SAN­DRA L BLOOD

In a for­tu­nate twist, Pow­er Stars Youth Mu­sic Acad­e­my (PSY) at­tend­ed the Pres­i­dent’s Pan Camp 2026 de­spite nev­er hav­ing been on the orig­i­nal in­vit­ed list.

Af­ter a spir­i­tu­al call­ing and recog­nis­ing the ben­e­fits the ex­pe­ri­ence could bring to the young pan­nists, their man­ag­er, Gre­go­ry Lind­say, made a nec­es­sary call, and the mem­bers turned up as an en­thu­si­as­tic group with added in­cen­tive.

Now in its third year, the camp was launched by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo as a means of en­cour­ag­ing pos­i­tive so­cial change, youth de­vel­op­ment and dis­ci­pline—ob­jec­tives that Lind­say set out for his band, Pow­er Stars Steel Or­ches­tra (PSSO), decades ago.

The Pres­i­dent’s House In­for­ma­tion Di­vi­sion de­scribed the campers as or­di­nary young men and women, “some with qui­et con­fi­dence, some with ner­vous hearts, some with unan­swered ques­tions, and no idea what lay ahead.”

Al­though PSY had not been among those ini­tial­ly in­vit­ed, its mem­bers dis­played the same char­ac­ter­is­tics ex­pect­ed of campers se­lect­ed for the pro­gramme: “courage, cu­rios­i­ty, and the will­ing­ness to lis­ten, learn and grow.” How­ev­er, they ar­rived with some ex­pe­ri­ence be­yond that of their fel­low campers.

PSY said the camp al­so al­lowed par­tic­i­pants to “dis­cov­er that the pa­n­yard is more than a place where mu­sic is made—it is where char­ac­ter is forged, com­mu­ni­ties are built, and fu­tures are trans­formed.”

Giv­en the ac­tiv­i­ties al­ready tak­ing place at their pa­n­yard, the young pan­nists said they un­der­stood the val­ue of such an en­vi­ron­ment and had seen how fu­tures could be trans­formed for the bet­ter.

Be­yond youth em­pow­er­ment and so­cial trans­for­ma­tion, an­oth­er key ob­jec­tive of the Pres­i­dent’s Pan Camp is to is­sue a call to ac­tion by draw­ing the at­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor to the need to broad­en op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple.

The camp al­so seeks to en­cour­age a shift away from treat­ing steel­pan strict­ly as a sea­son­al Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty and to­ward in­vest­ment in year-round com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture for the arts.

Kan­ga­loo said, “Every guest who vis­its the Pres­i­dent’s Pan Camp brings a dif­fer­ent sto­ry and every sto­ry leaves the campers with some­thing new.”

PSY brought its own sto­ries, the first be­ing one of irony and de­light. The band’s pa­n­yard is the birth­place of the very first fe­male Pres­i­dent of T&T and Kan­ga­loo’s pre­de­ces­sor, for­mer Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes, where she be­gan her pan-play­ing jour­ney.

Lind­say said this his­to­ry helps to keep the band mo­ti­vat­ed. With the added in­cen­tive of hav­ing vis­it­ed Pres­i­dent’s House, he said his young pan­nists were even more in­spired and would be placed on the band’s Wall of Fame.

Their sec­ond and third sto­ries cen­tred on con­fi­dence and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“While we do not have a spon­sor to as­sist us fi­nan­cial­ly or oth­er­wise, we com­prise mem­bers from all over Trinidad, and many of us are from vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties. Yet we ex­ist with love,” PSY said.

The camp was in­tend­ed for chil­dren aged 11 to 17, with one chap­er­one re­quired for every four pan­nists. How­ev­er, PSY said its mem­bers demon­strat­ed that they were ca­pa­ble of con­duct­ing them­selves re­spon­si­bly.

The group at­tend­ed with 25 pan­nists and one chap­er­one, with the youngest par­tic­i­pant be­ing sev­en-year-old Kwani Wal­dron.

On Ju­ly 14, the sec­ond day of the camp, PSY at­tend­ed in an or­der­ly and pre­sentable man­ner with Lind­say, who de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as “a mem­o­rable Cap­stone event, and their sixth event in six weeks.”

Among the “new things the campers left with” was a thought-pro­vok­ing chal­lenge to plan for the fu­ture.

For­mer Young Kings Monarch Mi­cal Te­jah, whose re­al name is Mi­cal Williams, posed the ques­tion to Mia Mc­Dow­ell: “Where do you want to be in 10 years?”

The ques­tion pleas­ant­ly shocked Mc­Dow­ell and her fel­low pan­nists, while al­so en­cour­ag­ing them to think about their fu­tures.

Lind­say said the ex­pe­ri­ence al­so re­in­forced the im­por­tance of build­ing con­fi­dence and learn­ing to in­ter­act pro­duc­tive­ly, re­gard­less of age. He point­ed to Wal­dron, whose con­fi­dence and in­ter­ac­tion were ad­mired by his fel­low pan­nists.

Lind­say said some of the group’s re­cent non-pan ac­tiv­i­ties, apart from the Pan Camp, in­clud­ed games, an ex­po and cui­sine.

Lind­say, cap­tain Aaron Clarke and the par­ents of the young pan­nists ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Kan­ga­loo, her hus­band, First Gen­tle­man Ker­wyn Gar­cia SC, and the Pres­i­dent’s team for the op­por­tu­ni­ty.