An­drew Mar­tin

The mu­sic of the steel­band is alive and well in the Amer­i­can state of Vir­ginia with the en­er­getic youth or­ches­tra, Mo­sa­ic Steel­band, led by Dr An­tho­ny Hai­ley. Mo­sa­ic, one of the bands that com­pet­ed in the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma in Au­gust in Port-of-Spain, is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that of­fers af­ter-school youth de­vel­op­ment steel­pan pro­grammes in Nor­folk, Vir­ginia and sev­er­al sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion is based in the Cris­pus At­tucks Cul­tur­al Cen­ter, a his­toric black the­atre where the stage side is based. They al­so have a ju­nior group for pri­ma­ry stu­dents, an adult group and a se­nior group.

At the com­pe­ti­tion in Au­gust, they brought smiles to many at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah with their en­thu­si­asm and their dis­tinc­tive racks fes­tooned with Unit­ed States flags. They per­formed the clas­sic win­ning arrange­ment of De Fos­to's Pan in a Rage that Jit Sama­roo orig­i­nal­ly arranged for Rene­gades in 1996.

While Hai­ley was in Trinidad, he gave a talk at the In­ter­na­tion­al Pan Con­fer­ence (ICP) on the pos­i­tive as­pects of pan in youth de­vel­op­ment. Mo­sa­ic has a num­ber of on­go­ing pro­grammes, set to ex­pand in the new year, with a fo­cus on un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties in their re­gion.

As Hai­ley not­ed in his talk at the ICP, when you teach pan to teenagers who are of­ten go­ing through stress­ful times in their lives–es­pe­cial­ly those in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties–there's a proven pos­i­tive ef­fect. They learn to fo­cus, to break down a com­plex task in­to con­stituent parts, to build their mem­o­ry, to work to­geth­er and to feel a strong sense of ac­com­plish­ment and self-worth, of­ten re­flect­ed in bet­ter class­room per­for­mance.

Hai­ley, orig­i­nal­ly from North Car­oli­na, is al­so a pro­fes­sor of mu­sic at Tide­wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and will be start­ing a steel­pan en­sem­ble there in the spring in ad­di­tion to his work with Mo­sa­ic. Hai­ley first heard pan at col­lege at East Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty where he joined the uni­ver­si­ty steel­band, where his fas­ci­na­tion with pan blos­somed. He went on to grad­u­ate school at West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he met pan pi­o­neer El­lie Man­nette.

Hai­ley got his doc­tor­ate in world per­cus­sion in 2005 and since then, he has been teach­ing pan and per­cus­sion with a spe­cial in­ter­est in African per­cus­sion. He has re­searched the top­ic in both Ghana and Nige­ria and has used Ewe drums from Ghana in the steel­band per­for­mance.

Tak­ing Mo­sa­ic to T&T was a dream come true for Hai­ley. He went to Trinidad for Car­ni­val sev­er­al years ago and played for Skif­fle, Star­lift and Rene­gades. When he first heard about the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pan and the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma, he want­ed to at­tend.

"I had been (to Trinidad) and want­ed my stu­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence it. I want­ed to take my en­sem­ble," he said.

Hai­ley ob­tained ini­tial sup­port from the US Em­bassy in Trinidad for the band to make the trip. He not­ed that this Em­bassy sup­port was key, as it gave the band's mem­bers the im­pe­tus to start se­ri­ous lo­cal fund-rais­ing–hold­ing events, seek­ing grants and find­ing donors.

In ad­di­tion to the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 mem­bers of the Mo­sa­ic stage side, Hai­ley got an­oth­er batch of his for­mer stu­dents, who loved pan, to join the band. Mo­sa­ic al­so hooked up US Vir­gin Is­lands youth steel­band Ris­ing Stars, whose di­rec­tor Hen­ry Pot­ter al­so want­ed to take stu­dents to the In­ter­na­tion­al Panora­ma. For the com­pe­ti­tion, mem­bers of their host steel­band, San­gre Grande Cordettes, filled out the ranks.

Lead­ing up to the com­pe­ti­tion, all three groups were prac­tis­ing at their home lo­ca­tions. The arrange­ment came to­geth­er when the three groups fi­nal­ly met at Cordettes pa­n­yard in the week be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion.

The Mo­sa­ic mu­si­cal di­rec­tor picked Pan in a Rage as their tune of choice be­cause "I love Jit. I love his arrange­ments."

Hai­ley had a writ­ten score of the arrange­ment and over the years, he would pull it out and think his stu­dents were not quite up for the chal­lenges it pre­sent­ed. Late last year, af­ter see­ing the growth and evo­lu­tion of the Mo­sa­ic stage side, he fi­nal­ly felt they could do it. The process was long and hard.

"Ini­tial­ly, they re­al­ly strug­gled with it and hat­ed it, but once they got it, then they loved it."

Hai­ley said every­one who vis­it­ed Trinidad and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pe­ti­tion had a great time and he can re­al­ly see a dif­fer­ence in his stage side.

"They are en­er­gised, they are re­al­ly friends now, and at re­hearsals you can tell," Hai­ley said.

"Mo­sa­ic Steel Or­ches­tra mem­ber Pre­cious Jerni­gan sum­marised our ex­pe­ri­ence best when she said: "Trinidad has taught me a lot about hav­ing con­fi­dence, com­mit­ment, ded­i­ca­tion, courage, pride, hap­pi­ness, and hard work in every­thing I do. This sen­ti­ment was felt through­out the band."