Kali­fa Clyne

The MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy has launched a mu­si­cal cur­ricu­lum for trainees, which could see them learn­ing mu­sic lit­er­a­cy and re­ceiv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The pro­gramme, dubbed Hype Mu­sic, was launched at MIC's main of­fice at the O'Meara In­dus­tri­al Es­tate yes­ter­day, as the school of­fi­cial­ly opened its mu­sic room.

The Hype Mu­sic syl­labus al­lows trainees to pur­sue up to grade five in the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal el­e­ments of mu­sic, which would then be cer­ti­fied by the As­so­ci­at­ed Board of the Roy­al Schools of Mu­sic ex­ams out of Lon­don.

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az, who spoke at the event, com­mend­ed the board but added that pan-tun­ing pro­grammes need­ed to be ac­cred­it­ed.

"We need the de­gree in pan tun­ing," he said.

Di­az said the coun­try should not be left be­hind in ed­u­ca­tion about pan, when it cre­at­ed the in­stru­ment.

"There are 500 schools in the Unit­ed States which have a pan pro­gramme. We can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue on the road we are go­ing."

He called on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to con­tin­ue ed­u­ca­tion on the steel­pan in schools de­spite com­plaints about fund­ing.

"I know it is dif­fi­cult. I look close­ly at the fund­ing al­lo­ca­tions but pan as­sists to open the mind for ed­u­ca­tion.

"Chil­dren deal­ing with pan in schools are do­ing bet­ter aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly."

Di­az said he of­ten got calls from for­eign uni­ver­si­ties re­quest­ing tu­tors and train­ers on the in­stru­ment but could not rec­om­mend many peo­ple be­cause they did not have their de­grees in mu­sic.

Se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Jes­sel Mur­ray, told Di­az that UWI of­fers a de­gree in mu­si­cal arts.

"Our goal was to ed­u­cate and make pan play­ers lit­er­ate," Mur­ray said.

He said long ago, in steel­bands there was no lit­er­a­cy train­ing and pan play­ers nev­er learned how to read mu­sic.

"What hap­pened is that peo­ple could not play in­de­pen­dent­ly of the bands be­cause they did not know how to read the mu­sic, and af­ter Car­ni­val the arrange­ments were dis­card­ed."

Mur­ray said it was through mu­sic lit­er­a­cy that pieces of lo­cal cul­ture could be saved for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.