Gillian Moore

Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion has been pound­ing out the beat of T&T mu­sic and cul­ture for some 23 years. Now they're at the heart of a new mu­si­cal ini­tia­tive that's ready to share their sound with the world.

Au­di­ences have been pos­sessed by the band's in­stru­ments, from the mighty, boom­ing "djun-djuns" to the tas­sa, djem­be and blis­ter­ing irons. The group has been a main­stay in all sorts of cul­tur­al events, at home and away.

Now, In­digisounds and pro­duc­tion team Jus Now have teamed up with the per­cus­sion pow­er­house to cre­ate the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion Sam­ple Li­brary, a dig­i­tal prod­uct that puts the sounds of their in­stru­ments at the fin­ger­tips of mu­sic pro­duc­ers.

At the launch, which took place on March 4, at the Big Black Box on Mur­ray Street in Wood­brook, the project part­ners told guests all about it.Pan­man Jo­hann Chucka­ree of In­digisounds wel­comed guests and ex­pressed plea­sure at be­ing part of the ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive. He said the soft­ware com­pa­ny was the first to cre­ate a dig­i­tal pan li­brary. The new prod­uct is an­oth­er first.

In­digisounds' cre­ator, en­gi­neer David Chow said the project was four years in the mak­ing and took many hours of stu­dio work to per­fect.Mu­si­cian and Jus Now pro­duc­er Ke­shav Chan­dra­dath Singh (aka LAZ­Abeam) salut­ed the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion for keep­ing alive "the drums of our an­ces­tors."

He said he had been "cap­ti­vat­ed and in­flu­enced" by their sound, which he called "the back­bone of the rhythm of T&T."He said the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion Sam­ple Li­brary was an in­vest­ment in T&T's cul­ture, "a feath­er in our cap; a lo­cal prod­uct we can be proud of."

The band's leader Trevor Mc­Don­ald said he was very pleased with the band's in­volve­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the new dig­i­tal tool, the fruit of com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion.

"When you start from hum­ble be­gin­nings, you learn to ap­pre­ci­ate big things. When small things grow in­to big things," he said, "it's that much sweet­er!"He said he wished to ex­press "the ap­pre­ci­a­tion we feel as a band for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate an­oth­er step­ping stone" for lo­cal cul­ture and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.

He said the achieve­ment was "not just suc­cess for the band but the whole Laven­tille com­mu­ni­ty."

Japan­ese-born Yoichi Watan­abe, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of mu­sic tech­nol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), was re­spon­si­ble for record­ing the dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments and cap­tur­ing their sig­na­ture sound.

Pro­duc­er and en­gi­neer Mar­tin "Mice" Ray­mond, al­so of UTT, said he had tried the prod­uct and rec­om­mend­ed it high­ly: "I en­cour­age every pro­duc­er in T&T to buy a copy."

More in­fo

The Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion Sam­ple Li­brary is avail­able for pur­chase on­line on Kon­takt for US$99, and is al­so avail­able for $650 at CET at Mar­itime Plaza in Barataria.