David Cuffy

Fol­low­ing on the heels of the Jit Sama­roo Ben­e­fit Con­cert staged by Pan Trin­ba­go on Au­gust 8, an­oth­er fund-rais­er to help de­fray med­ical ex­pens­es for the icon­ic com­pos­er/mu­sic arranger is now avail­able.

It is in the form of a high-res­o­lu­tion dig­i­tal down­load that comes from the tra­di­tion­al Ko­re­an folk song Chil­gap­san which sets the mood for in­tro­duc­ing a suite of eight pieces ti­tled From a Point of Love com­posed by Jit and record­ed by The Sama­roo Jets in 1992. The mu­sic was used, on oc­ca­sions, by coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist Laila Valere to stim­u­late well­ness and har­mo­ny of mind, body and spir­it.

Chil­gap­san is a moun­tain of Chungcheong­nam-do in west­ern South Ko­rea with an el­e­va­tion of 561 me­tres. It has deep val­leys and moun­tain ridges. The name is com­posed of Chi­nese let­ter Chil (?: sev­en or the uni­verse) that means all the things in the uni­verse and an­oth­er Chi­nese let­ter Gap (?: ar­mor) is the first let­ter of 60 ori­en­tal sex­a­ge­nary cir­cles. The east­ern val­ley of the moun­tain has a vil­lage called Alps Vil­lage, a tran­quil high­land vil­lage that has pre­served tra­di­tion­al cus­toms and folk arts very well up to the present day.

The al­bum, ti­tled Pan­cen­den­tal Elixa, was pro­duced by Sanch Elec­tron­ix whose man­ag­ing di­rec­tor/ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Sime­on San­di­ford said: "Through a long-stand­ing pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion that evolved in­to a warm friend­ship, I learned much about the beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty of Panora­ma arrange­ments by dis­sect­ing and analysing many of them in re­al time with Jit's metic­u­lous as­sis­tance.

"An ul­tra-con­ser­v­a­tive yet as­tute and pro­found gen­tle­man, I have al­ways held Jit in my high­est es­teem, first among equals in the fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive and in­su­lar steel­band world. It pains me to know that he is now very ill, pal­pa­bly de­void of his cre­ative facets."

He said the 24-bit files from the orig­i­nal record­ing, re-mas­tered from a cas­sette, have been utilised in the new work, and pro­ceeds from down­loads will be used to as­sist in de­fray­ing Jit's med­ical ex­pens­es. The re­main­ing funds will go to­wards build­ing the Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem for fos­ter­ing Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme, us­ing the ubiq­ui­tous an­i­mat­ed steel­pan in­struc­tor Pe­te the Pan­stick.

BP Rene­gades Steel Or­ches­tra's in­stru­ment tuner Bertrand "Butch" Kell­man was the per­son who made the nec­es­sary con­nec­tions for Jit Sama­roo to land the job of arranger with the Char­lotte Street band. A long and suc­cess­ful re­la­tion­ship de­vel­oped, with Jit help­ing the band to vic­to­ry in Panora­ma on nine oc­ca­sions. In 1984, Rene­gades won by 17.5 points, the widest mar­gin ever record­ed in Panora­ma fi­nals which last­ed un­til 2005.

In 1989, he si­lenced crit­ics who said he could on­ly arrange Lord Kitch­en­er ca­lyp­soes, with an arrange­ment of Baron's Some­body that com­bined as many as six rhythms in one ca­lyp­so arrange­ment. Al­so, BP Rene­gades un­der his arrange­ments is the on­ly steel or­ches­tra to have three suc­ces­sive wins in Panora­ma, 1995/1996 with De Fos­to's ca­lyp­soes, and 1997 with a Lord Kitch­en­er se­lec­tion.

The tracks from Pan­cen­den­tal Elixa

1 In­tro­duc­tion � Song for a Gold­en Sun­rise

2 Re­lax­ation and Cen­ter­ing � Hymn of Pan

3 Med­i­ta­tion and In­ner Peace � Serendip­i­ty

4 Prayer for Trinidad and To­ba­go � Serendip­i­ty

5 For­give­ness and Heal­ing � Join­ing Hands

6 Heal­ing the Uni­verse � Coast­ing to Light, Love and Peace

7 Bene­dic­tion and Na­tion­al An­them � Song for a Gold­en Sun­rise

8 Clos­ing � For the love of Pan

The al­bum is avail­able for down­load at myiestore.com/sanch­elec­tron­ix/prod­uct/chil­gap­san.