Wes­ley Gib­bings

It was mid­day on a hot Ju­ly Thurs­day. Mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Der­ri­anne Dyett had just re­turned from a mu­sic the­o­ry class at the En­gi­neer­ing Build­ing with her young charges. They all hopped off en­er­get­i­cal­ly from two UWI Cam­pus bus­es pro­vid­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty in sup­port of the Bird­song Acad­e­my’s an­nu­al mu­sic camp.

In less than one hour, a sched­uled “Open Mic” event was due, fea­tur­ing campers in per­form­ing roles not nec­es­sar­i­ly cov­ered by the for­mal camp sched­ule. The top floor of the old cam­pus En­gi­neer­ing Build­ing had al­ready been va­cat­ed by the brass con­tin­gent that joined with the pan­nists on the ground floor for joint prac­tice.

Next door, at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion, gui­tarists un­der the tu­tor­ship of Dean Williams had al­ready marched over. It was an in­tense ses­sion, with Williams stress­ing some of the ba­sics and ad­vis­ing some of the more ex­pe­ri­enced on tech­nique and style.

“The new­bies or the young­sters, you give them easy, ac­ces­si­ble parts, you know, all the ba­sic parts, which is where they need to be to learn the ba­sics,” he told T&T Guardian.

“The in­ter­me­di­ates, you know, they’re ex­per­i­ment­ing, they’re go­ing for more stuff … the ad­vanced ones, well, you give them the hard­er stuff. It might ap­pear flashy, but more tech­ni­cal. And you give them, some nice con­cepts to work on.”

How it all comes to­geth­er will be known on Au­gust 15 at The Fu­ture in the Present—the camp con­cert be­ing staged at Queen’s Hall in St Ann’s.

Over­all, it’s a mixed bag of com­pe­ten­cies, mu­si­cal back­grounds, and life ex­pe­ri­ences. Pan, drum­ming, wind and brass in­stru­ments, and gui­tars.

Among the campers, there are the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed who lat­er put down their in­stru­ments to sing, dance, and re­cite po­ems at the camp’s “Open Mic.”

Bird­song chair­man, Clement Im­bert, was clear about the role the camp and as­so­ci­at­ed Bird­song ac­tiv­i­ties play.

“There’s ev­i­dence that you can do so much in the pa­n­yard be­cause of the ini­tial at­trac­tion of the mu­sic,” he said.

“Plus … peo­ple who learn mu­sic, it sharp­ens their mind, so they are much bet­ter at what we call aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects. And I’m sure it will be much bet­ter in oth­er ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion.”

Dyett knows the score. An ac­com­plished mu­sic schol­ar, teacher, men­tor, and per­former, she said she was tired that day, but it did not show. There was a stage, seat­ing, a sound sys­tem, and high en­er­gy young­sters to arrange.

When asked what she con­sid­ers to be the val­ue of the ex­pe­ri­ence for the campers.

“For me, the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­gramme is one thing, in a space where you don’t have ac­cess to mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion at an af­ford­able cost,” she re­spond­ed.

“So, we kind of break that bar­ri­er, where you can al­low stu­dents who have tal­ent and po­ten­tial to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hone those skills and de­vel­op and move on.

“We see a lot of our alum­ni in all of those ser­vice (po­lice and mil­i­tary) bands and oth­er mu­sic spaces across the coun­try,” she said proud­ly.

Like Im­bert, she says a mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion is im­por­tant “in a wide va­ri­ety of ar­eas … it’s not on­ly the mu­si­cal ben­e­fits.”

The camp has grown over the years to fo­cus on sev­er­al oth­er non-mu­sic ar­eas in­clud­ing lead­er­ship, and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment.

There are al­so dis­cus­sions around top­ics such as emo­tion­al health—“those kinds of things that they don’t speak about on a day-to-day ba­sis”, ac­cord­ing to Dyett.

“Mu­sic,” she ar­gues, “al­lows you to en­ter those men­tal and emo­tion­al spaces in an ap­pro­pri­ate and eas­i­er way than if you try to ad­dress those is­sues in oth­er con­texts.”

Williams shares such a view. He is con­vinced the coun­try has the peo­ple and re­sources to con­front its nu­mer­ous chal­lenges. He takes such a con­vic­tion to his gui­tar class­es and be­lieves Bird­song pro­vides a plat­form to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties in wider ar­eas.

This year, close to 100 young­sters are ben­e­fit­ing from the free mu­sic in­struc­tion, en­ter­tain­ment, and gen­er­al­ly good time in St Au­gus­tine. Im­bert be­lieves it’s an act of se­cur­ing the fu­ture. The ti­tle of the clos­ing con­cert lat­er this month points in that di­rec­tion—The Fu­ture in the Present.

The con­cert starts at 6.30 pm at Queen’s Hall on Au­gust 15, tick­ets are $150, and you can call 760-9416 for fur­ther de­tails.