Nass­er Khan

He is known as "Pip" to his close friends–as in "Pip and the Con­vict," from Charles Dick­ens' Great Ex­pec­ta­tions, he says. St James-born Lennox "Boogsie" Sharpe, is one of Trinidad and To­ba­go's most gift­ed tal­ents in the steel­pan are­na, and ac­knowl­edged as one of the great­est play­ers-arrangers-com­posers, if not the great­est. He lov­ing­ly cred­its his mom, the late Grace Is­abel­la Sharpe, as the one who gave him the name "Boogsie," a name she told him came from an an­gel and had no clue what it meant.

His fa­ther, who used to take him to var­i­ous pa­n­yards and to play in com­pe­ti­tions as a young­ster, "once he re­alised that I had the tal­ent" gets the cred­it for in­flu­enc­ing his ear­ly start in the world of steel­pan. Boogsie has es­tab­lished his bril­liance the past 40-plus years with his arrange­ments for many ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, vo­cal­ists and steel­bands in T&T and the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, and has been the com­pos­er/arranger-in-res­i­dence at Phase 11 Pan Groove (cur­rent­ly Petrotrin- spon­sored) since the ear­ly 1970s. The five-time Panora­ma arranger win­ner (win­ner of three of the past four Panora­ma fi­nals), sec­ond on­ly to his good friend Jit Sama­roo's nine wins–up to and in­clud­ing Car­ni­val 2008–has a burn­ing de­sire to three-peat, a goal that has elud­ed him on two oc­ca­sions.

He is mo­ti­vat­ed by this goal, so that we can look for­ward to his pres­ence in the com­ing years, he in­sists, fre­quent­ly re­fer­ring to his God-giv­en tal­ents. He warns all and sundry that for 2009 he will be tough to beat. As some­one who does not read or write mu­sic, Boogsie is able to con­ceive elab­o­rate com­po­si­tions and arrange­ments and teach them to the play­ers note by note, phrase by phrase.

Ebony & Ivory

He is al­so an ac­com­plished pi­ano play­er and points out that his first cousin is Ja­maican reg­gae star, Bar­ring­ton Levy, a pic­ture of whom is dis­played on his liv­ing room wall, along­side his many trea­sured pho­tos. De­scribed as "the Mozart of pan" by Wyn­ton Marsalis, he re­mains a hum­ble gen­er­ous man whose St James home is a repos­i­to­ry of his many trea­sured mem­o­ries over the years. It was as a young­ster, at the very lo­ca­tion–Benares Street–where he grew up and still re­sides, that he first played the pan, which, in ad­di­tion to be­ing their home, al­so served as the pa­n­yard for Sym­phonettes, led by Ru­pert "Shad­ow" Nathaniel.

He rates In The Rain For­est, the win­ning com­po­si­tion/arrange­ment at the World Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in Oc­to­ber, 2000; Woman is Boss, Panora­ma win­ner 1988; Tri­ni Gone Wild, Panora­ma win­ner 2005; and Mu­si­cal Vengeance, Panora­ma win­ner 2008, as his best record­ings he would love first-time lis­ten­ers to hear. Pan Night and Day by the late Lord Kitch­en­er and School Days by Spar­row are his favourite ca­lyp­so/so­ca songs. He en­joys a good chick­en pelau with some callaloo and a cold di­et Sprite to wash it down, and likes to take one day at a time, which he says is his mot­to. He longs to vis­it his grand­chil­dren in Toron­to, Cana­da, "es­pe­cial­ly to see the last one who is now five years old."

His fourth grand­son, Hashim, of whom he is proud and who lives with him, has tak­en a lik­ing to the steel­pan, and has shown glimpses of his grand­pa's abil­i­ty. Win­ning the World Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val in 2000 with his own com­po­si­tion and arrange­ment In The Rain­for­est and be­ing ho­n­oured by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go/UTT–he proud­ly dis­plays the pho­to and cer­tifi­cate when he was ho­n­oured–he rates as among his great­est achieve­ments.

Boogsie holds in high es­teem An­tho­ny Williams "a great pan man," Ste­vie Won­der, "my mu­si­cal hero. My favourites are Ebony and Ivory and Nel­son Man­dela. "That is a great man."

Youth ad­vice

Love your own peo­ple and cul­ture is Boogsie's ad­vice to the young peo­ple of T&T, and he ad­mits that deal­ing with his fame has at times been dif­fi­cult, lead­ing to a num­ber of per­son­al chal­lenges, some of which he might not have han­dled as he should have. He prefers not to delve in­to the specifics. Lament­ing on the on­go­ing sad state of fa­cil­i­ties for the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and the treat­ment met­ed out to pan­men in gen­er­al, he hopes that the pow­ers-that-be would come to­geth­er to tru­ly brand our beloved na­tion­al in­stru­ment and pro­tect all the rights that go with its in­ven­tion and in­no­va­tion–pro­pri­etary, in­tel­lec­tu­al, etc–and de­vel­op and main­tain ways to show the na­tion's ap­pre­ci­a­tion for "our gift to the world," as he calls it.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Boogsie's first pay­ing job was as a pan play­er with the steel­band Cross­fire on Nepaul Street, back in about 1965.... "50 cents, plen­ty mon­ey back then for a young boy", he mus­es. His re­sponse to the chang­ing of the dates for Car­ni­val was "I'd rather not touch that one." His ad­vice to the young peo­ple of T&T is, "Love your own peo­ple and cul­ture...We tend not to ap­pre­ci­ate ours." Lennox Pip Boogsie Sharpe, tru­ly a mu­si­cal ge­nius.