The old Gospel song says, "Tell me the old, old sto­ry" and the tra­di­tion-bad as it is-con­tin­ues as an­oth­er steel­band is on the streets.Trin­i­ty All Gen­er­a­tions Steel (TAGS) and School of the Arts is an on­go­ing com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­gramme es­tab­lished in 1994, and reg­is­tered as a not-for-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion un­der Trin­i­ty All Gen­er­a­tions Foun­da­tion in 1999.The school of­fers mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion, both the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal, for youth in the Port-of-Spain area and its en­vi­rons, at lit­tle cost. Mem­ber­ship in TAGS is not re­strict­ed in any way.There are no pre-req­ui­sites for en­try, no mem­ber­ship fees or re­quired sub­scrip­tions be­cause of the tar­get pop­u­la­tion that is served. All in­struc­tors/teach­ers/tu­tors al­so op­er­ate on a vol­un­tary ba­sis.Al­though the main catch­ment area is the Port-of-Spain, East Dry Riv­er, Bel­mont, Gon­za­les and Laven­tille area, par­tic­i­pants have come from as far west as Care­nage and as far east as Matu­ra, and, as the name im­plies, en­roll­ment starts as ear­ly as five years of age and ex­tends well in­to adult­hood. TAGS' mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion is sup­ple­ment­ed with in­struc­tion in self-de­vel­op­ment and pos­i­tive men­tal at­ti­tudes.

Along with a fo­cus on prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion on the pan, there is al­so in­struc­tion in pi­ano, drum­ming, gui­tar and dance, all at very lim­it­ed cost to the par­tic­i­pants.The school's suc­cess rate has been ex­tra­or­di­nary thus far. Stu­dents are pre­pared and pre­sent­ed for the the­o­ry ex­am­i­na­tions of the ABRSM (Roy­al Schools of Mu­sic) twice year­ly, and for the prac­ti­cal ex­am­i­na­tions on pan of the De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine each No­vem­ber.The over­all pass rate is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 97 per cent, with about 66 per cent of the pass­es at the Dis­tinc­tion lev­el (90 per cent and over in the­o­ry and 85 per cent and over in prac­ti­cal), and sev­er­al 100 per cent pass­es in both the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal.TAG's lat­est ac­com­plish­ments in­clude a bronze medal in the 2009 Ju­nior Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion, and two gold cham­pi­onships in the 2010 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in the Cham­ber En­sem­ble class and the Ju­nior Pan En­sem­ble class, where TAGS Ju­nior En­sem­ble at­tained a per­fect score-the first time a per­former has ever been award­ed 100 per cent in the his­to­ry of the fes­ti­val.

Since then, TAGS has al­so achieved third place in the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Steel­band Fes­ti­val in 2010, and placed fourth in the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Panora­ma 2011.Since 1994, how­ev­er, the pro­gramme has ex­pand­ed ex­po­nen­tial­ly in num­bers. With­out any sort of pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign, each year many peo­ple come for­ward to ap­ply and reg­is­ter to join TAGS. Al­though the ad­min­is­tra­tion tries to ac­com­mo­date as many as pos­si­ble, there are still sev­er­al who are turned away an­nu­al­ly.The pro­gramme has been a part of the con­gre­ga­tion of Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral for the past 17 years.Sev­er­al of the found­ing mem­bers still func­tion in both ca­pac­i­ties as stu­dents and/or teach­ers in the pro­gramme and ac­tive Trin­i­ty parish­ioners who serve as vestry mem­bers, cho­ris­ters, chal­ice bear­ers and mem­bers of var­i­ous com­mit­tees that serve the church. How­ev­er, some­how a rift has de­vel­oped.

"Our in­stru­ments have been out of the church for al­most sev­en weeks now. We've been seek­ing an ur­gent au­di­ence with the Dean and Vestry to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion, and now we've been told that we have to wait at least an­oth­er month to have the dis­cus­sion."Al­though I think it would be a great loss to the church, maybe it's a sign that it's time to move," said founder and prin­ci­pal, Dr Phae­dra Pierre. For the past month, the group has been prac­tis­ing in the Cathe­dral's car park un­der a tent-what a fa­mil­iar sto­ry.A brief his­to­ry may il­lus­trate the prob­lem. In the late 60s fa­ther John Sewell came to Trinidad and found the steel­band in­vig­o­rat­ing and re­fresh­ing.He could not un­der­stand why it was not in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to reg­u­lar church ac­tiv­i­ties. He start­ed a se­ries of steel­band con­certs in the Cathe­dral Church of the Holy Trin­i­ty.

Lat­er in the 70s Melville Robin, Cathe­dral or­gan­ist and choir mas­ter, plant­ed the seeds of what is now TAGS in its leader Dr Phae­dra Pierre.TAGS came in­to be­ing in 1994, but has nev­er tru­ly been em­braced by the Cathe­dral Church of the Holy Trin­i­ty. Even un­der the stew­ard­ship of the ven­er­a­ble Dean Knol­ly Clarke, a num­ber of in­ci­dents reared their ug­ly heads.To­day, these have been mag­ni­fied, and now un­der the guise of prepa­ra­tion for the con­se­cra­tion of the next An­gli­can Bish­op, TAGS has been un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly thrown out of the church.The chal­lenge for TAGS is to find a suit­able al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tion. This has to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion a place that would be ac­ces­si­ble for its tar­get pop­u­la­tion. The com­mu­ni­ty out­reach na­ture of the pro­gramme has en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pa­tion by in­di­vid­u­als who may not be able to af­ford mu­sic lessons un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances.

The Cathe­dral lo­ca­tion is al­so cen­tral to "dis­ad­van­taged" com­mu­ni­ties which would lim­it trans­port costs of stu­dents.What al­so needs to be con­sid­ered is a build­ing that could ac­com­mo­date the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of the group-the­o­ry, prac­tise on pans, drums, gui­tar and pi­ano, and dance on both an in­di­vid­ual and group ba­sis.This just ac­com­mo­dates cur­rent of­fer­ings, and does not in­clude long term plans to be­gin in­struc­tion in oth­er in­stru­ments and ar­eas of the arts.A let­ter re­quest­ing a vis­it and dis­cus­sions was sent to the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.The on­ly re­sponse has been an ac­knowl­edge­ment of re­ceipt and an in­struc­tion that the let­ter has been for­ward­ed to the Min­istry of Plan­ning. Thus, an­oth­er steel­band is on the streets.