T&T and the steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty lost a true leg­end with the death yes­ter­day morn­ing of mas­ter arranger, com­pos­er and in­no­va­tor, An­tho­ny Williams.

For eight of the nine decades of his long and il­lus­tri­ous life, Williams was an in­spi­ra­tional and in­flu­en­tial fig­ure in the steel­band move­ment, pre­sid­ing over the evo­lu­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment from its em­bry­on­ic be­gin­nings in the post-World War II era to its 21st cen­tu­ry com­ing-of-age.

Fond­ly re­ferred to by those clos­est to him as Tony, Muff­man and Skip, Williams was a life­long res­i­dent of St James who ex­celled at tun­ing and cre­at­ing the steel­pan. He was a true mu­si­cal ge­nius whose place in the pan­theon of T&T greats is as­sured.

Born in Port-of-Spain on June 24, 1931, Williams grew up on Nepal Street, St James, where his first in­ter­ac­tion with the in­stru­ment was in the form of a bis­cuit tin which he tuned and then used to play Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb.

That was the hum­ble start for the man who went on to dis­tin­guish him­self as a vi­sion­ary mu­si­cian and leader.

Williams was one of 12 pan­nists se­lect­ed to join The Trinidad All-Steel Pan Per­cus­sion Or­ches­tra (TASPO), led by mu­si­cal di­rec­tor and arranger Lt Joseph Nathaniel Grif­fith, at the 1951 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in Eng­land.

He was al­so the leader of leg­endary Pan Am North Stars, a steel­band that broke many bar­ri­ers in the 1950s and 60s, in­clud­ing be­ing the first to land a spon­sor­ship deal.

Dur­ing his time with the band, he de­vel­oped the “spi­der web” lead pan, an in­stru­ment with an ex­pand­ed range that was the key to the band win­ning the 1962 Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val with Voic­es of Spring Waltz by Jo­hann Strauss.

The fol­low­ing year, the band won the pre­cur­sor com­pe­ti­tion to Panora­ma—The Best Road March Steel­band Com­pe­ti­tion—with its ren­di­tion of Spar­row’s Dan is the Man in the Van. In 1964, the band won the first Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion or­gan­ised by George God­dard’s new­ly formed Steel­band As­so­ci­a­tion, with Kitch­en­er’s Ma­ma This is Mas.

A steel­band pi­o­neer in the truest sense, Williams broke new ground when he as­so­ci­at­ed his band first with the Mar­i­onettes Choir led by Joyce­lyn Pierre and then with world-fa­mous Trinida­di­an-born pi­anist, Win­nifred Atwell.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion with Atwell pro­duced mu­sic that was com­piled in­to a land­mark al­bum, Ivory and Steel.

It is amaz­ing, when one con­sid­ers all his ac­com­plish­ments and con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan, that Williams was not much more cel­e­brat­ed dur­ing his life­time. He paved a way for gen­er­a­tions of pan­nists, tuners and arrangers and did earn some ac­co­lades, in­clud­ing an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters De­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in 2016.

But for all the cul­tur­al wealth that he has cre­at­ed for this coun­try, he en­joyed very few fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits and lived a sim­ple life, his tal­ent and con­tri­bu­tion not well known by younger gen­er­a­tions in this coun­try.

It is now left to those who know of Williams’ ge­nius to en­sure that his lega­cy is not lost, and his ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions nev­er for­got­ten, for that has been the sad fate of many who have giv­en so much to T&T.

We have lost a cul­tur­al gi­ant.