By Jason Hunsicker
KIRKSVILLE – Each week this summer, the Daily Express will preview the upcoming Kirksville Arts Association Summer on the Square concert by interviewing the band. Concerts are 7 p.m. Friday on the Adair County Courthouse. Here is our Q&A with Michael Bump, director of Truman Steel, the band featured in the final Summer on the Square concert Friday.
How did the band get started?
Since joining the music faculty at Truman in 2000, I had always wanted to expand the curriculum offerings to include world music performance experiences, specifically, steel pan music. I’d had many years prior experience performing and arranging with steel bands, and knew how infectious and community-oriented the art form was. In 2011, I was granted a research sabbatical to go to Trinidad-Tobago so that I could perform and further study the indigenous steel pan bands centered around Port of Spain. During my time, I befriended native pan builder/tuner, Mappo Richardson. Upon hearing my interest in establishing a steel pan program at Truman, Mappo offered to build a starter ensemble for us and ship the instruments to Kirksville. A year and a half later, and after countless meetings and grant writing, Ralph Cupelli (then assistant to the provost and vice president for academic affairs) granted the funds to make it happen. We established an official ensemble course for students, as well as a history prerequisite course on the history of pan music in Trinidad & Tobago. Our instruments arrived fall of 2012, with our inaugural campus concert in December of that year.
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