Community Center’s Low-Cost Music Program Breaking Down Cultural Walls

[Pan Times]

Youth Today

New York, USA - A shabby community center on the first floor of one of the 12 buildings that make up the vast Gov. Alfred E. Smith public houses is where social workers and teachers are hoping music can break down cultural barriers.

.....But the music school -- run by Hamilton Madison House a progressive non-profit -- which offers piano, violin, guitar and even steel pan lessons for a reduced fee, is a well-kept secret, patronized almost entirely by Asian families, not the black and Latino kids who also live in the housing project.

....Still, of the almost 4,300 residents in the Smith houses, almost 800 are black, and about 1,600 are Latino. To attract those residents, the House’s executive director Mark Handelman suggested starting a steel pan class, hoping that the music of Trinidad and Tobago would attract different students than piano and violin. This class is only $20 for the entire year.

 

“I don’t think he thought that it would turn out to be an Asian steel band group,” Goodman said, laughing. “I think his thought was that we’d get a bunch of teenagers off the street. But those aren’t the kids that decided to come.”
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[Andre-Roger Dellevi]

https://whensteeltalks.ning.com/forum/topics/community-center-s-low-...

[Wayne Cezair]

Seems everyone everywhere else realizes that music and especially pan music has an important role to play in the development of the youth except here in Trinidad.

[yvette johnson]

We must do more in the T&T education system from pre-school to UWI.