Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 02/Feb 04:35

From the sticks of babes

At today’s Junior Panorama, hundreds of children will demonstrate their skill as pannists. Twelve primary, ten secondary schools and 12 under-21 junior steelbands will compete for supremacy – but it should be emphasised that every player in each of these bands has already done a remarkable thing in qualifying for the National Junior Steelband finals. To achieve that, they would have had to sacrifice personal and sometimes study time, beginning as early as December. Some bands practised right up until Christmas Eve and resumed right after Boxing Day. Some of this activity is the fever of competition, and that has its own value as a unifying agent. Working together to achieve a common goal while facing numerous hurdles is a valuable life lesson for children coming of age in modern TT. Then there’s the lesson of discipline: for the 34 bands taking the stage today, the journey to performance was counted in long, exhausting hours, rigorous and repetitive drills and practice, practice, practice, aided by schools, parents and supporters. There are estimated to be as many as 53 schools with functioning steelband contingents, and more than 20 junior bands affiliated with adult steelbands. Since the 1980s, the Pan in Schools initiative was established to put the national musical instrument more clearly on the national music curriculum, and there are supposed to be 100 schools with the equipment to organise a functioning steelband. But that doesn’t always happen. A functioning school steelband requires a music teacher with a willingness to sacrifice the time to drill players, along with an aptitude to work with the instrument. That’s still rarer than it should be, in the country that invented the instrument. There are estimated to be as many as 160 schools with functioning steelbands in the UK. Any suggestion that such a comparison is unfair is inherently correct. TT has all the advantages, but fails to make effective use of them. After today’s competition, what happens next? Barring any ties, there will be three winners. But if the bands collectively field an average of 50 players each, there will also be 1,700 children who have been introduced to the highest levels of steelband organisation, musicality and camaraderie. What’s to be done with that significant and hard-won asset that doesn’t let it lie stagnant until the next competition cycle rolls around? Fifty years after gathering steelbands under the banner of Pan Trinbago, there remains a disconnect between talk of pan in education and its actual practice in schools. The 22 schools that fielded competitive steelbands today are to be congratulated. But the dozens of schools that struggle to create a music community around pan must not be forgotten. The post From the sticks of babes appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.