SAN­DRA L BLOOD

In 1994, Pel­ham God­dard was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Sil­ver), and in 2019, he re­ceived a Na­tion­al and Aca­d­e­m­ic Hon­orary Doc­tor­ate from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Trinidad.

Now, cel­e­brat­ing his 80th year, God­dard re­flects on his life and ca­reer with grat­i­tude, view­ing his jour­ney through much big­ger lens­es and giv­ing thanks for God’s bless­ings.

Born in­to a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly in St James, he em­barked on his pro­fes­sion­al mu­sic ca­reer at the age of 22—and nev­er looked back. Along­side suc­cess­es, he faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, yet re­silience, con­fi­dence and pos­i­tiv­i­ty pro­pelled him for­ward.

Wide­ly re­gard­ed as a so­ca ar­chi­tect, the ex­cep­tion­al key­boardist has cre­at­ed a thrilling cul­tur­al show­case, Echoes of an Era, set for Sat­ur­day at Kafe Blue, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, at 8 pm, to cel­e­brate his re­mark­able mu­si­cal jour­ney.

The per­for­mance fea­tures leg­endary artistes Den­nis Smith, Os­car B, Na­tal­ie Yorke and Car­ol Ja­cobs. God­dard care­ful­ly se­lect­ed this cast, mind­ful of their proven abil­i­ty to cap­ti­vate au­di­ences both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

A mul­ti­ple-win­ning Road March writer-arranger and Na­tion­al Panora­ma large band cham­pi­on arranger, God­dard’s ca­reer spans decades of in­no­va­tion and in­flu­ence.

Echoes of an Era will trace his for­ma­tive years from 1968 to 1976 with the Star­lift Steel Or­ches­tra, to the es­tab­lish­ment of the glob­al­ly recog­nised band Char­lie’s Roots in 1978, and his Road March break­through in 1977 with Ca­lyp­so Rose’s Give More Tem­po.

Among his 13 Road March wins with tunes by Austin “Su­perBlue” Lyons, Christo­pher “Tam­bu” Her­bert and David Rud­der, two no­table hat-tricks stand out: Su­perBlue’s Get Some­thing And Wave, Jab Jab and Bac­cha­nal Time (1991–1993), and Tam­bu’s This Par­ty Is It, Free Up and No No We Ain’t Go­ing Home (1993–1996).

In steel­pan mu­sic, his cham­pi­on era in­cludes arrange­ments in 1992, 2001, 2003 and 2004. He al­so con­tributed the orig­i­nal verse and cho­rus for Ex­o­dus, the Na­tion­al Panora­ma large band cham­pi­on in 2022 and 2023, de­spite not ar­rang­ing their win­ning tunes.

In 2015, seek­ing to broad­en his im­pact, God­dard launched Agra 9 Stu­dios in St James.

“It be­came nec­es­sary to shift fo­cus a bit,” he ex­plained.

“I ad­vanced to self-di­rect­ing pro­duc­tions and so­phis­ti­cat­ed cov­er projects.”

His mas­tery ex­tends from tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ments to the steel­pan, leav­ing an in­deli­ble mark on T&T’s mu­sic land­scape.

His in­flu­ence al­so touched younger gen­er­a­tions of per­form­ers, in­clud­ing Machel Mon­tano, whom he col­lab­o­rat­ed with in the 1980s on Too Ear­ly For Your Love.

God­dard’s tal­ents tran­scend eth­nic bound­aries—he has mas­tered In­di­an in­stru­ments, fre­quent­ly per­form­ing at Hosay cel­e­bra­tions. He at­trib­ut­es his self-taught in­ge­nu­ity and for­mal train­ing mas­tery to the late ac­claimed pan arranger Clive Bradley, who men­tored him.

A US cit­i­zen, hus­band, fa­ther and grand­fa­ther, God­dard has staged nu­mer­ous shows fea­tur­ing a myr­i­ad of artistes to nur­ture tal­ent and pre­serve mu­si­cal lega­cy.

For Echoes of an Era, he in­vites the pub­lic to en­joy an evening of ex­cep­tion­al mu­sic with ac­com­pa­ni­ment from Von­rick May­nard, Rus­sel Du­ri­ty, Richard Joseph, Dean Williams, Michelle Mar­tin-Urquhart, Haydn Robin and God­dard him­self.