Amer­i­can-born vir­tu­oso Andy Narell is a very re­served pro­fes­sion­al who prefers to ex­press him­self by mer­ri­ly mak­ing mixed, melo­di­ous, sounds on the Steel­pan.There is a dis­tinct sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween Andy and the great for­mer West In­di­an bats­man Bri­an Charles Lara who al­ways spoke with a crick­et bat through­out his 16-year il­lus­tri­ous test ca­reer.

As an adopt­ed son of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Narell has used this coun­try's na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment to suc­cess­ful­ly carve a vi­tal niche for its in­dige­nous rhythms and for him­self, world­wide. Andy de­serves the in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and ac­claim that he has so de­served­ly earned be­cause of in­ex­orable ded­i­ca­tion to his craft.

How many oth­er mu­si­cians have kept a "long-time tenor pan" in their archives and are brave enough to use it to make com­mer­cial record­ings? Narell has etched a name for him­self in main­stream en­ter­tain­ment by per­form­ing in North Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean, South Africa and Eu­rope. He con­tin­ues to play along­side the greats in­clud­ing T&T's Re­la­tor, David Rud­der and Ray Hol­man.

Andy Narell re­leased four al­bums on the (now de­funct) Wind­ham Hill Jazz la­bel; three oth­ers on his own Hip Pock­et Records; one for In­ner City Records and ten for Heads Up, now a di­vi­sion of Uni­ver­sal Mu­sic. These in­clude the re­cent mas­ter­piece Uni­ver­si­ty of Ca­lyp­so fea­tur­ing vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Willard "Re­la­tor" Har­ris.

Sanch has proud­ly dis­trib­uted close to 3,500 copies to date. Narell's Heads Up CD, en­ti­tled The Pas­sage, was record­ed with the French steel­band Ca­lyp­so­ci­a­tion. In­ter­est­ing­ly, an­oth­er of this band's re­leas­es, en­ti­tled Made It, cli­max­es with a ver­ba­tim per­for­mance of the late Clive Bradley's clas­sic Ah Goin An' Par­ty Tonight. This was orig­i­nal­ly the leg­endary Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra's Panora­ma ren­di­tion for 1982.

Narell's port­fo­lio is fur­ther em­bell­ished with an awe­some new dual DVD en­ti­tled Andy Narell Alive now be­ing dis­trib­uted by Sanch.One in­ter­est­ing facet of this re­lease is that it em­phat­i­cal­ly dis­avows the com­mon be­lief that top steel­band en­sem­bles pos­sess their own sig­na­ture sound. I have al­ways main­tained that en­sem­bles, whether of con­ven­tion­al sym­phon­ic or steel in­stru­ments, can on­ly repli­cate the sig­na­ture sound of their arranger or con­duc­tor.

This ex­cit­ing DVD af­fords an op­por­tu­ni­ty for diehard sup­port­ers of Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra to be blind test­ed. I am cer­tain that the ma­jor­i­ty of these gold­en-eared afi­ciona­dos would not recog­nise their band per­form­ing in a set­ting in which Leon "Smooth" Ed­wards was not the arranger! (SS)