CHARLES KONG SOO

Five-year-old Yaniv La­gan Ram­per­sad from Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma, is al­ready an "old hand" at play­ing the tas­sa.

Be­fore he could even walk or talk, he was beat­ing out rhythms on pots with spoons.

There is a video of Yaniv on Face­book play­ing a tas­sa drum with gus­to at the wed­ding of his moth­er's cousin when he was just three years old.

"I was play­ing some things wrong back then," he said, laugh­ing.

"I play the bass drum," he added. Govin­da Ren­nie Bha­gan, of Tris­tar Tas­sa Group in Fe­lic­i­ty, cus­tom-made the drums plus the sticks for his size as a Christ­mas present when he was two years old.

"I learned to play the tas­sa when mum used to sing the sound of the tas­sa, I would sing it back and slow­ly learn to play what we were singing. She taught me, but it is re­al­ly my dad­dy who is a tas­sa play­er since his child­hood."

The brave young­ster said "din­go­lay" was his favourite "hand" to play on the tas­sa and the Drag­on Boys Tas­sa Group mem­bers are his role mod­els.

Yaniv shared that he plays brass and oth­er tas­sa drums be­side the bass.

He sings, but he is shy to sing in pub­lic. And he al­so loves to dance, just not in pub­lic.

When asked about fam­i­ly mem­bers who are mu­si­cal­ly in­clined or in the arts, Yaniv said that his mum­my, Peg­gy Su­per­sad, plays tas­sa and sings some­times, while his dad­dy, Rishi Ram­per­sad, is a tas­sa play­er who man­ages San Juan Youngstars Tas­sa Group. His ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther is well-known co­me­di­an and singer Ken­neth Su­per­sad.

Yaniv played in Hosay in St James re­cent­ly, and al­so plays at var­i­ous func­tions in­clud­ing wed­dings, birth­day par­ties, con­certs, and cul­tur­al and re­li­gious events all over Trinidad.

Aside from tas­sa, Yaniv's hob­bies and in­ter­ests in­clude colour­ing, play­ing foot­ball, and games on his iPad and phone.

He said he wants to be a po­lice­man when he grows up

"Be­cause po­lice­man does lock up bad peo­ple," the young­ster added.

Yaniv Lagan Rampersad with members of the San Juan Youngstars Tassa Group, left, Sachin Latchman, his parents, Peggy Supersad and Rishi Rampersad, and Gerrad Ramroop on the bass drum.

Debra Wanser

Yaniv's favourite food is noo­dle soup and his favourite desserts are donuts and cup­cakes. His favourite tele­vi­sion show is Blip­pi, his favourite movie is Ven­om, and he en­joys all gen­res of mu­sic, main­ly Latin, So­ca, Bol­ly­wood and Chut­ney. He will be en­ter­ing First Year In­fants at the Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic School in Sep­tem­ber, and his favourite subject is Math­e­mat­ics.

What­ev­er Yaniv takes a lik­ing to, his mom and dad try their best to help him be­come bet­ter and im­prove his skills in it.

His dad, Ram­per­sad, ex­plained that while they work at their busi­ness place, they line off at least six tas­sa drums in the liv­ing room area for him to play, and he plays all day long.

Ram­per­sad added that they tried to car­ry Yaniv on as many gigs as they can for him to per­form.

To them, it does not mat­ter what he choos­es, once it is some­thing that he is pas­sion­ate about, be­cause as par­ents they will do every­thing in their pow­er to help him ex­cel in that field. Ram­per­sad said they are there to give him the sup­port he needs, the push he does not even know that he needs, and the en­cour­age­ment that he nev­er even dreamed of.

When asked if Yaniv does not seem ner­vous or shy per­form­ing be­fore a crowd, Su­per­sad, his mom, said this has not al­ways been the case. She shared that with the pan­dem­ic, not be­ing able to so­cialise or even per­form for at least a year was quite a chal­lenge.

Su­per­sad re­vealed that it was ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to break him out of that iso­la­tion and shy­ness when they start­ed tak­ing gigs.

Yaniv has a lot of con­fi­dence in play­ing tas­sa now, but he is still too shy to sing pub­licly, how­ev­er, she be­lieves that this will change in time.

His mom said that as he ven­tures in­to pri­ma­ry school, she will try her best to en­cour­age him to take part in many ac­tiv­i­ties that will help him over­come his in­se­cu­ri­ties.

She said that Yaniv is an ex­cel­lent, all-round­ed child, thanks to Mrs Vanes­sa Per­sad at Ruth's Preschool, he was able to do Math­e­mat­ics and Read­ing on a lev­el that was over a year ahead of his time.

Su­per­sad said he has even been brand­ed as the class pre­fect since he was the child who en­sured oth­er chil­dren fol­lowed the rules. She said he had shown the char­ac­ter­is­tics of be­ing a leader at such a ten­der age.

Yaniv, she said, is a per­fect ex­am­ple of "what you teach your child is what they will learn".

She ex­plained that it is not al­ways about ge­net­ics or fam­i­ly his­to­ry, but about be­ing con­sis­tent in what you teach your child and then watch­ing them amaze you every day of your life.