An­drew Mar­tin

Salah Wil­son is a busy man. Dur­ing the sum­mer of 2015 alone, he is teach­ing a pan sum­mer school in Toron­to, start­ing work on his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion on pan at York Uni­ver­si­ty, get­ting his steel­band ready to com­pete in Toron­to and in Mon­tre­al and–oh yeah–get­ting ready to bring his band, Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my, to com­pete in the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence and Panora­ma as well as giv­ing a talk at the con­fer­ence on pan ed­u­ca­tion work in Cana­da.

Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my may not be well known in Trinidad but, watch out, they are se­ri­ous com­peti­tors. The band has won the Mon­tre­al In­ter­na­tion­al Steel­pan Fes­ti­val com­pe­ti­tion nine times and Toron­to's Pan Alive steel­pan com­pe­ti­tion five times.

Wil­son's tune of choice for the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma is Out­ta de Box and his way of prepar­ing the Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my steel­band for com­pe­ti­tion is equal­ly in­no­v­a­tive. For the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma, Wil­son has as­sem­bled play­ers from Mon­tre­al and Toron­to as well as sup­port from Trinidad to bol­ster the size of Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my steel­band to a ro­bust com­pe­ti­tion-sized steel­band.

The play­ers from Mon­tre­al are or­gan­ised by two of Wil­son's daugh­ters, Miriyam and Fa­ti­ma Wil­son, and the play­ers from Toron­to are stu­dents and col­leagues of Wil­son him­self.The Cana­di­an mem­bers of Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my steel­band will be sup­ple­ment­ed by Trinida­di­an play­ers from Flamin­goes steel­band of St Au­gus­tine–with whom Wil­son has a work­ing re­la­tion­ship.

Wil­son is al­so be­ing sup­port­ed in this ven­ture by Ji­mi Phillip, pan tuner/mu­si­cian of Ch­agua­nas, Re­an­na Ed­wards, a teacher from Princess Town, and Cur­tis Ed­wards of Wit­co Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra.

The process of comb­ing steel­bands works due in no small part to a ful­ly no­tat­ed score of the arrange­ment and mu­si­cal­ly lit­er­ate (no­ta­tion) pan play­ers lead­ing the small­er groups in these four dis­parate lo­ca­tions–the bands will not come to­geth­er as a whole un­til just days be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion.

For Wil­son, the lo­gis­tics of prepar­ing sep­a­rate groups of play­ers in re­mote lo­ca­tions is a chal­lenge and he is look­ing for­ward to show­ing how strong a steel­band can be with on­ly lim­it­ed com­bined re­hearsals.

Wil­son's tune of choice Out­ta de Box is tru­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tive ven­ture as the mu­sic was com­posed by Mark Lo­quan and Seion Gomez, the lyrics are by GB Bal­len­tine, and the song record­ed by ca­lyp­son­ian Shanaqua. Dur­ing the 2015 Panora­ma, Out­ta de Box was per­formed by a num­ber of steel­bands in­clud­ing Har­monites, Val­ley Harps, Tokyo, St Mar­garet's Su­per­stars, La Har­quet­ta Pan Groove, Pan­de­mo­ni­um, and Nu­tones.

Salah Wil­son grew up in St John Vil­lage in St Au­gus­tine, Trinidad, and was raised in and around the Flamin­goes Steel Or­ches­tra pa­n­yard. Like so many of his gen­er­a­tion from the area near St John's Vil­lage, Wil­son and his wife em­i­grat­ed to Mon­tre­al in 1973.

Once in Cana­da, Wil­son left Trinidad but he did not leave pan and he im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed per­form­ing in what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion he could drum up. In 1991, he start­ed the first pan in the schools pro­gramme in Mon­tre­al and in 1997 Wil­son ex­pand­ed his school pro­grammes by start­ing the first pan acad­e­my in Cana­da called Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my.

For Wil­son, pan is a fam­i­ly af­fair–fam­i­ly first a favourite mot­to–and he taught his chil­dren to play pan. The ap­ple does not, as they say, fall far from the tree and now sev­er­al of Wil­son's chil­dren are in­volved in Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my as in­struc­tors.In par­tic­u­lar, two of Wil­son's daugh­ters (Miriyam and Fa­ti­ma) have tak­en over the day to day op­er­a­tions of Salah's Steel­pan Acad­e­my as he re­turned to grad­u­ate school in pur­suit of a ter­mi­nal de­gree.

His con­sid­er­able per­form­ing prowess and steel­pan acad­e­my aside, ed­u­ca­tion and mu­sic lit­er­a­cy have al­ways been a cen­tral theme for Wil­son. In 2013, he earned a mas­ters de­gree in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy mu­sic, with a the­sis ex­am­in­ing steel­pan de­vel­op­ment in Mon­tre­al and Toron­to, and he is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing his doc­tor­ate in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy.

Wil­son pub­lished his first book Steel­pan Play­ing With The­o­ry in 1999 and the work has since been trans­lat­ed in­to French. He has since writ­ten five oth­er tu­to­ri­als on the sub­ject of pan, steel­band, and mu­sic the­o­ry.Wil­son has al­so re­leased sev­er­al al­bum record­ings in­clud­ing a hol­i­day so­lo record, an al­bum fea­tur­ing the Wil­son fam­i­ly steel­band, and two al­bums fea­tur­ing com­mu­ni­ty steel­bands from Cana­da.

De­spite liv­ing in Cana­da for the bet­ter part of four decades, Wil­son's heart nev­er left Trinidad and he has re­turned on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions for Car­ni­val and played with many lead­ing steel­bands in­clud­ing Wit­co Des­per­a­dos, Star­lift Steel Or­ches­tra, and Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra.

Wil­son's most re­cent labour of love, how­ev­er, is the re­vival of the Flamin­goes Steel Or­ches­tra. Af­ter Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra split off from the Flamin­goes Steel Or­ches­tra in 1980 the lat­ter band de­clined over the years and by 2007 it was a shell of its old self.

Wil­son be­come in­volved again with the band in 2009 and his has since arranged for the band in sev­er­al suc­cess­ful sea­sons of com­pe­ti­tion. As Wil­son notes, "If at any time the old African say­ing that "It takes a vil­lage to raise a child" has a mean­ing, it is now. Flamin­goes is that child and it sure­ly needs the vil­lage to par­tic­i­pate again."

Re­viv­ing a com­mu­ni­ty band has been a chal­lenge, yet Wil­son, like he has done in Cana­da, has pressed on, or­gan­is­ing mu­sic lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes for the band mem­ber­ship–both the youth and se­nior mem­bers.

Wil­son sees his work as an at­tempt at vil­lage-wide com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment with the hope that St John Vil­lage can once again be proud of their steel­band and it, in turn, can as­sist in stop­ping the spread of crime and bad el­e­ments in so­ci­ety, as he has been do­ing in Cana­da. He is work­ing hard to build mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion around pan in both Toron­to and Mon­tre­al.

At the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma, the pub­lic will have a chance to taste the cul­ti­vat­ed fruits of yet an­oth­er re­turn­ing son.

Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. Dr An­drew Mar­tin is an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, per­cus­sion­ist, pan play­er, and Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at In­ver Hills Col­lege in St Paul, Min­neso­ta.