Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Pan­nist Joshua Re­grel­lo struck a pow­er­ful chord of uni­ty with an ex­tra­or­di­nary feat—play­ing the steel­pan for 31 hours.

His his­toric per­for­mance achieved what few have man­aged in years—bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er through mu­sic.

With just eight sec­onds to go, Re­grel­lo raised his left hand in tri­umph, his right glid­ing through the fi­nal notes of Olatun­ji’s In­ven­tor. As cheers erupt­ed from sup­port­ers in­side and out­side WACK 90.1 FM’s stu­dio in San Fer­nan­do, he capped off the marathon per­for­mance with the Na­tion­al An­them.

Re­grel­lo start­ed his quest for a Guin­ness World Record (GWR) at 6.28 am on Fri­day and de­liv­ered a mes­meris­ing reper­toire of so­ca, ca­lyp­so, and even on-the-spot re­quests from vis­it­ing artistes.

The star-stud­ded line­up in­clud­ed Na­dia Bat­son, Farmer Nap­py, Voice, and vi­o­lin­ists An­dre Don­awa and Mr Strings, among oth­ers. De­spite the gru­elling sched­ule, Re­grel­lo ra­di­at­ed en­er­gy, paus­ing on­ly twice for 25-minute breaks—once af­ter 17 hours for a bath­room run and lat­er for a quick pow­er nap.

His moth­er, Kam­la Re­grel­lo, stood faith­ful­ly by his side, feed­ing him dur­ing the per­for­mance. There was a steady stream of high-pro­file sup­port­ers, in­clud­ing Re­grel­lo’s fa­ther, for­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein, Deputy May­or Pa­tri­cia Alex­is, and a host of coun­cil­lors, fam­i­ly, friends, and so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers.

With the crowd grow­ing by the hour, staff had to ro­tate guests to give every­one a chance to wit­ness the his­toric event.

When the mu­sic end­ed, an ex­haust­ed but elat­ed Re­grel­lo thanked every­one who sup­port­ed him, in­clud­ing the in­de­pen­dent wit­ness­es cru­cial for sub­mit­ting his record at­tempt to a GWR. Re­flect­ing on the feat, he re­vealed he had no doubts about his abil­i­ty to pull it off.

“There was not much prepa­ra­tion, but as a sea­soned per­former, I have done five- or six-hour con­certs filled with high en­er­gy, so when I thought about it, this was not im­pos­si­ble,” he said.

Re­grel­lo felt he could have gone longer.

“I be­lieve I could have reached 35 hours. We on­ly stopped be­cause we had set the timer for 31 hours,” he said.

Asked how many songs he played, he laughed, ad­mit­ting that fa­tigue blurred the de­tails.

“Some­times, artistes showed up, and I learned their songs on the spot,” he ex­plained.

While GWR ap­proval is still pend­ing, Re­grel­lo said the record at­tempt aimed to show­case the steel­pan’s glob­al po­ten­tial and en­cour­age in­no­v­a­tive ca­reers in the per­form­ing arts. He was over­whelmed by the per­for­mance’s im­pact, es­pe­cial­ly the steady stream of on­line view­ers.

“At one point, some­one showed me YouTube and there were 7,000 view­ers. I was like, ‘What?’ I gen­uine­ly did not ex­pect that,” he said.

His fa­ther ex­pressed im­mense pride in his achieve­ment.

“Joshua has an im­mense ap­peal. Wher­ev­er we go, peo­ple say how pleas­ant he is. That speaks vol­umes about his char­ac­ter. His con­nec­tion with ma­jor artistes like Na­dia Bat­son and Voice shows how well-re­spect­ed he is,” he said.

Mitchell em­pha­sised the glob­al sig­nif­i­cance of Re­grel­lo’s achieve­ment.

“Sub­mit­ting this to GWR is just an­oth­er way of push­ing the steel­pan across the globe. It is some­thing we can boast about. This feat em­bod­ies the sta­mi­na, grit, and de­ter­mi­na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly San Fer­nan­do. It is a sto­ry we can pack­age and mar­ket world­wide,” he said.

Mitchell en­cour­aged oth­er mu­si­cians to fol­low Re­grel­lo’s lead in pro­mot­ing T&T’s rich cul­tur­al her­itage.

“Be­yond our nat­ur­al re­sources, our cul­ture is our great­est at­tribute. Look at Car­ni­val—it has in­spired fes­ti­vals around the world. This is what makes us unique,” he said.

Re­grel­lo’s per­for­mance was not just about en­durance, it was a cel­e­bra­tion of the steel­pan and its abil­i­ty to bring peo­ple to­geth­er. Scores of peo­ple await­ed his de­par­ture from the build­ing, chant­i­ng his name as he walked down the stair­case, with some even tak­ing a few self­ies.