Because when because when academia is merged with art and that produces world-class leaders, when you have the art as a discipline and you merge that with different sciences or different communication subjects, you become a deadly person, a powerful person.
Petrotrin Siparia Deltones perform durng the Small bands semifinals.
Yvonne Webb Akinola Sennon is a bold, brash, visionary whose seemingly outrageous ideas annoy the hell out of people. But that does not interrupt his perspective. Sennon has set about transforming the pain young people in his Siparia community have experienced as a result of crime and other social ills into a passion for music—not as a mere distraction but as a potential career.
Along with his musical mentor Carlton “Zanda” Alexander and others, Sennon is moving full speed ahead to develop the Deltones Institute of Steel Drums and Music into a full-day school where academia and music will be combined to not only transform them into world class leaders but in the process help them to shape their own identities.
The plan is to open the school about one year from now, on the Heritage site at Railway Road, Siparia, where Deltones evolved and progressed from a social club comprising a membership of college students, university graduates and other academics in 1962, the same year T&T gained Independence.
From its inception, Deltones always had an interest in education and learning and training people, moulding and shaping the minds to be independent thinkers and embracing their heritage for self-acceptance. Five-and-a-half decades later, the concept has come full circle.
Five years ago, children within the community who were already learning the practice and theory of the pan music were introduced to academics through the institute. Sennon is hoping to take it a notch higher.
"It is time for us to stop this narrow approach that we are a mere orchestra or a mere band and for us to evolve. We are at that point where we need to embrace the various disciplines of global music and not just exist in the box of the pan fraternity," the executive director explained.
World music is not unfamiliar to this group as they have had collaborations with great musicians, including renowned Grammy Award winning South African artiste Hugh Masekela on an album titled From Siparia to Soweto. Last year Sennon introduced the Cousoumeh project—a melting pot of rhythms—which featured some of T&T's finest alongside international musicians like Shane Dahler from Virginia, pianist and composer Chris McCarthy of Boston, Manhattan's Cole Davis and New Jersey trumpeter Alonzo Demetrius.
Guiding children
Sennon believes their centre of focus should be guiding the children to become leaders, to carry the instrument in the next ten-15 years, as it is proven that the mind develops best at an early age.
"So we are taking them in from as early as four years. As you could talk, as you could walk, we start training them," Sennon said.
He explained that the intention is to develop a full-time school, where children would write the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam as well as CXC.
"Because when because when academia is merged with art and that produces world-class leaders, when you have the art as a discipline and you merge that with different sciences or different communication subjects, you become a deadly person, a powerful person.
"That is what is happening in Cuba. There are some doctors out there who are bad, bad percussionists and piano players who would have gone to a school that is heavily involved in the arts. My thing is to not just fuse the arts with academia, fuse the arts with science, but to fuse the arts with heritage and produce a different kind of citizen."
The dream is to one day be the institution of choice for people from across the globe to develop a doctorate in pan studies, pan tuning, arranging.
"My thinking is that people who want to study pan to the highest level (…), should not look to America, but come to Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of the steel drum.
"I have a problem with that and if the University of the West Indies (UWI) is not going to do it, if our own University of T&T (UTT) is not going to do it, then the Deltones Institute of Steel Drums and Music is going to do it."
Standing in the way of realising that dream is the infrastructural upgrade to support the project
"Yes, we would approach government, but we also believe as a community we could be a model to T&T, to come together as a community to do that project. Something that could be acknowledged internationally and could be a real example of what a mere pan yard should and could evolve into."
He said the intention was to reach out to all of the people who have a vested interest in Siparia, including the international Siparia diaspora, to buy into the dream, either through their services, cash or goods.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2017-04-02/deltones-transforming-childrens-pain-music-passion
Replies
I love the Idea and would like to support this movement as someone born in Siparia and now living in Canada.
The way forward. Be blessed!
This is an admirable vision that I for one support.
May God grant Sennon the strength and dedication needed to pull it off, and send him all the support that he will need from community, parents, and Government.
-Big Sid
I hope we could see Deltones plans materialize.
Small Conventional Steelbands, Finals;
Siparia Deltones Steel Orchestra - Burn Dem (Arr Carlton 'Zanda' Alexander)