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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Pulse

Genesis of great things in Exodus

by

20130919

This past decade some laud­able things have been hap­pen­ing at the well-ap­point­ed am­phithe­atre at Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus Steel Or­ches­tra, on the East­ern Main Road, St Au­gus­tine.

Apart from two Na­tion­al Panora­ma ti­tles in 2003 -2004, un­der the as­tute lead­er­ship of Ainsworth Mo­hammed, the band es­tab­lished Ex­ocubs, its youth or­ches­tra.

Ex­ocubs was es­tab­lished more than ten years ago with the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of de­vel­op­ing T&T's youth in the di­rec­tion of mu­sic and more­so the steel­pan. Over the years, in ex­cess of 1,500 young peo­ple have grad­u­at­ed from its pro­gramme. In the more re­cent years youth were di­rect­ed to the area of mu­sic lit­er­a­cy and for­mal­ly grad­ed.

Speak­ing to Pulse this week from abroad Mo­hammed said: "For the new term (2012/13) we have de­cid­ed to in­tro­duce all oth­er con­ven­tion­al in­stru­ments and to in­clude the dance, chorale and oth­er forms of the per­form­ing arts, ex­am­ple tas­sa, African drum­ming, parang etc.

"In this re­gard, we are be­ing guid­ed and sup­port­ed through UWI's (Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies) Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre as part of their com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­gramme. Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus/ Ex­ocubs' de­sire is to for­malise an al­liance with UWI so that the youth of Trin­ba­go can de­vel­op them­selves in mu­sic and the arts to what­ev­er lev­els they so wish."

Through Pro­fes­sor Clement Sankat, prin­ci­pal of UWI, Mo­hammed and the band's lead­er­ship has been in meet­ing with Jes­sel Mur­ray, head of UWI's Cre­ative Arts and his deputy, Sa­tanand Shar­ma, who have been ex­ceed­ing­ly sup­port­ive and mak­ing time from their al­ready busy sched­ules to so do. Un­der their guid­ance, the pro­gramme is be­ing de­vel­oped and tu­tors would in­clude among a host of oth­ers, Ex­o­dus' mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Pel­ham God­dard and Roy Cape.

Mo­hammed added: "We have in­vit­ed and re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back from Michael Sal­ick­ram of Shiv Shak­ti, Nor­van Fuller­ton of Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ing Com­pa­ny, Nan­cy Her­rera of Meta­mor­pho­sis and Xavier Phillip of Wasafoli to sup­port the project.

"Our chal­lenge is to meet the hu­man re­sources needs de­mand­ed and the premis­es con­straints. To this end we have been li­ais­ing with our MP for Tu­na­puna for tem­po­rary premis­es sup­port as Ex­o­dus has am­bi­tious plans to im­prove our fa­cil­i­ties to in­clude the re­quired floor space above our ex­ist­ing build­ing to ac­com­mo­date this ed­u­ca­tion­al project. We are con­fi­dent that this would be achieved with­in three years."

It is the am­bi­tion of Ex­o­dus to de­vel­op a tem­plate in mu­sic and the arts which in two to three years may be ex­tend­ed to oth­er steel­bands and per­form­ing groups through­out our coun­try. Steel­bands, as you know, have been the true "com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres" in our na­tion though lit­tle recog­ni­tion is giv­en to them.

Reg­is­tra­tion for the new term 2012/13 was last Sat­ur­day and 161 par­tic­i­pants were reg­is­tered and in­ter­est has been ex­pressed by sev­er­al more who would be reg­is­ter­ing to­mor­row.

And the Heat goes on

Af­ter more than a month of sus­tained ac­tion, live en­ter­tain­ment con­tin­ues un­abat­ed in­to this week­end.

Last week­end saw a bumper pan show–Pan­tas­tic Fri­day–host­ed by Wit­co Des­per­a­does at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain; the very suc­cess­ful Rum Fes­ti­val was host­ed by An­gos­tu­ra, at­tract­ing ca­pac­i­ty crowds each of its three days at House of An­gos­tu­ra, Laven­tille; and, the stag­ing of the open­ing of the 2013 parang sea­son at Li­ons Cul­tur­al Club, Port-of-Spain.

Join­ing Des­per­a­does on Fri­day were Petrotrin Phase II Pan Groove, Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, and CAL In­vaders, plus reign­ing Su­perBlue and Prime Min­is­ter Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion stars North West Laven­tille Folk Per­form­ers. Un­for­tu­nate­ly this feast of mu­sic had to be trun­cat­ed by the po­lice as it went be­yond its al­lot­ted mid­night com­ple­tion.

As bad­ly as I want­ed to I didn't make it to the open­ing of the parang sea­son but last week­end I did hear what is like­ly the first Christ­mas hit sin­gle. It is by Crazy, named Mr Back in Times, and is arranged by Pel­ham God­dard. Trust me, this song is re­al­ly a sweet "lavway." I al­so heard what is to be Crazy's first re­lease for C2K14–To­tal Sex­o­ra­ma–and that too sounds like a crack­er.

This evening, the spa­cious and leg­endary pa­n­yard of Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars, at Duke Street, will be the venue for Nos­trand Steel Sym­pho­ny steel or­ches­tra's Sin­gle Pan Ex­trav­a­gan­za, from 7 pm. The en­sem­bles billed to per­form in­clude St James Tripo­lians, Uni Stars, Pash­phon­ics, Brim­blers, City Sun Val­ley and One Love.

To­mor­row, from noon, the T&T Fire Ser­vices (TTFS) will hold its first ever Trim­ming the Waist­line Na­tion­al Cook­out, at Cal­drac Sports Club and Grounds, Rail­way Road, Cal­i­for­nia. Li­ons Club of Port-of-Spain North holds its Din­ing With the Stars...Sing a Hap­py Song fund-rais­er, at Li­ons Cul­tur­al Cen­tre; and Tri­ni Rev­ellers is launch­ing The Sul­tan Palace, its C2K14 mas pre­sen­ta­tion, at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas.

The Fire Ser­vice cook­out is seek­ing to fo­cus at­ten­tion at main­tain­ing a healthy lifestyle by the food we eat. Fire­fight­ing, through the use of tech­nol­o­gy, aids in its ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion, but, if a fire fight­er isn't healthy, the chances of him or her be­com­ing in­jured or suf­fer­ing from ail­ments on the job in­creas­es great­ly.

With that said, Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Nyah Ram­per­sad has en­dorsed this event by en­cour­ag­ing fire fight­ers and the in­vit­ed pub­lic at large to im­prove their healthy eat­ing habits whilst still main­tain­ing culi­nary ex­per­tise.

To­mor­row's chal­lenge has been ac­cept­ed by 11 teams across all di­vi­sions of the Ser­vice. With­in the TTFS cook­out com­pe­ti­tions were held be­fore at a small­er scale, with San­gre Grande Fire Sta­tion team be­ing the last cham­pi­on. With more teams and a wider span the com­pe­ti­tion is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be "beefed" up and may there­fore re­sult in an even bet­ter qual­i­ty of food be­ing de­liv­ered.

This event will not be tele­vised, so make it your du­ty to see and be there as live en­ter­tain­ment will be pro­vid­ed, along with a round robin foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion at the same venue in­volv­ing fire­fight­ers.

With al­ready gen­er­at­ed in­ter­est, plans are un­der­way for the in­clu­sion of more teams out­side of the TTFS for the sec­ond edi­tion of the cook­out com­pe­ti­tion in 2014.

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