SAN­DRA L BLOOD

Lay­ing down on her bed one night, she be­gan to think about who she is as a per­son, and as a per­son in the steel­pan in­dus­try. This prompt­ed Nao-mi Fred­er­ick to start a so­cial me­dia page.

Fred­er­ick, then a stu­dent at Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary’s Caribbean Vo­ca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tion (CVQ) pan man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­gramme, ap­proached her teacher, Kurt Sargeant, with an idea that would see her chat­ting with her friends about the idea the same night, but they were clue­less of the scope.

Pro­gress­ing to the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny (MIC), Fred­er­ick, along with her friends, want­ed to be­come man­u­fac­tur­ers and tuners, which saw her ap­pris­ing them of the big­ger idea prompt­ing in­ter­est and ex­cite­ment.

Fred­er­ick’s idea to form an all-woman steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing and tun­ing team called Women of Steel (WOS) came to life.

Cur­rent­ly be­ing tu­tored by Roger “Moon” Robin­son of LH Pan Groove and Kai­jah Co­dring­ton, of The Co­dring­ton Pan Fam­i­ly, the five friends—Sindy Her­rera, Aman­da Sin­nette, Keyan­na Munroe, 21 years, and Abi­gail Re­ece and Fred­er­ick, 20—would be­come T&T’s first fe­male and youngest fe­male pan-man­u­fac­tur­ing and tun­ing team, with a pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing the world’s, giv­en no record to date Au­gust 24, 2020.

With a vi­sion “to de­vel­op and show­case the fe­male pres­ence in steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­plore their po­ten­tial in the in­dus­try,” Fred­er­ick jus­ti­fies her as­pir­ing es­sen­tial ca­reer as fu­elled from hav­ing learned about all the great as­pects with­in the in­dus­try, and ob­serv­ing the ab­sence of women in many ar­eas. She wants to change that by en­cour­ag­ing more girls and women to grasp the op­por­tu­ni­ties. She said: “It is not a man-alone thing any­more, and women can learn the craft and art­form and make huge prof­its.”

“I want WOS ‘to tru­ly ed­u­cate T&T about the steel­pan with spe­cial fo­cus on man­u­fac­tur­ing and tun­ing; to get le­gal pro­tec­tion for the steel­pan; be­come ac­tivists; and pro­mote dis­ci­pline and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as a group pro­mot­ing fe­male ex­cel­lence in the in­dus­try’.”

With goals to be­come ed­u­ca­tors, en­tre­pre­neurs, re­spect­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers and tuners but in gen­er­al, all-round­ed hu­man be­ings, Fred­er­ick stress­es that they put God first in every­thing they do, but notes, with­out dis­ci­pline, pas­sion and fo­cus, one will not eas­i­ly or prop­er­ly achieve any­thing. It is your men­tal­i­ty that has to act.

“We plan on mak­ing a dent in the steel­pan in­dus­try even though we know it’s go­ing to be a lot of hard work,” said Fred­er­ick. “We need to start speak­ing to the world on cer­tain top­ics that are not com­mon­ly spo­ken on.

“These five won­ders of world are mul­ti-tal­ent­ed and, “have been un­break­able bud­dies since 2012; like a tight-knit fam­i­ly.”

She quipped: “We are al­so proud mem­bers of the MHTL Star­lift fam­i­ly and are ‘We Not I’ for­ev­er, hav­ing start­ed from the ju­nior band.”

Song­ster Fred­er­ick, once cap­tain for the ju­nior band and Re­ece the sec­re­tary, have ad­vanced with the oth­er three to the se­nior or­ches­tra where Fred­er­ick mas­ters all pan in­stru­ments but plays the gui­tar pan, of which, she is the sec­tion leader and Al­ter­nate Floor Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Fred­er­ick, the el­dest of six sib­lings, is born to Ayana and Takun­da Fred­er­ick, and apart from high­ly prais­ing her for­mer CVQ teacher for im­pact­ing her con­fi­dence and for­ward think­ing, Star­lift has done won­ders.

She said: “Re­spons­es on our pages are over­whelm­ing, in­spir­ing and very hum­bling. It’s a great, awe­some and fan­tas­tic ex­pe­ri­ence, and we haven’t even start­ed to touch on the meat of our jour­ney.”

Woman of Steel ready to take the world by storm

Fred­er­ick says: “Young peo­ple want to be reck­less and not work hard, but the steel women’s moms don’t make joke, so we have to al­ways walk the straight line. We have a very pos­i­tive at­ti­tude to­wards learn­ing, and are ex­cit­ed about all our fu­ture en­deav­ours.

“We boast of be­ing black, proud, in­de­pen­dent young adults, lit­er­al­ly ready to take over the world with God at their side.”

Fred­er­ick thanks God for choos­ing this path for them, and of­ten-time won­ders, what the Women would have been do­ing if they didn’t con­sult with Him first. She prays for the break they need to “talk to the world about our his­to­ry, pan…that is ours.” She al­so thanks every­one who played a part in mak­ing her dream start to take shape.

Women of Steel are ex­clu­sive­ly spe­cial­is­ing in man­u­fac­tur­ing and tun­ing bass pans.

The pan fra­ter­ni­ty, and com­mu­ni­ties, Care­nage, Diego Mar­tin and Sea Lots, should stand in ho­n­our of these five young women, for, as Fred­er­ick de­scribes them: “True women of steel.”