Wes­ley Gib­bings

wgib­bings@ya­hoo.com

The Jan­u­ary 26 Ju­nior/Na­tion­al Schools Panora­ma Fi­nal al­most feels like dis­tant his­to­ry in the haze of the COVID-19 lock­down—de­sert­ed schools and pa­n­yards like sleep­ing arte­facts. Class­rooms locked be­hind the screens of vir­tu­al teach­ing and learn­ing. But, for suc­cess­ful Bish­op Anstey & Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE) Steel Or­ches­tra arrangers An­tho­ny Miller and Jonathan Wat­son it’s no time to rest on the lau­rels of a mem­o­rable vic­to­ry in the sec­ondary schools’ cat­e­go­ry. BATCE last won in 2008.

They pro­vid­ed re­spons­es to ques­tions from T&T Guardian via email.

For Wat­son, 20, few mo­ments are spent look­ing back. As a UWI mu­sic stu­dent he has reg­u­lar on­line prac­ti­cal and the­o­ry class­es. When not in vir­tu­al class he is sharp­en­ing his skills on the pan which he plays every day. He says he spends much of his time “lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent gen­res of mu­sic and prac­tis­ing dif­fer­ent styles to im­pro­vise.”

Miller, 17, has him­self de­cid­ed “with all the ex­tra time I now have on my hands” to aim for a bet­ter bal­ance be­tween his mu­sic and aca­d­e­m­ic life. He is cur­rent­ly a Low­er Six stu­dent at BATCE.

Like his prize-win­ning ar­rang­ing part­ner, he has al­so been work­ing on new arrange­ments “as well as con­tin­u­ing to prac­tise over­all.”

“Re­gard­ing my school life, my teach­ers have been us­ing on­line learn­ing and meet­ing plat­forms to con­tin­ue teach­ing and prepar­ing us for ex­ams,” Miller told Guardian Me­dia.

The two young men both agree that the down­time from the class­room and so­cial events pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hone their craft at a more in­tense rate than would have oth­er­wise been pos­si­ble.

“I be­lieve if you’re a mu­si­cian and you don’t prac­tise on your skill … you’re wast­ing this time,” Wat­son said. “That goes for any­one.”

“In that case,” he added, “this quar­an­tine has many ad­van­tages. This home time could teach so much to peo­ple.”

Miller con­curs: “Dur­ing this iso­la­tion pe­ri­od so far I’ve def­i­nite­ly found my­self be­ing pro­duc­tive and cre­ative in my mu­sic. I’ve been prac­tis­ing more and I’ve al­ready seen im­prove­ment in my im­pro­vi­sa­tion skills, some­thing that has added to my will to keep on prac­tis­ing.”

Wat­son and Miller are al­so keen­ly aware of the world-chang­ing na­ture of the pan­dem­ic and ac­tions tak­en to mit­i­gate its worst ef­fects. They, how­ev­er, do not com­plete­ly agree with each oth­er on what would be­come of Car­ni­val and Panora­ma in 2021.

Said an op­ti­mistic Miller: “I think we as cit­i­zens play a huge role in how Car­ni­val and Panora­ma (will) play out.” He said he thinks things will re­main the same for both events “if (we) cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to have pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes to­ward the Car­ni­val sea­son.”

Wat­son is, how­ev­er, less con­vinced. “I don’t think that any­thing will be the same again af­ter this pan­dem­ic. Even though that’s what every­body wish­es for ... I don’t think that even the ba­sic ac­tiv­i­ties will be the same,” he said.

One view they, how­ev­er, strong­ly share is that the role of the steel­pan in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment is po­ten­tial­ly in­valu­able. Wat­son thinks the in­stru­ment should have a stronger pres­ence in the school sys­tem.

“I feel that steel­pan in mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go should be on the cur­ricu­lum in every school,” he said. “I know it won’t be an easy task for the gov­ern­ment, but it should be in each school. If it’s not on the cur­ricu­lum, there should be a small steel en­sem­ble in the school.”

Miller, mean­while, thinks mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion in school “opens (stu­dents’) eyes to a whole new world.” He said that pan, in par­tic­u­lar, “is a po­tent mech­a­nism in boost­ing na­tion­al pride.”

“Our na­tion­al in­stru­ment has a very rich his­to­ry and from play­ing steel pan and from be­ing a part of band that goes out to var­i­ous per­for­mances and out­ings as well as par­tic­i­pates in dif­fer­ent com­pe­ti­tions, I have learnt a great amount about the cul­ture of T&T,” he said.

The two young mu­si­cians are al­so very strong on build­ing their ca­pa­bil­i­ties on the in­stru­ment they love, while ex­plor­ing a wide va­ri­ety of gen­res and, in Wat­son’s case, a num­ber of oth­er in­stru­ments.

He says he can com­pe­tent­ly “play around” with the drums, pi­ano, glock­en­spiel, xy­lo­phone, and the mem­bra­nophone—in­stru­ments he be­came more ex­posed to as a part of a UWI per­cus­sion en­sem­ble.

Miller start­ed for­mal­ly on the pi­ano ear­ly in life (at around six or sev­en) but switched to pan fol­low­ing vis­its to wit­ness his fa­ther on per­cus­sions as part of the Trinidad All Stars en­gine room.

He, how­ev­er, re­mained on the for­mal mu­sic path at the East­ern School of Pan Mu­sic in Arou­ca un­der the guid­ance of mu­sic teach­ers Nervin Saun­ders and Su­san O’Neal.

For Wat­son, his per­son­al cred­its in­clude names such as mu­sic teach­ers/men­tors Tanya Heart and Ro­jelle Granger-Mor­ton to­geth­er with An­tho­ny Adams and Shawn Smart.

The BATCE mu­sic sta­ble has pro­duced sev­er­al out­stand­ing names in the con­tem­po­rary mu­sic world. An­tho­ny Miller and Jonathan Wat­son have made an ear­ly start with a mem­o­rable Panora­ma vic­to­ry and a fu­ture un­der dili­gent con­struc­tion on sol­id ground in the midst of dif­fi­cult times.