com­mu­ni­ty and its peo­ple." Desuze said or­gan­i­sa­tion had sev­er­al oth­er projects in the mak­ing, among them par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Laven­tille Steel Band fes­ti­val and the St James Steel­band Fes­ti­val. "We have quite a few things on the draw­ing board," he said.