Suzanne Shep­pard

When Mae­gan Pol­lon­ais left T&T 12 years ago to pur­sue ter­tiary stud­ies, she planned to study so­ci­ol­o­gy to be­come a crim­i­nol­o­gist. In pur­suit of that dream, she en­rolled in a de­gree pro­gramme at SUNY Platts­burgh in New York.

Her plans changed af­ter a pro­fes­sor heard her singing and en­cour­aged her to switch to mu­sic as a ma­jor. Mae­gan didn’t need much con­vinc­ing.

She re­vealed in a re­cent in­ter­view: “Al­though I want­ed to be­come a crim­i­nol­o­gist, I al­ways se­cret­ly nursed the hope of con­tin­u­ing my mu­si­cal train­ing.”

That proved to be a right choice as on May 2, she grad­u­at­ed with her Doc­tor of Arts De­gree in Mu­sic with a Con­cen­tra­tion in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy and a Cer­tifi­cate in Gift­ed and Tal­ent­ed Ed­u­ca­tion from Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Born in New York City, Mae­gan came to Trinidad and To­ba­go at age six and was raised here. Mu­sic was a part of her life from ear­ly on. She at­tend­ed Mu­cu­rapo Girls’ RC, then Holy Name Con­vent where she got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in and win sev­er­al Mu­sic Fes­ti­val com­pe­ti­tions.

“I was an avid mem­ber of the Mar­i­onettes Chorale that gave me nu­mer­ous so­lo singing op­por­tu­ni­ties and made me fall in love with per­form­ing. Thank you to them,” she said.

Once she re­alised that mu­sic was her true call­ing, there was no turn­ing back for Mae­gan. In 2012, she grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Mu­sic and So­ci­ol­o­gy with a mi­nor in The­atre Arts. Al­so, she was award­ed the 2012 Out­stand­ing Per­former Grad­u­at­ing Se­nior Award, Grad­u­at­ing Se­nior Award in Jazz Per­for­mance, and the Mer­tle Mehan Award.

Dur­ing the four years as she worked to­ward her first de­gree, Mae­gan got a taste of per­form­ing and mu­si­cal train­ing.

“I was thirsty for more,” she said. “I was very for­tu­nate enough to be award­ed the Winifred. O. Stone Pres­i­den­tial Schol­ar­ship for Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­si­ty, Ohio, where I was able to pur­sue a Mas­ters of Mu­sic De­gree.

“Dur­ing this time, I was of­fered and at­tend­ed many Young Artist opera per­for­mance pro­grammes in Italy, Ger­many, Cana­da, and the Unit­ed States. I was one of 30 singers cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate in the Op­er­a­Works Emerg­ing Young Artist Pro­gramme in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia that au­di­tioned over 300 singers. My love for opera per­for­mance was grow­ing and the op­por­tu­ni­ties kept pre­sent­ing them­selves.”

As she at­tend­ed au­di­tions and trav­elled to dif­fer­ent parts of the world, Mae­gan no­ticed there were very few mu­si­cians of colour.

She said: “This was tru­ly dis­ap­point­ing to see and ex­pe­ri­ence, hav­ing be­ing raised in a coun­try so rich in di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion. This de­sire for rep­re­sen­ta­tion and eq­ui­ty cre­at­ed a new found pas­sion in me. I want­ed to help mi­nor­i­ty stu­dents find their voic­es and cre­ate their lega­cies.

“I want­ed to lead. I want­ed to guide and shape the minds of mi­nor­i­ty stu­dents who may not have had the ex­pe­ri­ences and op­por­tu­ni­ties that I had. I want­ed to help cor­rect some of the bi­as­es and ig­no­rance that many di­verse stu­dents en­counter.

“I can­not tell you the num­ber of times peo­ple asked me “If all we sing is day light come and me wan­na go home” in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ig­no­rant of the fact that while in the Mar­i­onettes I sang Beethoven, Mozart, and Han­del to name a few. There were a lot of stereo­types, prej­u­dice and ig­no­rance that I want­ed to ad­dress and to ed­u­cate.”

Mae­gan en­rolled in the Doc­tor of Arts in Mu­sic at Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty in In­di­ana. While there she was the Grad­u­ate As­sis­tant for the PhD. Path­ways Pro­gramme in the Of­fice of In­sti­tu­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and had the op­por­tu­ni­ty towith high achiev­ing mi­nor­i­ty stu­dents.

The pro­gramme helps these stu­dents get in­to grad­u­ate school and hope­ful­ly start them on their way to a Ph.D.

Mae­gan, who de­scribed it as “one of the most re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ences I have had in my life,” worked with stu­dents who were the first of their fam­i­lies to at­tend col­lege

“My de­sire to work with these un­der-rep­re­sent­ed mi­nor­i­ty stu­dents was so­lid­i­fied and com­pound­ed through­out these three years of work­ing in the Ph.D. Path­ways. At Ball State, I was al­so a Grad­u­ate School Am­bas­sador, the Stu­dent Co­or­di­na­tor for the Pan African Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme, nom­i­nat­ed for the Grad­u­ate As­sis­tant of the Year Award in 2017, as well as nom­i­nat­ed by Ball State for the Pa­tri­cia K Cross Fu­ture Leader Na­tion­al Award in 2019.

At Ball State Mae­gan was able to de­vel­op her craft un­der the guid­ance of voice pro­fes­sor, Dr. Mei Zhong. She won Ball State’s 10th An­nu­al Voice Com­pe­ti­tion in 2016 and the Great Com­pos­er’s In­ter­na­tion­al Voice Com­pe­ti­tion in 2017.

“I was al­so in­vit­ed to sing in mas­ter class­es for the George Shirley (the first African Amer­i­can tenor to sing a lead­ing role at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera) and Gram­my Award-win­ner Is­abel Leonard. What amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ences that I will cher­ish for­ev­er,” she said

“One of the high­lights of my singing ca­reer at Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty, was when I was in­vit­ed to sing the Na­tion­al An­them of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca at the Worthen Are­na at the Fall 2019 Com­mence­ment Cer­e­mo­ny.

“What an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege. An ar­ti­cle by the Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty Alum­ni Mag­a­zine was writ­ten about me and fea­tured my per­for­mance prowess and my work with stu­dent life. To date, my favourite role to per­form would be, The Witch, in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gre­tel. I en­joyed this role so much so that I was able to make my pro­fes­sion­al op­er­at­ic de­but per­form­ing this role with the Salt­works Opera Com­pa­ny in Vir­ginia in their pro­duc­tion of Hansel and Gre­tel.”

Mae­gan had long had a de­sire to in­cor­po­rate di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and her Caribbean her­itage in ber mu­si­cal en­deav­ours. In 2017, she saw what was pos­si­ble when Lon­don based T&T com­pos­er Do­minique Le Gen­dre pre­sent­ed Songs of the Is­lands, a 12 song col­lec­tion.

She at­tend­ed the pre­mière pre­sent­ed by the Pi­coplat Mu­sic De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion and “quick­ly be­came in­trigued and ex­cit­ed.”

She re­vealed: “I was adamant in bring­ing the song cy­cle to the Unit­ed States, and in 2018, I pre­sent­ed a lec­ture recital on the poly­cul­tur­al el­e­ments in Le Gen­dre’s Songs of the Is­lands, thus mak­ing its In­ter­na­tion­al Pre­miere. I had found my dis­ser­ta­tion top­ic. Since then, I have per­formed and been in­vit­ed to per­form Songs of the Is­lands at over six oth­er uni­ver­si­ties in the US.”

Un­der the guid­ance of Dr. Don Es­ter, Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic Ed­u­ca­tion at Ball State, Mae­gan spent two years do­ing re­search, study, and per­for­mance of these songs and their ori­gins. She la­tr wrote more than 200 pages on the im­por­tance of mul­ti­cul­tur­al mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion to di­min­ish­ing the achieve­ment gap be­tween mi­nor­i­ty stu­dents and their coun­ter­parts, the dis­cov­ery and ex­plo­ration of Caribbean art song, and a ped­a­gog­i­cal guide to per­form­ing Le Gen­dre’s songs.

“It is as if both my pas­sions com­bined to form this to­tal­ly unique project. I am cur­rent­ly work­ing on get­ting my work pub­lished as my first book,” she said.

Mae­gan is cur­rent­ly As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Stu­dent Di­ver­si­ty and In­clu­sion and a Res­i­dent Hall Di­rec­tor at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in In­di­ana. How­ev­er, her dream is to cre­ate an en­rich­ment pro­gramme for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in T&T. It can take the form of an af­ter-school pro­gramme where stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in ear train­ing (au­r­al skills), vo­cal train­ing, self-es­teem build­ing, and per­for­mance tech­niques.

She said: “What I have ul­ti­mate­ly learned from every­thing I have stud­ied is that mu­sic has a trans­for­ma­tive pow­er that can aid in the de­vel­op­ment of a strong sense of self, teach­es dis­ci­pline, and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties that may not have pre­sent­ed them­selves, be­cause I of­ten think about what would have hap­pened had I not cho­sen to add mu­sic as a ma­jor? Would I be Dr. Pol­lon­ais to­day?”