Pe­ter Ray Blood

The steel­band move­ment is re­plete with lo­cals who sac­ri­fice a lot of time and en­er­gy to nur­ture the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment at home and abroad. Sel­wyn "Fruits" John is one such pan­man and he proud­ly stands along­side T&T steel­band am­bas­sadors like El­lie Man­nette, Robert Greenidge, Clif­ford Alex­is, Rudy "Two Leff" Smith, Oth­el­lo Mo­lin­eaux and Liam Teague, mu­si­cians who con­tin­ue to ex­pose and pro­mote pan on the world stage.

Ear­li­er this year, John, a key mem­ber of First Cit­i­zens Su­per­novas Steel Or­ches­tra, was in­volved in a sig­nif­i­cant event which placed pan from Is­rael, of all places, cen­tre stage at a pres­ti­gious Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty. John's par­tic­i­pa­tion ac­tu­al­ly be­gan more than two decades ago through his af­fil­i­a­tion with a uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er who works in Is­rael.

John re­lat­ed: "Know­ing that I was from Trinidad and in­volved in pan, Pro­fes­sor Har­vey Price be­friend­ed me about 25 years ago at the Kim­mel Cen­ter in Philadel­phia. When we met, he, and an­oth­er Amer­i­can guy named George Whit­mire, were ex­per­i­ment­ing on steel drums made from stain­less steel ma­te­r­i­al. Two of those drums are in Trinidad right now–Bertram 'Butch' Kell­man has had one for about 20 years and I brought the oth­er one this year which I in­tend plac­ing at the grave of the late Jit Sama­roo.

"Through my re­la­tion­ship with the pro­fes­sor, I was in­stru­men­tal in ac­quir­ing pan in­stru­ments to be sent to Is­rael, where the pro­fes­sor was form­ing a steel­band com­pris­ing some of his stu­dents. Three years ago the pro­fes­sor suc­ceed­ed in form­ing a mul­ti-de­nom­i­na­tion­al steel­band of Mus­lims from Pales­tine, and Jews and Chris­tians in the Galilee re­gion of Is­rael. The idea be­hind this ini­tia­tive was to get dif­fer­ent peo­ples to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er.

"In Oc­to­ber 2013, the pro­fes­sor, with Delaware's Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim as­so­ciates in the vil­lage of Ibillin and the Jew­ish youth of Haifa, fi­nal­ly got the steel­band up and run­ning.

"This year, the Is­raeli steel­band– The Peace Drums–went to the Unit­ed States and played at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing New York, Philadel­phia and Delaware. The main per­for­mance was at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware and I was in­vit­ed to give a lec­ture on steel­band de­vel­op­ment and his­to­ry. I got a tremen­dous re­cep­tion from the Amer­i­cans. Al­so speak­ing with me was Aneysha de Coteau, who spoke on the mu­si­cal as­pects of pan. It was mov­ing see­ing all these young, bright stu­dents giv­ing a rous­ing ova­tion to this Tri­ni pan­man."

John be­lieves that, de­spite the ex­po­sure giv­en to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment in the past, there is a lot of work still to be done glob­al­ly. He said: "Pan Trin­ba­go and the gov­ern­ment of T&T have to get a lot more proac­tive and se­ri­ous as pan in­stru­ments and mu­sic are in great de­mand abroad. The de­mand con­tin­ues to out­dis­tance the sup­ply.

"The Amer­i­cans are al­so des­per­ate for peo­ple who can teach the pan and its mu­sic at col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty lev­els. Too many Tri­ni pan peo­ple go out there just to play, 'to eat ah food', drink and have a good time, and there is se­ri­ous work to be done to pro­mote our na­tion­al in­stru­ment, a lot more out­side there. Pan is a lot deep­er than just play­ing the in­stru­ment."

The Peace Drums event was host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware and it was ac­tu­al­ly a month-long ex­er­cise with the Is­rael steel­band at the Uni­ver­si­ty. John's lec­ture was based on his over­seas trav­els with pan and his in­volve­ment with var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ties in the US.

John al­so re­vealed that his steel­band, FC Su­per­novas, would be host­ing a steel­band gospel event at a lo­cal venue on Oc­to­ber 1. He added: "The con­cert will be pro­duced with a col­lab­o­ra­tion done with all church­es, with var­i­ous steel­bands play­ing gospel mu­sic on the road be­tween Ed­die Hart Ground and Con­stan­tine Park in Tu­na­puna.

The in­ten­tion is to see if we can reach souls in young peo­ple, for some sort of peace, of which the old­er gen­er­a­tion would ben­e­fit at present. Right now we are in or­gan­i­sa­tion­al phase seek­ing spon­sor­ship from the var­i­ous min­istries to be in­volved with this event.

"The great­est achieve­ment we hope to ac­com­plish is for folks to see love, peace and har­mo­ny as the recipe for sav­ing T&T, in­stead of crime. Gospel on the road in Oc­to­ber will have some of the lead­ing steel­bands in our coun­try. It will be ben­e­fi­cial in two ways be­cause of the lev­el of mu­si­cian­ship re­quired of both in­stru­ments and tu­tors not on­ly in places like Is­rael and abroad."