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Monday, August 18, 2025

Funk balances life through art, music

by

20130328

Ray Funk has be­come well-known to and loved by the peo­ple of T&T through his keen in­ter­est in ca­lyp­so and Car­ni­val.

An an­nu­al Car­ni­val vis­i­tor to T&T, af­ter this year's vis­it he took time out to up­date the T&T Guardian on the projects he's work­ing on these days, one of which is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with ca­lyp­son­ian Chalk­dust (Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool), with whom he has worked in the past.

"Chalkie and I do a num­ber of things," Funk said.

"When­ev­er I am in town I am a guest lec­tur­er for his Car­ni­val stud­ies class­es at UTT. We did a cou­ple joint events, ed­u­ca­tion­al en­ter­tain­ments I called 'D Dust and the Judge present.' We did ones on crick­et ca­lyp­soes and in­de­pen­dence ca­lyp­soes–both sev­er­al years ago.

"We have two more in the works. One is a trib­ute to Lord Melody and Lord Chris­to. The oth­er is on Li­on and At­ti­la's first record­ing trip to New York in 1934. We are hop­ing to present one or both of these in Sep­tem­ber if every­thing works out."

In ad­di­tion, Chalk­dust is start­ing work on the sec­ond vol­ume of his book Rit­u­als of Re­sis­tance, to cov­er the first 50 years of state­hood, and Funk will be a re­search as­sis­tant on it.

Soon af­ter he ar­rived for Car­ni­val this year, he had a very suc­cess­ful show­ing of ear­ly ca­lyp­so, pan and mas film clips at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain.

"That was spon­sored by the T&T Film Fes­ti­val, and was a won­der­ful free event where every­body seemed to have a good time," he re­called. "One of the things I have been re­search­ing is what films and TV shows have ear­ly ap­pear­ances of ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. This is an on­go­ing ef­fort.

"On Car­ni­val Tues­day I learned that All Stars ap­peared in an ob­scure Dutch thriller from 1974. Now, I am go­ing to try to find a way to get that and bring it to Trinidad. I am con­stant­ly look­ing for more sources of film and Car­ni­val."

Funk is al­so work­ing on a steel­band project, the his­to­ry of the North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Steel­band, which is cel­e­brat­ing its 40th an­niver­sary this year.

"This unique pro­gramme is, in my opin­ion, cer­tain­ly one of great in­ter­est. North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty has one of the best steel­bands in the US, led by Liam Teague and Cliff Alex­is.

"I am head­ed to Illi­nois in April to their spring con­cert and a recital by Teague which fea­tures a num­ber of pre­mieres of com­mis­sions of new com­po­si­tions for pan in var­i­ous set­tings.

"An­drew Mar­tin, who did his dis­ser­ta­tion on pan in Amer­i­ca, and Dr Jea­nine Re­my, who got her de­gree from NIU, and I are work­ing to­geth­er on this.

"I be­lieve that Liam and Cliff are two of the ge­nius­es of pan and they have shaped this in­to an amaz­ing pro­gramme.

"Al O'Con­nor, who start­ed the pro­gramme, showed amaz­ing ded­i­ca­tion to bring pan in­to Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, and his vi­sion not on­ly cre­at­ed a great pro­gramme at NIU, but led the way in the de­vel­op­ment of pan pro­grammes in Amer­i­can col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.

"Now NIU is of­fer­ing a mas­ter's de­gree in per­cus­sion, with pan as the pri­ma­ry in­stru­ment, that is at­tract­ing many of the lead­ing young pan­nists from Trinidad, like Seon Gomez and Mia Gor­mandy."

How and why did a judge from Alas­ka de­cide to de­vote so much of his time and en­er­gy to T&T, its mu­sic, and its Car­ni­val?

"Com­ing to Trinidad and do­ing re­search on Trinidad cul­ture cre­ates a need­ed bal­ance in my life," an­swered Funk. "My pro­fes­sion­al life as a lawyer and judge has been so much about the sad­ness of nice peo­ple who do stu­pid and bad things when drink­ing that cause oth­ers in­jury and them­selves se­ri­ous mis­ery.

"I find that my ob­ses­sion with Trinidad cul­ture is the re­verse. It is not about sad­ness, but about the joy of artis­tic achieve­ment. The cre­ative en­er­gies of Tri­nis con­stant­ly amaze me, from ca­lyp­so and ex­tem­po to pan and mas, the­atre and art."

Who is Ray Funk?

A re­tired tri­al court judge from Fair­banks, Alas­ka, Funk has been re­search­ing ver­nac­u­lar mu­sic for over 25 years. Ini­tial­ly, his fo­cus was on African-Amer­i­can vo­cal har­mo­ny and gospel singing.He has writ­ten lin­er notes for over 50 re-is­sued al­bums, as well as giv­ing lec­tures and writ­ing pa­pers on that sub­ject.

He has al­so re­searched film and tele­vi­sion footage of tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can mu­sic and was a footage con­sul­tant to the pub­lic tele­vi­sion se­ries Amer­i­can Roots Mu­sic, as well as for over a dozen oth­er doc­u­men­taries films.He has an on­line newslet­ter, has writ­ten for all three dai­ly news­pa­pers in this coun­try, and was the co-cu­ra­tor of a trav­el­ling and on­line ex­hib­it called Ca­lyp­so: A World Mu­sic, with the His­tor­i­cal Mu­se­um of South­ern Flori­da.


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