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Monday, July 28, 2025

TRI­NI TO D BONE

No step programme

by

20140525

My name is Che Cede�o and I played in all three of my pan side's Ju­nior Panora­ma Cham­pi­onship sec­ond hat trick.

It takes me five min­utes to walk from home to Rene­gades' pa­n­yard. I could hear the pan from home in Quar­ry Street. So I could hear if I'm late for prac­tice. But I try not to be late for any­thing.

You would think with such a fa­mous back­ground–Che Gue­vara, the great rev­o­lu­tion­ary–there would be an ex­cit­ing sto­ry to me get­ting named, "Che". Not even close. My moth­er had a pen­chant for unique names. My old­er broth­er is Reese, but not R-e-e-s-e, R-h-y-s. And my younger broth­er is Chaz­a­iah. All of us have "h" as the sec­ond let­ter in our name, in­clud­ing my mum, Sharon.

My sur­name is Span­ish. Is more pro­nounced, "Say-dane-yo" be­cause it has a tilde on the enn. But is eas­i­er for most peo­ple to pro­nounce it as, "Say-dane-oh". So that's what they's do. Span­ish last name, Span­ish first name, Span­ish her­itage.

My moth­er is a huge in­flu­ence on who I am, not just as a per­son, but al­so as a mu­si­cian. She's not a mu­si­cian but it was un­der her de­ci­sion I went to Rene­gades' pa­n­yard for the first time. Hon­est­ly, I didn't want to go.

I'm a mid­dle son. In a sense. My moth­er has three chil­dren. My fa­ther has more, from pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ships. But, liv­ing as a fam­i­ly, I con­sid­er my­self a mid­dle child.

My old­er broth­er has a dif­fer­ent fa­ther but we don't con­sid­er "steps". Steps is for hous­es and climb­ing. We have no steps: is your broth­er, un­cle, cousins, that's it! It helps pro­duce a lot of good times and gen­er­ates more af­fec­tion and love with­in the fam­i­ly.

The mid­dle child is al­ways the re­bel­lious one. Is a hard po­si­tion to play in the fam­i­ly field. You not the big one. You not the lit­tle one. So you make your­self spe­cial by mak­ing your­self re­bel­lious. But, once every­thing's hashed out, be­cause of the love in the fam­i­ly, the re­bel­lious mid­dle child calms down a lit­tle bit.

I'm do­ing a part-time cer­tifi­cate in mu­sic at the uni­ver­si­ty. Most days I have class­es, but they're usu­al­ly evening. I had two 10am class­es last se­mes­ter that made my life a liv­ing hell. Well, I had to get up very ear­ly to reach to school on time.

Apart from the pa­n­yard, I re­al­ly wouldn't say I have an out­doors lifestyle. But, as I get old­er, maybe things will change. I try to be open to new ex­pe­ri­ences. I could end up hik­ing some­where, some time. You nev­er know.

I start­ed do­ing mu­sic when I was eight with TAGS–Trin­i­ty All-Gen­er­a­tion School of Mu­sic. But I didn't like mu­sic the­o­ry at all. So I just stopped. My moth­er sent me and my broth­er to play with Rene­gades, prac­tis­ing for our first Ju­nior Panora­ma, which end­ed up be­ing the band's first hat trick.

Two days be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion, my broth­er and I got dropped. From that mo­ment, I said, "I'm nev­er get­ting dropped from an­oth­er band!" And, so far, I've kept to that.

Rene­gades is all about fam­i­ly. Our cap­tain, how she por­trays every­thing, is, "One per­son can't make a band: is every­body work­ing to­geth­er who make the band". Gay, straight, black, white. I know the his­to­ry and a lot of steel bands were [very rigid­ly mas­cu­line, in­tol­er­ant of gays]. Rene­gades par­tic­u­lar­ly so. But, as times change, peo­ple change. And, as man­age­ment changes, cer­tain poli­cies as well. It's al­ways a good thing to be more open to and ac­cept­ing of peo­ple.

My moth­er has al­ways put it in my head that each gen­er­a­tion must do bet­ter than the last. So, in the fu­ture, I def­i­nite­ly want a fam­i­ly. [When] I could pro­vide prop­er­ly.

The best thing about play­ing in a hat trick-win­ning ju­nior pan side is, with the skill lev­el I had, I was a front­line play­er. The bad side is, when you get large num­bers of peo­ple like that to­geth­er, some­times there are con­trast­ing per­son­al­i­ties.

Tri­nis are hap­py peo­ple. Even in se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions, some­how, we find a way to make a joke about it. Some make jokes that go a lit­tle too far.

Trinidad & To­ba­go to me means so much: is the birth­place of steel pan, ca­lyp­so and so­ca. Is a beau­ti­ful coun­try. But it could be so much bet­ter if every­body would get past cer­tain dis­crim­i­na­tions and un­der­stand how good we tru­ly have it.

�2 Read a longer ver­sionof this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com


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