Pe­ter Ray Blood

Aki­no­la Sen­non is a mul­ti­tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian. He plays the cu­a­tro, gui­tar, pi­ano and steel­pan, com­pos­es and arranges pan mu­sic, and is the ex­ec­u­tive/mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of Del­tones In­sti­tute of Steel Drums and Mu­sic. Sen­non will be re­leas­ing a new al­bum called Cousoumeh in­ter­na­tion­al­ly on Au­gust 26, at Rope a Dope Records, based in New Jer­sey, USA. The al­bum will have its lo­cal re­lease on Re­pub­lic Day at the home of Siparia Del­tones, lo­cat­ed at Rail­way Road, Siparia.

Sen­non is de­ter­mined to make our na­tion­al in­stru­ment evolve glob­al­ly. Many will re­mem­ber the 2013 crit­i­cal­ly-ac­claimed al­bum–From Siparia to Sowe­to–which was a steel or­ches­tra and trum­pet col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Siparia Del­tones and world-renowned South African mu­si­cian Hugh Masekela, the trum­peter, flugel­hor­nist and com­pos­er. Sen­non was project co-or­di­na­tor and steel­pan soloist on that al­bum.

Sen­non's new al­bum, Cousoumeh, has di­verse in­flu­ences from African, In­di­an, Latin drum­ming, chant­i­ng, spo­ken word, choir, folk and French.

So it seems Aki­no­la Sen­non is poised to be one of this coun­try's bright lights on the mu­sic scene.

Mu­si­cal child prodi­gy

Born on May 2, 1984, as the third child to An­drew and Va­lerie Sen­non, he spent his child­hood years in Quinam Road, Siparia. Sen­non was some­thing of a child prodi­gy and be­gan at­tend­ing the Joseph School of the Arts in 1991, from age sev­en, learn­ing to play the cu­a­tro and study­ing the the­o­ry of mu­sic.

"I then moved on to play­ing two oth­er in­stru­ments, the gui­tar and the pi­ano at the mu­sic school in Siparia, un­der the tute­lage of Ash­ford Joseph," said 32-year-old Sen­non. "By age ten, I was ar­rang­ing mu­si­cal com­po­si­tions for my sib­lings and per­formed at our school con­certs and recitals."

"I start­ed play­ing the steel­pan in Stan­dard Three with Roland 'Moose' Joseph and at that point, I fell deeply in love with the in­stru­ment. Dur­ing this time, I al­so played the gui­tar with the school and church choir.

"Miss Valdez, our school choir mis­tress, was quite a huge in­flu­ence in de­vel­op­ing my mu­si­cal abil­i­ty. Mr Joseph nur­tured my tal­ent dur­ing that ear­ly pe­ri­od by tak­ing us to many com­pe­ti­tions and ex­pos­ing us to the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty. I re­mem­ber him tak­ing me to Pan Trin­ba­go's An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ings and in­tro­duc­ing me to var­i­ous im­por­tant peo­ple in the steel­band world."

Sen­non joined Siparia Del­tones in 1996 for the Panora­ma sea­son and al­so the stage side. He said:

"It was there that I met Carl­ton 'Zan­da' Alexan­der–Des­per­a­does arranger. I vivid­ly re­mem­ber him ask­ing me one day, 'Young man, do you know your scales?' To which I an­swered: 'Yes'. He then in­struct­ed me, 'Play me this scale', which I did. He then replied, 'Okay, well, do you know your chord scales?' I again an­swered: 'Yes.' He in­struct­ed, 'Well play me this chord scale.' I played the scale and he then re­quest­ed me to play him the same chord scale from the sec­ond in­ver­sion and that was where the trou­ble start­ed. That was the be­gin­ning of a 17-year-old–and count­ing–re­la­tion­ship. I have been his un­der­study since then."

Play­ing for Coal Pot Band

Sen­non was in­duct­ed as a mem­ber of the Coal Pot Band led by Alexan­der. This band was ba­si­cal­ly a kaiso/jazz fu­sion en­sem­ble with horns, vo­cals, pi­ano, bass gui­tar and steel­pan.

He re­called: "We per­formed ex­ten­sive­ly at all the lead­ing jazz and fu­sion shows through the na­tion, in­clud­ing To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val, San Fer­nan­do Jazz Fes­ti­val, Sanch Apri Car­ni­val, Siparia Jazz Fes­ti­val, Point Jazz Fes­ti­val and many more. At age 18, I al­so be­gan play­ing with Clive Alexan­der, Carl­ton's old­er broth­er.

This was al­so quite an ex­pe­ri­ence and has sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to my over­all de­vel­op­ment, es­pe­cial­ly our week­ly per­for­mances at the Sach­mo's Jazz club on Ari­api­ta Av­enue for a num­ber of months."

In 2003, Sen­non be­came the cap­tain of Siparia Del­tones' ju­nior band. He lat­er be­came cap­tain of the se­nior band. He has al­so worked with the Na­tion­al Steel Sym­pho­ny Or­ches­tra for one year, and the Pan in the Class­room Unit, as well as teach­ing at For­est Re­serve An­gli­can School, Fyz­abad Pres­by­ter­ian School, Iere High school, Pa­lo Seco Gov­ern­ment School and Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prepara­to­ry School.

This gift­ed and mul­ti-tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian con­tin­ues to work in the area of steel pan de­vel­op­ment, ar­rang­ing and mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion. He de­signed the syl­labus and course struc­ture for Siparia Del­tones, and in 2009, he and the band did pan work­shops through­out Cana­da to help pro­mote the steel­pan there.

Be­side be­ing a steel­band arranger, Sen­non al­so com­pos­es mu­sic. He said: "As an arranger, I have com­posed for the South­ern Marines Steel­band Foun­da­tion plac­ing third in the Small Band Cat­e­go­ry of the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion of 2010. I have won the Pri­ma­ry School cat­e­go­ry of the San­fest Com­pe­ti­tion for four years in a row from 2010; three times with For­est Re­serve An­gli­can School and one year with Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prepara­to­ry School of which I am their mu­si­cal di­rec­tor. I have al­so won the Pan for Blue Com­pe­ti­tion with For­est Re­serve An­gli­can School in 2013."

Am­s­ter­dam Jazz work­shop

Ear­li­er this year, Sen­non trav­elled to the Nether­lands to par­tic­i­pate in the Am­s­ter­dam Con­ser­va­to­ri­um Van Sum­mer Jazz Work­shop, be­com­ing the first pan play­er to be ac­cept­ed to be part of the pres­tige work­shop.

The in­flu­ence of that work­shop is what led to the cur­rent new al­bum Cousoumeh. Sen­non ex­plained:

"The in­flu­ence to record this al­bum came about as a re­sult of the over­whelm­ing re­sponse I re­ceived at the Sum­mer Jazz Work­shop at the Am­s­ter­dam Con­ser­va­to­ry Of Mu­sic, Nether­lands. Whilst there, I did many per­for­mances that dis­played a high lev­el of crafts­man­ship and im­pro­vi­sa­tion­al skills that were of a cer­tain stan­dard. Af­ter per­for­mances, I was ap­proached by many with ques­tions such as: 'How many al­bums do you have?', 'Where next in the world would you be per­form­ing?' or an oc­ca­sion­al: 'What class do you teach at the con­ser­va­to­ry?' This cer­tain­ly in­spired me to get to work as soon as I got back home."

On his re­turn home, Sen­non sur­round­ed him­self with a team of young mu­si­cians from the In­sti­tute and work com­menced right away on tak­ing the mu­sic and In­sti­tute fur­ther.

He said: "It is George Cae­sar, the In­sti­tute's head in­struc­tor, who came up with the idea that the Cousoumeh al­bum should tell a sto­ry of a man, an in­stru­ment, a peo­ple and of a land. It was there the idea 'Cousoumeh' was born."

Sen­non flew to Boston to record the first ses­sion of the al­bum and this el­e­ment took the form of a cul­tur­al ex­change with stu­dents of the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­to­ry and Berklee's Col­lege of Mu­sic. For an en­tire week he screened stu­dents to get the right mu­si­cian­ship to fit the script.

About this project, Sen­non said: "We learnt that in the ear­ly bee­bop era, pi­o­neers like The­olo­nius Monk spoke of lis­ten­ing to a lot of kaiso on the ra­dio whilst grow­ing up, and this cer­tain­ly in­flu­enced his style.

"There­fore, we clear­ly see that the in­te­gra­tion which took place be­tween Trinida­di­ans and Amer­i­cans was con­sid­er­ably in­flu­en­tial in its mu­sic de­vel­op­ment, mak­ing this cul­tur­al ex­change by no means an im­po­si­tion."

Af­ter an in­tense three-week pro­gramme, the group went in­to PBS stu­dio in Boston and record­ed.

Sen­non then re­turned to Trinidad and hooked up again with the In­sti­tute's team, com­pris­ing George Cae­sar (head in­struc­tor who was the project's main pro­duc­er); Ian Cae­sar (main writer, spo­ken word artiste); Jesse Coop­er; Dar­ri­ann Twitts; Al­pha Sen­non; and La­toya Gar­den­er. The group worked for ten weeks, some­times do­ing 24-hour shifts on the mu­sic.

Sen­non said: "To tell the sto­ry of a peo­ple, we need to ob­serve the rich her­itage of the peo­ple of our in­de­pen­dent land. We need to ob­serve the in­ter­de­pen­den­cy that had de­vel­oped amongst the peo­ple; an in­ter­de­pen­den­cy that paved the way to In­de­pen­dence and an in­ter­de­pen­den­cy that wasn't pos­si­ble if the peo­ple didn't first 'cousoumeh'.

The con­cept of Cousoumeh is all there on the al­bum, in­clu­sive of African, In­di­an and Latin drum­ming, chant­i­ng, spo­ken word, choir, folk, French in­fuences–the en­tire amal­ga­ma­tion.

Cousoumeh was fi­nal­ly mixed and mas­tered in Los An­ge­les and is in­tend­ed to com­mem­o­rate our In­de­pen­dence with its re­lease.