Relighting ‘Crossfire’

It is September, 2009, Leon Foster is relaxing. He is a Florida resident, musician, and family man. The phone rings. It’s a call from Brooklyn, an invitation to arrange for a steelband that has struggled on every level—its survival even threatened—with instruments being vandalised and destroyed months earlier.
It was an offer not without seemingly insurmountable challenges. The steel band, Crossfire, had also placed at the bottom of the Panorama competition. Its young members were left demoralised. Courageously, he took over the reins the following year as arranger and the band placed sixth, a remarkable improvement given the circumstances.

“I knew it was going to be an uphill task but this is what I do,” said the ace pannist. “It’s important to get that opportunity, that medium to channel what is going on in your head. How else can you create a masterpiece?” Thomas is renowned for his musical achievement, having copped the coveted soloist trophy at the World Steelband Music Festival in 2002, and again as part of a duet, two years later. As the front man for the Leon Foster Thomas Quartet, a jazz outfit, he shuffles between Florida and Brooklyn as he attempts to further improve the lot of Crossfire. “This year, we are experiencing staffing problems.” He mentioned the tendency of pannists to leave their base—gravitating to bands that have placed higher in the annual competition.

Inviting pannists from Trinidad, his birthplace, is an idea that Crossfire management has contemplated but not pursued. “It’s a question of financing these trips. Most bands in New York don’t have sponsors so it becomes a daunting prospect. Furthermore, it has become harder to get a visa to the US,” he noted.
He also alluded to “the suffocating heat” that has gripped the country in recent weeks, making it “difficult to get out there and fully practice.” Despite these drawbacks, Foster is focussed on embellishing Rodney LeBlanc’s “Trini,” Crossfire’s 2011 Panorama rendition.

“It’s always a challenge to take a simple two-chord song and make it bigger than it is.” And how will he accomplish this feat? He talked about capturing ideas in the form of voice notes. “It’s all about inspiration. Ideas come naturally, almost spontaneously, and I have to grab and record them. I also study the meaning and atmosphere of the lyrics and this takes me to the heart of the culture.” Such musical insights are the product of years of honing his skills. Interesting, he started out as a drummer who taught himself to play pan. “I was a drummer at Pleasantville Senior Comprehensive and was asked to accompany the steelband on Baron’s ‘Somebody’, he recalled.

“I was amazed at the melody and richness of the sound that the instruments were producing. Before then, I was never interested in pan, but this was the turning point in my life. I buckled down and trained myself, literally.” As our exchange inched to the end I invited Foster to indulge in a game of word association.
“Pan,” I said.
“Ecstasy,” he retorted.
“Panorama Finals?”
“Confident,” he answered, without hesitation.

Dr Glenville Ashby
New York correspondent
Guardian Media Ltd