Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

It’s of­fi­cial! T&T’s Joshua Re­grel­lo’s 31 hours of play­ing the steel­pan has been ac­cept­ed in­to the Guin­ness World Records.

Re­grel­lo’s achieve­ment was pub­lished on the Guin­ness World Records web­site yes­ter­day.

The brief state­ment said, “The longest marathon play­ing steel drums is 31 hours, and was achieved by Joshua Re­grel­lo (Trinidad and To­ba­go), in San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad and To­ba­go, on 27 De­cem­ber 2024. Joshua Re­grel­lo is a tal­ent­ed steel­pan mu­si­cian from Trinidad and To­ba­go and has been per­form­ing steel pan drums for 24 years.”

The San Fer­nan­do na­tive could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.

Last De­cem­ber, the coun­try ral­lied around Re­grel­lo as he aimed to set the record for the longest marathon play­ing the steel­pan. His per­for­mance at WACK 90.1 FM’s stu­dio in San Fer­nan­do at­tract­ed celebri­ties and fans alike ral­ly­ing him on.

Re­grel­lo start­ed his quest for a Guin­ness World Record at 6.28 am on De­cem­ber 27 and de­liv­ered a reper­toire of so­ca, ca­lyp­so, and even on-the-spot re­quests from vis­it­ing artistes over 31 hours.

De­spite the gru­elling sched­ule, Re­grel­lo ra­di­at­ed en­er­gy, paus­ing on­ly twice for 25-minute breaks—once af­ter 17 hours for a bath­room run and lat­er for a quick pow­er nap.

With just eight sec­onds to go, Re­grel­lo raised his left hand in tri­umph, his right glid­ing through the fi­nal notes of Olatun­ji’s In­ven­tor. He capped off the marathon per­for­mance with the Na­tion­al An­them.

Back then, he said, “I be­lieve I could have reached 35 hours. We on­ly stopped be­cause we had set the timer for 31 hours.”

Re­grel­lo said the record at­tempt aimed to show­case the steel­pan’s glob­al po­ten­tial and en­cour­age in­no­v­a­tive ca­reers in the per­form­ing arts. He was over­whelmed by the per­for­mance’s im­pact, es­pe­cial­ly the steady stream of on­line view­ers.