Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For decades, Vin­cent “Benge” Ben­jamin was a fa­mil­iar fig­ure in New­town, Wood­brook, and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val and cul­tur­al cir­cles.

Re­gard­ed as a gi­ant in the steel­band in­dus­try, he was yes­ter­day giv­en a fit­ting farewell with a Car­ni­val-style pro­ces­sion through the streets he had long called home.

Rel­a­tives, friends, mem­bers of the steel­band, sport­ing and oth­er fra­ter­ni­ties, and res­i­dents of the Wood­brook com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered at St Patrick’s RC Church in New­town to bid farewell to Ben­jamin, who died of heart fail­ure at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Oc­to­ber 27.

He was 73 and had been ail­ing for some time.

The son of the late Vin­cent Har­ring­ton “Big Ben” Ben­jamin, a promi­nent Port Au­thor­i­ty fig­ure and one-time con­fi­dant of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, Benge grew up in the lime­light.
He worked with Tel­co, the pre­de­ces­sor of TSTT, from the age of 17 un­til his re­tire­ment.

How­ev­er, much of his life was al­so de­vot­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture.
An avid pan­man for 40 years, Ben­jamin man­aged the New­town Play­boys and Wood­brook Play­boy steel­bands and was a key fig­ure with We Tings and Mod­ern­naires. He al­so served on the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive of Pan Trin­ba­go dur­ing Patrick Arnold’s pres­i­den­cy.

In recog­ni­tion of his ser­vice to the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty, Pan Trin­ba­go pre­sent­ed him with a spe­cial award in 2019.

Among those at­tend­ing yes­ter­day’s fu­ner­al were sev­er­al Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers, in­clud­ing for­mer Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion coun­cil­lors and for­mer deputy may­or Keron Valen­tine.

Al­so present were mem­bers of the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty, in­clud­ing ace arranger Pel­ham God­dard, for­mer min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, and past and present Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion of­fi­cials Mike De­osaran and Pe­ter Kan­hai.

Fol­low­ing the fu­ner­al ser­vice, dur­ing which Ben­jamin’s daugh­ter Vornique de­liv­ered the eu­lo­gy, his cof­fin was placed in a white car­riage and drawn from the church along Tra­garete Road to Lapey­rouse Ceme­tery.

Steel­band mu­sic ac­com­pa­nied the pro­ces­sion, as mourn­ers gave him a fi­nal “jump-up.”

Ben­jamin al­so be­came more wide­ly known dur­ing the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, when he ap­peared in a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­ver­tise­ment por­tray­ing a pen­sion­er who crit­i­cised the PNM’s pen­sion sys­tem.

Fol­low­ing his death, the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment paid trib­ute to him, de­scrib­ing him as “a dis­tin­guished fig­ure in T&T’s steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty; his pas­sion for cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty pres­ence touched many lives.”

“Through­out his tire­less ef­forts, Mr Ben­jamin helped cham­pi­on an im­por­tant as­pect of T&T’s rich mu­si­cal her­itage. He leaves be­hind a lega­cy of cul­tur­al pride, com­mu­ni­ty spir­it and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the steel­band move­ment. His con­tri­bu­tion will long be re­mem­bered, and his in­flu­ence will con­tin­ue to res­onate with­in the com­mu­ni­ties and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions he served so faith­ful­ly,” the min­istry added.