Zahra Gor­don

This year, the San Fer­nan­do Arts Coun­cil marks its 43rd an­niver­sary and cel­e­brates the 42nd an­nu­al Na­tion­al Ju­nior Arts Fes­ti­val, San­Fest, which kicked off on Sep­tem­ber 25 and con­tin­ues to No­vem­ber 26. San­Fest, which fes­ti­val di­rec­tor Win­ston Bram­ble says is the on­ly fes­ti­val in T&T that in­cludes vi­su­al, per­form­ing and lit­er­ary arts, has pro­pelled such artists as Liam Teague, Machel Mon­tano and Megan Wal­rond. Chore­o­g­ra­phers Joyce Kir­ton and Er­ic But­ler are for­mer fes­ti­val di­rec­tors.The coun­cil's chair­man Tor­rance Mo­hammed is al­so the artis­tic di­rec­tor and founder of Arawak Dance Co and a found­ing mem­ber and past pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Dance As­so­ci­a­tion. Cur­rent­ly, the coun­cil's mem­bers in­clude more than 35 arts or­gan­i­sa­tions and 500 in­di­vid­ual mem­bers.

Mo­hammed ex­plained dur­ing an in­ter­view at the coun­cil's Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre, Mon Re­pos, San Fer­nan­do, last week, that the coun­cil was found­ed in 1969 be­cause of the need for a rep­re­sen­ta­tive um­brel­la body for artists in San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons. "While in­di­vid­u­al­ly one could be strong, col­lec­tive­ly you could be greater. We hoped to reach a stage where we would have bar­gain­ing pow­er to rep­re­sent artists," he said. At the time artists were lob­by­ing for more pro­fes­sion­al re­hearsal space be­cause the Na­pari­ma Bowl had on­ly two prac­tice rooms. The coun­cil's lob­by­ing along with the help of such politi­cians as Er­rol Ma­habir even­tu­al­ly brought about the open­ing of the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre in 1989. Mo­hammed be­lieves the coun­cil is the on­ly arts group in T&T with a build­ing at its dis­pos­al. The cen­tre has served as the home for the coun­cil and the fes­ti­val, and is open to artists for re­hearsals and the stag­ing of per­for­mances. Out­side of the fes­ti­val sea­son, dance and art class­es for chil­dren are al­so held week­ly.

San­Fest was orig­i­nal­ly open on­ly to stu­dents in the Vic­to­ria dis­trict but af­ter three or four years par­tic­i­pants from oth­er south­ern dis­tricts were in­vit­ed and the com­pe­ti­tion even­tu­al­ly mor­phed in­to the pres­ti­gious na­tion­al fes­ti­val it is to­day with com­peti­tors from all re­gions, in­clud­ing To­ba­go. For Teague, who is now an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of mu­sic at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, the fes­ti­val opened doors to oth­er wins and recog­ni­tion in com­pe­ti­tions like Teen Tal­ent and the Mu­sic Fes­ti­val. "I think that San­Fest was a won­der­ful step­ping stone for me as a young mu­si­cian. While I am not a huge ad­vo­cate of com­pe­ti­tion in the arts, I do feel that it al­lowed me to strive for ex­cel­lence and pro­vid­ed a ve­hi­cle for me to demon­strate my art," said Teague via e-mail. While still a teenag­er, Teague was fea­tured in the fi­nal is­sue of Gayap, a year­ly arts mag­a­zine pro­duced by the coun­cil. The mag­a­zine boasts such past ed­i­tors and con­trib­u­tors as di­rec­tor James Lee Wah, found­ing mem­ber of the coun­cil and the Na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools Dra­ma Fes­ti­val, and artist Willi Chen.

Pe­rus­ing old copies of Gayap one finds news of new plays by Derek Wal­cott and Earl Lovelace, the­atre re­views, cre­ative-writ­ing sub­mis­sions, ap­peals and blue­prints for a San Fer­nan­do mu­se­um and cre­ative arts cen­tre, pro­files of Den­nis Hall, the ac­tor, be­fore he be­came known as Spran­galang and his con­tem­po­raries such as Ralph Maraj and Walid Baksh. When artist Carlisle Chang's mur­al The In­her­ent No­bil­i­ty of Man was de­stroyed at the Pi­ar­co Air­port in 1977, Lee Wah wrote in the 1977-78 is­sue of Gayap that its de­struc­tion was "per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant event of the artis­tic cal­en­dar." He wrote: "The mur­al has been qui­et­ly con­signed to obliv­ion and the gen­er­al at­ti­tude sug­gests that it is no big thing."

Lee Wah's state­ments were in­dica­tive of a com­mit­ment to the arts and con­nec­tions that sur­passed the south­ern city. Since Teague par­tic­i­pat­ed, the fes­ti­val of­fer­ings have grown con­sid­er­ably. When Bram­ble be­came fes­ti­val di­rec­tor three years ago, he sought to breathe life in­to what he felt had be­come too repet­i­tive. "Pri­or to that it was kind of one-di­men­sion­al, the same pat­tern year af­ter year. When I took over we had a dif­fer­ent vi­sion in that we in­tro­duced pub­lic speak­ing be­cause we found that our chil­dren could not speak well. Lim­bo danc­ing was not on the sched­ule be­cause it's more an east­ern cor­ri­dor kind of thing but it's re­al­ly amaz­ing and the au­di­ence lapped it up," he said. "The oth­er thing we in­tro­duced was the judg­ing of bands in schools and that in it­self gave the chil­dren some more en­cour­age­ment, so that was a plus."

This year, mid­night rob­ber and pier­rot grenade speech­es have been added to the drama­tised speech cat­e­go­ry in con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to ex­pand. These are ad­di­tions to a sched­ule which al­ready in­cludes judg­ing of sto­ry­telling, paint­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, one-act plays, pan en­sem­bles and chorales, to name a few cat­e­gories. Both Mo­hammed and Bram­ble say even af­ter 42 years these new ad­di­tions are on­ly the be­gin­ning. The two, who con­sid­er them­selves cul­tur­al ac­tivists, want to see the com­pe­ti­tion achieve in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion. "We're hop­ing in the near fu­ture to pro­vide schol­ar­ships to chil­dren to fur­ther study the arts. T&T is preg­nant with tal­ent, but tal­ent is like an un­cut di­a­mond: it has to be nur­tured and pol­ished," said Mo­hammed. "Our vi­sion is to pro­mote it and es­tab­lish it in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and in­vite peo­ple from oth­er Caribbean is­lands to per­form.

"We're al­so hop­ing to im­prove our struc­ture here at the cen­tre to get a prop­er dance stu­dio, a mu­sic room, and we're hop­ing to have our own in-house band here with brass, string and pan."While there's no ques­tion for Mo­hammed that San Fer­nan­do abounds with tal­ent, he re­grets that most artists have to move out of the city to make it. "We aren't get­ting the kind of recog­ni­tion and sup­port we de­serve and most of our young artists mi­grate to the big city. It's a nat­ur­al, se­quen­tial kind of thing." He al­so ac­knowl­edges that even though the com­pe­ti­tion re­mains pop­u­lar, more sup­port is need­ed to view the arts as vi­able lo­cal­ly. "We still have some prob­lems with prin­ci­pals who don't be­lieve the arts is im­por­tant for aca­d­e­mics. But I can tell you that it's the arts that saved me. I failed every­thing in school, but hav­ing been in­volved in the arts gave me a kind of strength," he said.

For more in­for­ma­tion about San­Fest, con­tact the coun­cil at 657-7665 or san­fer­nan­doartscoun­cil@hot­mail.com.