Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

The work of the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust has been go­ing on for over ten years. The trust, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion that con­nects fund­ing sources to ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the field of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion, com­pris­es vol­un­teers who have been sup­port­ing young T&T mu­si­cians in their dreams to be­come both mu­sic-lit­er­ate and mu­sic-cer­ti­fied. With en­dorsers like for­mer pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and late artist and mu­sic his­to­ri­an Pat Bish­op, the trust has had a lin­eage of ac­com­plished stu­dents and a long list of im­por­tant mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion projects that have been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

Even as the mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion in­dus­try has gained trac­tion over the years through the in­tro­duc­tion of a mu­sic syl­labus at the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) CSEC lev­el and the of­fer of mu­sic-re­lat­ed pro­grammes at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust has iden­ti­fied oth­er ar­eas that are in need of de­vel­op­ment.In 2009, the board of the trust de­vel­oped a mu­sic pro­gramme for un­der�served com­mu­ni­ties as a ve­hi­cle for build­ing con­fi­dence and de­vel­op­ing the mu­si­cal tal­ent of young chil­dren. The City An­gels Mu­sic Pro­gramme was con­cep­tu­alised, cham­pi­oned and co-or­di­nat­ed by the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust and has pro­vid­ed free va­ca­tion and af­ter�-school mu­sic class­es to hun­dreds of chil­dren in the east Port-of-Spain area.

In Au­gust 2011, the trust joined T&T in mourn­ing the loss of the cel­e­brat­ed Pat Bish­op. In ho­n­our of her un­tir­ing ef­forts as a found­ing mem­ber of the trust, the or­gan­i­sa­tion col­lab­o­rat­ed with Liam Teague and the Birch Creek Per­for­mance Cen­tre to present the Pat Bish­op Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme.Over the years, the trust has award­ed over 19 mu­sic lit­er­a­cy schol­ar­ships, which have as­sist­ed some of the best up­com­ing mu­si­cians and arrangers such as pan prodi­gy At­i­ba Williams, steel­band arranger and com­pos­er Am­rit Sama­roo, and North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Mas­ters of Mu­sic stu­dent Bar­ry Man­nette. Oth­er awardees in­clude Dachelle Mor­ri­son and Av­ery Attzs, both from To­ba­go, who have ben­e­fit­ed from the Pat Bish­op Schol­ar­ship Fund.

Mor­ri­son is study­ing mu­sic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and Attzs ex­pects to go to the Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Illi­nois to study un­der com­pos­er, pan­man and lec­tur­er Liam Teague in Sep­tem­ber 2015.For the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust, even greater pos­si­bil­i­ties for mu­sic lit­er­a­cy have been ap­plied to the T&T cul­ture and con­text.CEO and di­rec­tor of the trust Jen­ny Lee said, "The vi­sion of the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust is to re­alise the full po­ten­tial for, and preser­va­tion of, the mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion of the cul­ture of T&T."By push­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion and en­sur­ing that this touch­es every­one from ear­ly years to post­grad­u­ate stu­dents, the trust be­lieves that we fur­ther the preser­va­tion of our cul­ture."

Giv­en the in­flu­ence of Bish­op and her tire­less work with steel­bands, it should be no sur­prise that the first preser­va­tion projects of the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust have in­volved com­po­si­tions for steel­bands. Lee ex­plained, "Over the years, the arrange­ments of Ray Hol­man, Ken 'Pro­fes­sor' Philmore, Dr Jit Sama­roo, Bob­by Mo­hammed of Guin­ness Cav­a­liers fame, and Ed­win and Ju­nior Pouchet have been pre­served in both dig­i­tal and print­ed for­mat. All arrange­ments will be made avail­able to ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions free of charge and pre­served for pros­per­i­ty for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."

Lee con­firmed that in the line-up for preser­va­tion are the mu­sic of High­landers, with Bertie Mar­shall's arrange­ments, and the 50th an­niver­sary of Fon­clair, which should be com­plet­ed in the very near fu­ture."For Panora­ma 2015 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go, the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust will score the win­ners in the large band cat­e­go­ry, and the first-place win­ners in all oth­er cat­e­gories."All mu­sic scores will be giv­en free to ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions and will al­so be giv­en back to the com­posers and bands for their use. Nei­ther the trust nor Pan Trin­ba­go will sell this prod­uct. It is pre­served for all time."

The trust al­so in­tends to ex­pand its preser­va­tion ef­fort to oth­er lo­cal mu­si­cal are­nas. "Re­cent­ly we have been ap­proached to pre­serve ca­lyp­soes as well. We will be re­search­ing this, as it is in line with our de­sire to pre­serve our mu­si­cal cul­ture for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."The goal of the trust con­tin­ues to be a very am­bi­tious one...to place the pow­er of mu­sic lit­er­a­cy in­to the hands of all our chil­dren so as to trans­form their lives and even­tu­al­ly re­store our na­tion."