Sascha Wil­son

With judg­ing of their steel­band card­ed for Wednes­day at Fon­claire pan yard, stu­dents of Pleas­antville Sec­ondary School’s steel­band or­ches­tra, P’ville Pan Jam­mers, were busy go­ing through their re­hearsal on Fri­day.

Steel­band man­ag­er Va­lerie Patrick, a teacher at the school, said they were con­fi­dent about qual­i­fy­ing for the fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Schools Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

She ex­plained that the school and Fon­claire have a rich his­to­ry to­geth­er, since the school is the al­ma mater of Fon­claire’s found­ing mem­bers.

Patrick said Fon­claire part­nered with the school and has been teach­ing stu­dents to ap­pre­ci­ate pan and teach­ing them how to play.

She said the stu­dents are taught all gen­res of mu­sic, in­clud­ing clas­si­cal Beethoven tunes to chut­ney.

Ex­plain­ing that mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion helps to mold chil­dren in­to all-round­ed in­di­vid­u­als, she said, “Work­ing to­geth­er in a steel­band or­ches­tra, ob­vi­ous­ly we have chil­dren of dif­fer­ent races, dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ties, dif­fer­ent cul­tures, gen­ders and we all work to­geth­er to­wards that com­mon goal, which is play­ing the steel­band and mak­ing sure that we make it to the fi­nals.”

Steel­band arranger and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Cur­tis “Sleepy” Mar­celle said its the first time in two years that the stu­dents will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­pe­ti­tion and they are ex­cit­ed about it. Mar­celle said this year their song will be Same Way from Blacks.

Not­ing that Fon­claire al­so of­fers free train­ing to chil­dren, he said more girls seem in­ter­est­ed in play­ing the pan. He added 75 per­cent of the play­ers in the Pleas­antville Sec­ondary Or­ches­tra are fe­males.

Mar­celle is hop­ing to see more steel­bands en­gag­ing in com­mu­ni­ty out­reach pro­grammes to get youths in­ter­est­ed in play­ing pan.

“We need to take them off the streets and put the pan sticks in their hands,” he said.

Mar­celle said play­ing pan cre­ates ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties and al­so gives play­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it var­i­ous coun­tries.

Par­ent Es­ther John­son en­cour­aged oth­er par­ents to send their chil­dren to learn the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

“This is a good thing. It keeps youths away from neg­a­tiv­i­ty and steers them to the light where they could be more pos­i­tive and let the oth­er youths know that there are much in­ter­est­ing things to do with their lives, wher­ev­er it is pan, whether it is sport,” she said.