Ray Funk

Ear­ly Trinidad string band mu­sic will be per­formed live for the first time in al­most a cen­tu­ry in a free con­cert at the UTT cam­pus au­di­to­ri­um at Na­pa on Sat­ur­day at 6 pm. The event, ti­tled Echoes of Car­ni­val–A re­vival of old-time Trinidad string band mu­sic 1910�30, is be­ing or­gan­ised by UTT's as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of mu­sic Si­mon Browne who has been busy the past few months scor­ing a se­lec­tion of ear­ly record­ings by Lovey's String Band, Cyril Mon­rose, pi­anist Li­onel Be­las­co and Ger­ald Clark.The event was in­spired by reis­sue CDs of ear­ly ca­lyp­soes, as well as those of Li­onel Be­las­co and Lovey's band. Browne has un­der­tak­en the daunt­ing task–since no sheet mu­sic sur­vives–to score it, and get a band of ac­com­plished mu­si­cians from UTT and the com­mu­ni­ty to bring it to life again.

Browne can't wait for peo­ple to hear the first pub­lic show of this project:"This won­der­ful mu­sic forms a for­got­ten link be­tween pop­u­lar 19th-cen­tu­ry dance mu­sic like waltzes, paseos and mazurkas and the evolv­ing ca­lyp­so style for bands that ac­com­pa­nied the ear­ly ca­lyp­so­ni­ans," he says.Browne has been at UTT for five years. He was a lead­ing cham­ber mu­si­cian in Eng­land be­fore com­ing to Trinidad per­form­ing with sev­er­al or­ches­tras and cham­ber groups across Eng­land and Eu­rope, Mex­i­co, Cana­da, Japan and New Zealand. He has nev­er lim­it­ed him­self to clas­si­cal mu­sic and played in jazz set­tings as well as groups such as the fa­mous Cuban en­sem­ble Ibrahim Fer­rer & the Bue­na Vista So­cial Club.

The con­cert will fea­ture Browne as arranger and on vi­o­lin, as well as Jonathan Stor­er and Eleanor Ryan on vi­o­lin, Cait­lyn Kam­min­ga on dou­ble bass, Yevge­ny Dok­shan­sky and An­tho­ny Woodruff on clar­inet, Katy Gain­ham on flute, Theron Shaw on gui­tar, Desmond Wait­he and Glen Wor­rel on cu­a­tro. The event will be a lec­ture/con­cert as Browne will al­so talk about the peo­ple and his­to­ry be­hind the mu­sic. The next project of this type will be a full-length dance con­cert which Browne is hop­ing will come to­geth­er in May.