Pan reaches New Zealand University

Help us! It’s not a dis­tress call to save souls, but it is a plea to bring the soul­ful­ness of steel­pan mu­sic to the cit­i­zens of New Zealand so that they can ex­pe­ri­ence its mag­ic.
For the first time, steel­pan mu­sic is be­ing taught at a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion in Aus­trala­sia. Two Thurs­days ago, the T&T flag stood promi­nent­ly in Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty’s con­ser­va­toire as the New Zealand School of Mu­sic (NZSM) be­gan its first steel­pan class. Eng­lish-born mu­si­cian Mar­i­on Tit­muss, who fell in love with the in­stru­ment back in 1987, is lead­ing the charge to de­vel­op steel­pan cul­ture to the South Pa­cif­ic na­tion. This se­mes­ter’s course is a tri­al and if suc­cess­ful, it will be a ten-point pa­per open to any uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent. 
Notwith­stand­ing the ex­cite­ment, Tit­muss said sup­port from T&T was crit­i­cal to the feat she is hop­ing to ac­com­plish as New Zealand is in dire need of arrangers, tuners, and play­ers to help train the Ki­wis. 
And with Panzfest com­ing up on Sep­tem­ber 19-22 in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia, she hopes that a link will be made.
"Im­por­tant is the sup­port from you guys in Trinidad & To­ba­go. There is not much sup­port here in New Zealand, no min­is­ter of the arts, no grants avail­able and it is hard. What I’m try­ing to do now is get peo­ple in Aus­tralia who play mu­sic to get in­volved in steel­pan, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to play but to write mu­sic. 

"There is a to­tal lack of know-how in New Zealand and I want steel­pan to be more known and for peo­ple to see the pos­si­bil­i­ty of what you can do with it," Tit­muss said.
In 1987, a younger Tit­muss, who is a clas­si­cal flautist and harpist, got a job at the John Bun­yan Sup­per School on the out­skirts of Lon­don, Eng­land. There, she found steel­pans ly­ing around but had no clue what to do with the in­stru­ment. Luck­i­ly, she met Trinidad-born Richard Mur­phy, who had been play­ing and teach­ing pan in Lon­don. 
"I went to spend a cou­ple of weeks with him and he ex­plained how to at least un­der­stand what the dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments could do. He taught me to un­der­stand them as a choir of steel. What he trans­ferred to me was his love of an in­stru­ment that was to­tal­ly unique. There is not an­oth­er in­stru­ment in the world like it and you can take peo­ple who nev­er played an in­stru­ment be­fore and teach them."

From there, she start­ed the Steel the Beat school band where stu­dents have gone on to be­come pro­fes­sion­al pan­nists. Steel­pan was sub­ject­ed to prej­u­dice but over­came its scorn and has ce­ment­ed its place in Eng­lish cul­ture. She said one of the stu­dents even got a Doc­tor­ate in Steel­pan.

Fast for­ward to 2011, fol­low­ing the 6.3 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a new chap­ter opened in Tit­muss' steel­pan odyssey. She and her hus­band Steve mi­grat­ed to the coun­try to help re­store it to its pic­turesque state. In­side their ship­ping con­tain­er were clothes, fur­ni­ture, and ap­pli­ances, mi­nus their wash­ing ma­chine which had to be left be­hind to make way for a few tenors and gui­tars. Al­though Tit­muss has nev­er vis­it­ed T&T, the birth­place of the mag­i­cal steel drums, her quest is the teach the New Zealan­ders her love for the pan. 
For sev­en years she had writ­ten uni­ver­si­ties seek­ing to get steel­pan in­to their cur­ricu­lum and like pan’s his­to­ry of non-ac­cep­tance, she was re­ject­ed.
The Ki­wis thought lit­tle of the steel­pan, think­ing it was an eth­nic per­cus­sion in­stru­ment that orig­i­nat­ed in Ja­maica. 

"When I came to New Zealand, I didn’t re­alise I was be­gin­ning all over again. Af­ter 25 years of teach­ing in the UK, the world change. New Zealand is part of UK com­mon­wealth and I thought there would have been steel­pans here as well. 

Read More

By Kevon Felmine

Trinidad & Tobago Guardian