CHARLES KONG SOO

Most steel bands start out with its mem­bers typ­i­cal­ly meet­ing in the pan world, chance en­coun­ters at a mu­si­cal event, or tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­u­als con­nect­ing in the same high school class­room.

Then there are those bands whose gen­e­sis be­gins in the cra­dle, as with 20-year-old Mal­abar twins Melis­sa and Ana-Lis­sa Jack.

At their al­ma mater St Joseph Con­vent, St Joseph, the girls played foot­ball and crick­et and were cap­tains, they re­ceived the Prin­ci­pal's Award for most out­stand­ing all-round stu­dents and Ana-Lis­sa al­so re­ceived an ad­di­tion­al busi­ness schol­ar­ship. She is cur­rent­ly study­ing law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, while Melis­sa will be study­ing med­i­cine at UWI in Sep­tem­ber.

Melis­sa plays pan, gui­tar, sax­o­phone and key­board, while her sib­ling plays per­cus­sion and gui­tar.

The steel band they are part of—the Ari­ma Boys' and Girls' RC Steel Or­ches­tra—didn't qual­i­fy for the fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Schools' Ju­nior Panora­ma, it was the band's first for­ay in com­pe­ti­tion as it was on­ly formed in De­cem­ber, 2017.

Ac­cord­ing to their moth­er, Ann-Marie Jack, a Stan­dard Three teacher at Ari­ma Boys' RC, the ori­gin of the school band came about due to the ded­i­ca­tion of teach­ers and par­ents and the pas­sion of past pupils from the boys and girls schools, who want­ed to give back to their schools in what­ev­er field they had learned.

She said she took her idea to the Ari­ma Boys' Prin­ci­pal Bri­an Brooks and asked him if they can form a com­bined steel band since Melis­sa had the love and pas­sion for the mu­sic and she was on a year break from her stud­ies.

The prin­ci­pal green light­ed the for­ma­tion of the band.

Jack said what was spe­cial about the band was that with past pupils from Ari­ma Boys such as Nathaniel Guer­ra and Melis­sa and Ana-Lis­sa from Ari­ma Girls at the helm, they were get­ting oth­er young stu­dents in­volved in play­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and be­ing pos­i­tive role mod­els.

She said they were do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive with their lives, so that lat­er on who knows where it could take them.

Jack said her sup­port was to en­sure that the same ground­ing Guer­ra, her daugh­ters and oth­er past stu­dents re­ceived, they would now be able to pass it for­ward and men­tor oth­er young stu­dents.

She said be­cause of the short Car­ni­val sea­son they gave up their Christ­mas hol­i­days to help the young chil­dren who were very ex­cit­ed and en­thu­si­as­tic to learn to play the pan.

Melis­sa said “I arrange the mu­sic, teach them to play and ba­si­cal­ly lead the band and al­so play pan in one of the choirs in the San­ta Rosa RC Church, Ari­ma.

“At Christ­mas it was on­ly ten, now there are 20 boys and 13 girls in the band.

“We had two weeks to learn Kitch­en­er's song Iron Man from scratch, prac­tic­ing at lunch time and af­ter school and most of them nev­er played pan be­fore.

“It was chal­leng­ing be­cause most of the girls were in SEA class­es and had ex­tra lessons, the av­er­age age is nine and the youngest is six years.”

She said they had a few pans on the com­pound and were able to bor­row some from Nu Tones pan yard.

Melis­sa said as the school had no spon­sors, it raised funds sell­ing ice cream and cup­cakes to pay some­one to tune the pans.

Ana-Lis­sa said there was a Stan­dard Three boy who start­ed play­ing drums along­side her to ac­com­pa­ny the pan.

She played with him to en­sure that he did not speed up or if he stopped be there to pro­vide sup­port and help with the oth­er in­stru­ments such as the iron scratch­er and toc toc.

Ana-Lis­sa said as they were young chil­dren, they were al­so there to have a calm­ing ef­fect if they were ner­vous in per­form­ing.

She said even though the band did not make it to the Ju­nior Panora­ma fi­nals they will be play­ing at the school's jump up on Car­ni­val Fri­day.