SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

The on­ly form of T&T en­ter­tain­ment that will be en­joyed at the Mar­cus Mosi­ah Gar­vey Foun­da­tion’s (MMGF) first vir­tu­al, but sec­ond an­nu­al, Din­ner and Dance Gala event sched­uled for Au­gust 17, is the Port-of-Spain band, Caribbean Steel­band Con­nex­tion (CSC), be­ing the first steel­band to per­form at the event.

The 11-mem­ber group was al­so the first to per­form in the largest coun­try in Cen­tral Asia and ninth-largest in the world, Kaza­khstan, in 2017. That per­for­mance was for the Es­pana Trade Ex­po 2017 themed, Fu­ture En­er­gy.

CSC is man­aged by Is­rael “Izzy” McLeod and cap­tained by Rikky An­dre Rob­ley, lead tenor pan­nist for the world’s lead­ing steel or­ches­tra and reign­ing na­tion­al Panora­ma large-band cham­pi­on (2020), Des­per­a­does.

McLeod stat­ed that while oth­er bands’ mem­bers form the CSC, they are ful­ly com­mit­ted to their re­spec­tive band. There’s no an­i­mos­i­ty, on­ly love and full sup­port.

“For the ex­po, it was a Face­book post that ad­ver­tised for pan­nists to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion with the par­tic­u­lar fee to par­tic­i­pate, and we emerged the lucky band cho­sen world­wide, but de­spite hav­ing ar­rived one month af­ter every­one else, it all turned out su­perb,” stat­ed McLeod.

For the Cari­com ini­tia­tive, CSC sub­mit­ted a sev­en-minute video and rel­e­vant port­fo­lio that im­pressed.

Members of the Caribbean Steelband Connextion.

Caribbean Steelpan Connextion

Ini­tial­ly, a four-mem­ber group formed in 2017, McLeod said: “We pride our­self as be­ing the vibes, pas­sion and mu­sic of the Caribbean. We are trendy and are con­tin­u­ing to grow. New mem­bers are be­ing re­cruit­ed.

“Our band in­cludes one sax­o­phon­ist who is al­so one of our play­ers, Brigid ‘Trin­isax­tress’ Sam. Some of our uni­forms are de­signed by our di­va Caris­sa Vic­tor.”

In their four years, CSC was al­so the first steel­band to per­form for the at­tor­ney gen­er­al of Sau­di Ara­bia at the in­au­gur­al T&T Sau­di Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s Busi­ness Fo­rum 2018, at the Miss World T&T Fi­nals, and World Mu­sic Day 2018 and 2019, and were ex­pect­ed in Sene­gal 2019 and 2020, but un­for­tu­nate­ly COVID-19 hit.

The band’s oth­er in­volve­ments in­clude: Unite and Re­build Fundrais­er for the Ba­hamas, the Na­tion­al Pa­tri­o­tism Month 2020 and the Vaugh­nette Big­ford Pro­duc­tion, D’Sun­set Pan Jazz Lime 2021.

CSC is al­so the own­er and pro­duc­er of the an­nu­al Car­ni­val fundrais­er, The World on Steel.

The Ghana al­liance came by way of a mem­ber of the Ghana T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, Trinidad na­tion­al and Ghan­ian cit­i­zen, Dr Su­san Al­fred, and African gar­ment busi­ness own­er, T&T cit­i­zen Av­ery Am­mon.

Al­ready taped and sub­mit­ted, their reper­toire, in ho­n­our of the late Niger­ian mu­si­cian and ac­tivist, Fela Ran­some Ku­ti, com­pris­es Afrobeats, tunes on the Groovy Rhythm, Is­land pop-ur­ban, and orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions.

Caribbean Steelband Connextion.

Caribbean Steelpan Connextion