Pan Diaspora Visionary
Trinidad, W.I. - Come carnival 2010 Fitz-Gerald Sparks would be 79 years young and still playing tenor pan for his beloved Starlift Steelband for Trinidad & Tobago panorama even though he has been confined to walking on crutches over the last eight years.
“Daddy Sparks” as he is fondly called in the home circle of Lady Hailes Avenue in San Fernando, south Trinidad, has seen it all and done it all in the name of steelpan – from tuner to arranger to captain to manager of a host of steelbands throughout the length and breadth of Trinidad.
Sparks’ career in the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago started in 1942 at the tender age of eleven in Palo Seco, south Trinidad, with a band called Sunvalley Serenaders which would later become Eight Army and then Black Eagles. As a student, Fitz-Gerald Sparks - who became a construction worker - originally attended Coffee E.C. and Forest Reserve E.C. Primary Schools, and Fyzabad Intermediate Secondary School.
Following carnival in 1946 Sparks went to live in Oropouche where he tuned his first pan for Carlos and Gabriel Rose. Sparks believes that he might very well have been the first panist to perform at social events such as garden parties and social evenings where the guests were strictly white folks. That was at the T.L.L. (Trinidad Leaseholds Limited) Forest Reserve Manager’s Residence as well as the staff club.
In 1947, since his father was employed in the oil industry – Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd. – he went back to Palo Seco to live, and as fate would have it he inherited the captaincy of the steelband upon the departure of the then-captain Mickey Smith.
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