What part of Ja­maica is Trinidad? This was the ques­tion that was re­peat­ed­ly asked wher­ev­er and when­ev­er Alvin Ros­tant played his steel­pan in Aus­tralia. This drove him to set the record right.

In so do­ing, he es­tab­lished his own Aus­tralian Acad­e­my of Steel Drums, where­in he script­ed a sto­ry for pri­ma­ry schools en­ti­tled Ba­nana Joe and an­oth­er for high schools called Ca­lyp­so Drums. He was sub­se­quent­ly con­tract­ed by the Queens­land Arts Coun­cil In-schools tour­ing pro­gramme, which saw him tak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion to close to 1,000 schools.� ��

Ros­tant, a for­mer San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute soc­cer stand­out in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s, was be­ing in­ter­viewed on air from Aus­tralia by Hol­lis Clifton (pan di­as­po­ra vi­sion­ary) and Ken­ny Phillips, CEO of WACK Ra­dio 90.1FM in San Fer­nan­do.��A peev­ed Ros­tant ex­plained that Ba­nana Joe was a steel­pan/dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tion that put the steel­pan in­to a his­tor­i­cal and ge­o­graph­i­cal per­spec­tive and in­cludes Tri­ni char­ac­ters like "Fish Eye." It al­so ex­plains the stages a crude drum goes through on be­com­ing a fine-tuned acoustic per­cus­sion mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.

The ed­u­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive has been go­ing on over the last sev­en years and, un­like many oth­er pro­grammes, aims at pro­vid­ing the truth to the younger gen­er­a­tion of Aus­tralians about the steel­pan, the on­ly mu­si­cal in­ven­tion since the 20th cen­tu­ry. In re­sponse to a ques­tion by Ken­ny about the songs be­ing used and on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­duc­tion be­ing adapt­ed for T&T, Ros­tant an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive, adding that mi­nor changes would need to be made, since pan orig­i­nat­ed in T&T.

The show be­gins with tra­di­tion­al pans (pan-round- the-neck), with five pieces be­ing used; the first be­ing Waltz­ing Matil­da. This en­ables the chil­dren to start with some­thing they are fa­mil­iar with. Oth­er gen­res in­clude reg­gae and ca­lyp­so. Play­ers sing along to Jump and Wave (ca­lyp­so) and that opens the way for Ros­tant as nar­ra­tor to tell the sto­ry of pan.

Clifton sug­gest­ed that T&T has not re­al­ly been ag­gres­sive in pro­mot­ing the steel­pan as a prod­uct of T&T, in the way Ja­maica has pro­mot­ed reg­gae, via Bob Mar­ley. Both Ros­tant and Phillips lament­ed the short-sight­ed­ness of T&T in not be­ing able to see the big­ger pic­ture.

Ros­tant said be­fore he got to Aus­tralia in the 1970s he didn't think peo­ple would want to play the steel­pan but now there are over 1,000 bands through­out the�world. Clifton pro­posed that the Gov­ern­ment should make it a pol­i­cy that every pan made in T&T should car­ry a stamp stat­ing "Trinidad & To­ba­go–the home of the steel­pan" and should in­clude the man­u­fac­tur­er and the man­u­fac­tur­er's se­r­i­al num­ber for prop­er iden­ti­ty. The Bu­reau of Stan­dards should in­sist on this.

To­geth­er with two for­mer mem­bers of the Trinidad Cav­a­liers, Ros­tant formed the Trinidad Ca­lyp­so Band. The mu­si­cal en­ti­ty played at many ma­jor Aus­tralian venues, in­clud­ing all the casi­nos, and ap­peared on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion on shows such as Wom­bat, The Mid­day Show, Good Morn­ing Aus­tralia, Big Broth­er Fri­day Night Live and Ray Mar­tin, among oth­ers.

As a pan­nist Ros­tant has made waves in sev­er­al coun­tries in­clud­ing the USA, New Zealand, Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore, the Solomon Is­lands, Nau­ru, Papua New Guinea, among oth­ers.