Gillian Cal­iste

“John Arnold” has been a name long etched in­to the mu­si­cal, cul­tur­al and en­ter­tain­ment land­scape of T&T.

From his days of co­or­di­nat­ing, coach­ing and ac­com­pa­ny­ing To­ba­go con­tes­tants on the Hazel Ward-Red­man chil­dren's tal­ent shows 12 and Un­der and Teen Tal­ent in the ear­ly 1980s and co-found­ing and mould­ing the Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir to man­ag­ing large-scale events and im­pact­ing tourism on the sis­ter isle, Arnold has done much to pro­mote cul­tur­al arts, fes­ti­vals, and events in his 64 years.

Last month, he added an­oth­er notch to his belt, launch­ing his sec­ond pub­li­ca­tion “A To­ba­go Son: A Mem­oir by Mu­si­cian and Even­tol­o­gist John Arnold” at Kari­wak Vil­lage in To­ba­go. Writ­ten in Arnold's voice with well-known au­thor and jour­nal­ist Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni, the work com­mem­o­rates Arnold's ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons learnt in ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, events ad­min­is­tra­tion and tourism.

Through its ten chap­ters, the book traces as­pects of Arnold's life, in­clud­ing his child­hood in Bethel, hav­ing been left in the care of his grand­par­ents while his moth­er was abroad study­ing to be­come a nurse, the im­pact of a pi­ano, his years as a pi­o­neer­ing mu­sic teacher and choir di­rec­tor, the gen­e­sis of To­ba­go Jazz fest and Arnold's re­source­ful­ness in deal­ing with nu­mer­ous is­sues in events ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Arnold shared in a re­cent Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view that the mem­oir had its ori­gins in the ex­pe­ri­ences and anec­dotes in event man­age­ment he start­ed doc­u­ment­ing while he was a lec­tur­er at the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness. His ini­tial in­ten­tion was to write a text­book so oth­ers could ben­e­fit from his jour­ney. While work­ing with Allen-Agos­ti­ni, how­ev­er, he ac­cept­ed her sug­ges­tion that his ex­ten­sive life ex­pe­ri­ences and knowl­edge made him a good can­di­date for do­ing a mem­oir.

John Arnold

Arnold's first pub­li­ca­tion “Car­ry em go Long” in 2007 fea­tured the words and mu­sic of 33 folk songs of To­ba­go. But folk songs were far from the mind of his evan­gel­i­cal moth­er Jean Arnold nee Pig­got when she bought Arnold and his sis­ter San­dra a $5,000 pi­ano on her re­turn from study­ing nurs­ing in Eng­land, he re­flect­ed.

His moth­er in­tend­ed for her chil­dren to play in the church but had lit­tle idea she would set the stage for her son's deep in­volve­ment in cul­tur­al arts. Al­though she would lock the in­stru­ment when she worked the night shift to pre­vent a young Arnold and San­dra from play­ing sec­u­lar mu­sic, they found a way to pick the lock and prac­tise whichev­er genre they wished.

The cur­rent Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Ltd and Chair­man of Mu­sicTT went on to hone his mu­si­cal skills, start­ing his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer as a teacher at Sig­nal Hill Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, now known as Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary, in 1982. There, he would shape the mu­si­cal and cul­tur­al tal­ents of stu­dents for 22 years. The fa­mil­iar ac­com­pa­nist on Ward-Red­man's 12 and Un­der and Teen Tal­ent for To­ba­go par­tic­i­pants, Arnold cred­it­ed the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion pro­gramme and its sea­soned host with lay­ing the mantra for his pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney.

“I talk about that in the book ac­tu­al­ly be­cause I learnt so much from Hazel as a pro­fes­sion­al. There is a quote she gave me that I still use when she told me: al­ways stay on your bridge of pur­pose and let mud­dy wa­ter run be­neath. In oth­er words, what she was say­ing re­al­ly was just go about what you have to do and don't wor­ry about what peo­ple may say about you,” he said.

He said the words have been a source of strength which has helped him to stay fo­cused on his goals and he of­ten pass­es on the ad­vice to oth­ers.

Apart from help­ing to har­ness the mu­si­cal skills of the likes of en­ter­tain­er Os­car B (Os­car Ben­jamin), pop­u­lar so­ca artiste Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter, for­mer ca­lyp­son­ian and gospel singer East­lyn Orr, pan­nist turned promi­nent arranger Du­vone Stew­art through the tal­ent show, the cul­tur­al stal­wart was in­stru­men­tal in pro­pelling the Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir to in­ter­na­tion­al fame. Test­ing the bound­aries of tra­di­tion­al lo­cal folk chorales, the choir in­tro­duced choralog­ra­phy (dance and move­ments by a choir) to the lo­cal mu­sic fes­ti­val scene, lat­er ex­tend­ing its reper­toire to fu­sions of gospel, ca­lyp­so, reg­gae, and oth­er con­tem­po­rary mu­si­cal styles.

Man­ag­ing ex­tracur­ric­u­lar and fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as a teacher brought Arnold's knack for event man­age­ment to the fore. His first re­al chal­lenge came as chair­man of the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val in 1990 the year of the coup when he was charged with pro­duc­ing the event while the coun­try still reeled from the ter­ri­ble cri­sis.

De­spite the con­cerns of his moth­er when he de­cid­ed to leave his steady teach­ing job to take up the role of event co­or­di­na­tor/man­ag­er in the Di­vi­sion of Tourism and Trans­porta­tion at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in 2003, Arnold said it was the best time in his life.

“I was now trav­el­ling all over the world; to Fin­land, Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries, Turkey, so it was nice. I was co­or­di­nat­ing events not on­ly here, but abroad,” he said.

Two high points for him dur­ing that pe­ri­od were tour­ing with Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni, and es­pe­cial­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Eisteddfod choral com­pe­ti­tion in Wales in 2001 when the choir copped sec­ond place in the folk cat­e­go­ry and pro­mot­ing To­ba­go through the pan side Eu­phon­ics in 20 cities through­out Ger­many.

Such mar­ket­ing strate­gies saw the high­est-ever num­bers of in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors to To­ba­go–some 89,000–be­tween 2003 and 2007, Arnold said.

The Hum­ming­bird Gold re­cip­i­ent al­so played a piv­otal role in the cre­ation of the To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val which was launched in 2005 and the To­ba­go Blue Food Fes­ti­val. He has al­so con­tributed to Car­ifes­ta, among oth­er events. Of course, Arnold's break­throughs were not with­out their chal­lenges.

“We did have a chal­lenge that first year to get a ma­jor spon­sor for To­ba­go Jazz,” he re­called.

“The ma­jor spon­sor that came on board was CL Fi­nan­cial. At the last minute, we al­most had the event crash, so they re­al­ly saved the day. We had oth­er chal­lenges in 2008 when CL came out. We had to do it on our own and that's when we changed the name from Ply­mouth Jazz Fes­ti­val to To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence.”

To­ba­go Jazz was test­ed again when John Leg­end was ad­ver­tised as the head­line per­former in 2014. This time, it would be an is­sue of in­ad­e­quate ca­pac­i­ty to house the mas­sive crowd that showed up ea­ger to see the high­ly ac­claimed Amer­i­can singer live.

“The show was great, but the prob­lem that year was ca­pac­i­ty. We didn't have the space. Nei­ther did we have the road net­works. Peo­ple were in traf­fic for five hours. Yeah, we took some blows for that one,” he said.

How­ev­er, Arnold main­tained that the mantra taught to him by Ward-Red­man car­ried him through the highs and lows, adding that come 2023, the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee was plan­ning for a “big­ger and bet­ter” Jazz fest since the last one held three years ago.

While he at­trib­ut­es his stead­fast ded­i­ca­tion to the arts to his moth­er, who first in­spired him to pur­sue mu­sic, Arnold cred­it­ed the late mu­si­cian New­man Alexan­der with for­ev­er im­pact­ing his mu­si­cal life and ca­reer. For decades, he played along­side Alexan­der, an all-rounder with the Kari­wak Jazz play­ers, lap­ping up the ace mu­si­cian's mu­si­cal point­ers.

Arnold played the gui­tar and flute but the pi­ano re­mained his first love and the in­stru­ment in­to which he poured his full en­er­gy. To be a suc­cess­ful in­stru­men­tal­ist, one had to fo­cus steadi­ly on one in­stru­ment, and learn­ing to play hymns was fun­da­men­tal to play­ing the pi­ano, he point­ed out.

Cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing his PhD in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at UWI, Arnold ad­mit­ted that one pro­fes­sor had told him his mem­oir had much to of­fer as a chron­i­cle of To­ba­go cul­ture, his­to­ry, an­thro­pol­o­gy, so­ci­ol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion. He felt aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents and those in­ter­est­ed in these ar­eas would ben­e­fit most from the book but every­one could en­joy and learn from it.

“To­ba­go Son: A Mem­oir by Mu­si­cian and Even­tol­o­gist John Arnold” is avail­able on Ama­zon and Kin­dle and will soon be in lo­cal book­stores.