Pe­ter Ray Blood

As a child grow­ing up in Laven­tille, let's say up to the age of 12 or 13, my on­ly am­bi­tion was to be a priest. Yes, I know many of you must be falling off your chairs laugh­ing, but it's the truth....cross my heart.

Back then, three of us shared the same dream-Win­ston Joseph, Ken­neth Spence and my­self. Of the trio, Win­ston and Ken­neth are ac­tu­al­ly priests to­day. A big part of this as­pi­ra­tion had to do with the adults that men­tored Win­ston and I as acolytes and cho­ris­ters at the Cathe­dral of the Holy Trin­i­ty in Port-of-Spain; peo­ple like Es­la Mor­ris, choir mas­ters JEV Jenk­ins and Melville Robin, head serv­er Ru­pert Reg­is, priest John Sewell, and the Verg­ers Messrs George and Carl­ton.

Apart from choir prac­tice dur­ing the week, on Sat­ur­day, we young­sters were ea­ger to get to the church to pre­pare our sur­plices and cas­socks, and our hym­nals. Back then, these adults didn't just preach the talk...they walked the walk as well. They looked out in a very se­ri­ous way for their young charges, ad­mon­ish­ing us, ad­vis­ing us, groom­ing us to blos­som in­to up­stand­ing, re­spon­si­ble male and fe­male adults. This pre­am­ble brings me to why I thought of them this week. I walk­ing along Queen Street and saw the Trin­i­ty All Gen­er­a­tions (TAGS) mu­si­cians hud­dled un­der a lit­tle tent, with mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Phae­dra Pierre in their midst. I stopped to en­quire what was go­ing on and the sto­ry I got shocked the be­jeezans out of me.

Phead­ra ex­plained that at the be­gin­ning of March this year, the band was asked to "tem­porar­i­ly" give up its space in the Cathe­dral for the con­se­cra­tion of the new bish­op that month. The mu­sic room, lo­cat­ed in the cathe­dral car park, where the band re­lo­cat­ed to, proved to be too small for prac­tice and class­es.

"We as­sumed in good faith that we'd be al­lowed back in­to cathe­dral af­ter the con­se­cra­tion," says Phae­dra, "but, it's now six months, and we're still out here." Re­cent­ly call­ing back the cathe­dral of­fice for an up­date on the steel­band's fate, Phae­dra was told that "con­sid­er­a­tion" is be­ing giv­en to mov­ing the band to the loft in the back of the church, which is even more in­con­ve­nient than be­ing in the mu­sic room.

TAGS steel or­ches­tra now per­forms in the car park, ex­posed to the el­e­ments.

The band, com­pris­ing pre-teens and teenagers, placed fourth in this year's Ju­nior Na­tion­al Panora­ma fi­nals. In 2010, the band won the dis­trict and na­tion­al cham­pi­onship ju­nior pan en­sem­ble and the cham­ber en­sem­ble class­es. TAGS cre­at­ed his­to­ry in the lat­ter by scor­ing a per­fect 100 per cent, a first in the his­to­ry of mu­sic fes­ti­val. In these times of our youth be­ing at six­es and sev­ens in terms of dis­ci­pline and di­rec­tion, we need more car­ing adults, like those of yes­ter­year at Trin­i­ty, adults that are sin­cere­ly in­ter­est­ed in di­rect­ing our chil­dren to a brighter and bet­ter fu­ture than the one most of them face at present.

No Siz­zla

Still con­va­lesc­ing from in­juries sus­tain in an ac­ci­dent, Siz­zla Kolon­ji is un­able to trav­el to Trinidad for his big con­cert, planned for to­mor­row night, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, in Port-of-Spain. This week a spokesman for the pro­mot­ers of Siz­zling Hot, fea­tur­ing Siz­zla, De­ter­mine, Ben­jai & Blaxx, Roy Cape All Stars and more, said that once the pop­u­lar Ja­maican star is ful­ly re­cov­ered, he will meet his com­mit­ment to per­form in Trinidad, hope­ful­ly by No­vem­ber.