THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408120269
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 223 lines
THE BELL-LIKE rhythm of Trinidad pan music speaks of crystal-clear sea breezes and island dreams.
But the reggae beat is spilling from the open doors of an old warehouse on one of downtown's drab back streets. And the only breeze is the one stirred by two industrial-sized fans towering over the city's new steel drum band.
It's not an island. But it's not just a dream anymore either.
Welcome to Portsmouth's pan yard, brought in from Trinidad to bring the gift of music and more to the lives of 40-some urban youngsters.
Some of them are streetwise. Some wouldn't dream of getting into trouble.
Some showed up with bad attitudes and a history of disciplinary problems. Others came in with a love of music and a desire to learn something new and unique.
Quite a few didn't get along. There were fights in the beginning. There were challenges to authority.
But there is no sign of that period of adjustment on this hot August day.
THE KIDS, RANGING in age from 11 to 17, have just returned from lunch and a mandatory calming period before they are allowed to break into a run for the pans. They line up in a large square - tenor pans at the front, seconds and double seconds on either side and basses toward the back.
Keith St. Louis, leader of the Trinidad band brought over by a Portsmouth consortium, stands in the middle of the square using a stick to beat the time on a cow bell.
The kids are focused, pouring every ounce of their souls into the pan.
There are no music stands. The Trinidadian teachers don't read music.
They use their ear and a feeling that has rested deep inside every human being since time began.
It sounds good to the untrained ear. But their teacher's forehead is creased as he listens hoping for perfection but always able to pick out that one stray note.
``Even from a distance you can tell who hit the wrong note,'' he explains later. ``If 120 players are there, you can tell the man who hit the wrong note.''
And after just a few weeks, so can these American kids.
``They are getting hip to the steel band,'' he said proudly. ``They will tell you who hit the wrong note.''
He stops them often on this day, hitting the stick on the side of a pan sternly. He corrects one of the kids and repeatedly reminds them they will be performing that night.
It works. They are lost in the melody and the vision of one more standing ovation. Finally, the wrinkles on their teacher's forehead disappear and the trace of a dimple appears.
He half smiles as the harmony of home surrounds him.
FOR ALMOST 14 YEARS, this scene was nothing more then fragments of a fantasy for local artist Michael Goodwin, who spent time in Trinidad.
Then one day a year ago when he bought a lottery ticket, his friend, Maury Cooke, teasingly asked him what he would do with the money if he won.
Goodwin told him he would hire a Chinese chef, and he would bring a steel drum band to Portsmouth to teach young people how to make and play the pan.
Cooke wanted to know more. So Goodwin played him a tape of pan music and told him his ideas.
It immediately appealed to Cooke, president of the Portsmouth Community Development Group, a non-profit organization that works to improve the city and the lives of its residents.
``He said `Why wait 'til you win the lottery?' '' Goodwin remembered.
``I think I cried. I know I got choked up,'' he said. ``I kept throwing it at people hoping it would stick to the wall, but it never happened until last year. Finally, Maury was the one who listened to me.''
Cooke has a simple reason for that.
``The artists traditionally are the ones that aren't listened to especially,'' he said. ``And they're the ones that see things before we common folks see them.''
Cooke and Goodwin went to work pulling together a large advisory board including representatives of the arts and retired music teachers.
Michael Broadhurst, a businessman who serves as chairman, still remembers the day Cooke approached him.
``I thought it was a visionary kind of idea that probably wouldn't work,'' Broadhurst said. ``But their enthusiasm was so infectious I stayed with it.
``Someone greater than all of us was in charge of this,'' he said.
IT MIGHT HAVE been a divine road, but it wasn't an easy one. There were plenty of clashing versions of the vision, personality conflicts and false starts, including a grant that fell through.
``At times everybody was sorry the whole thing was started,'' Broadhurst said.
Today, when they want to remember why they did it, they head over to watch the youngsters play.
``We took United Way over there the other day and they played `Amazing Grace,' and the hair stood right up on my arm,'' Cooke said.
It's such moments that remind Cooke and Broadhurst of all the little miracles that popped up along the way, not the least being how they hooked up to St. Louis and the other members of the Trinidad and Tobago Pan Professionals.
It was so easy they almost missed it.
Gloria Mark, who works at Portsmouth Community Development, overheard them discussing the issue of finding a steel drum band and mentioned that her brother-in-law played in one.
``We just kind of ho-hummed that, figuring it was probably a neighborhood steel drum band,'' Cooke said.
Finally, they listened to her and realized her brother-in-law, Gibson Mark, was the real thing.
He hooked them up with St. Louis, the band leader, a 46-year-old who has taught students from all over the world to make and play the pan at his Trinidad academy.
St. Louis suggested they contact Jean Raabe, a Fulbright Scholar from North Carolina who had studied with him the summer before.
Raabe, a music therapist and teacher, happened to be waiting for word on a fellowship she had applied for so she could return to Trinidad to study with St. Louis.
It was early March and she came home and heard a message on her answering machine from ``some man I never heard of in a town I never thought of going to.''
But when the Portsmouth man dropped St. Louis' name, her ears perked up.
She remembers telling Goodwin she didn't feel proficient enough to teach the pan, but that she could assist. She stressed that if that fellowship came through, she was on her way to Trinidad.
Goodwin told her that wouldn't be necessary, that St. Louis and his band were coming to Portsmouth.
``I thought, `Right, you're really going to bring some guys from Trinidad.' ''
But with that skepticism, Raabe had a sense that it was going to happen.
``The only thing I can think of is faith,'' she said. ``You get a bunch of people believing in something and it happens.''
She soon found herself working and learning with St. Louis again, but this time in a city just a few hours from her home in Roanoke Rapids.
THE FIRST DAY they had kids playing a song,'' Raabe said. ``That's why these kids are so great. Somebody gave them an instrument and somebody showed them how to succeed with it fast.''
Raabe is thrilled with the levels of concentration and excitement she saw the kids bring to the pan yard every day.
She's worked with kids long enough that she saw it even when they were trying to hide it.
Goodwin wasn't sure at first, when some of them looked like ``this was something being done to them'' rather than for them.
St. Louis, too, had his doubts, especially when the kids were running around, fighting each other and generally treating band members like they had some nerve trying to teach them anything.
``For the first four days I used to go home every day with a headache,'' St. Louis said.
Then one day, nine of the kids walked out and went to McDonald's.
``It was a sign of power, but they lost,'' Raabe said.
St. Louis was away from the pan yard when it happened. When he came back, some of the kids were arguing and he learned that some of them were to be suspended for a week for leaving the premises without permission.
He drove the guilty parties home and talked to their parents, explaining what would happen. He told some of them they probably wouldn't be coming back.
That was the turning point for St. Louis; the moment that his students would finally drop their guard and express what the program meant to them.
``All the time I didn't realize how much they loved the pan,'' he said. ``So I realized I was holding the trump card.''
After that, the pan yard had a point system. Everyone started with 20 points a week. If they dropped to 15, they lost benefits - especially the opportunity to participate in performances.
Because there are only enough pans for about half the class to play at a time, the advisory board has set up a structured schedule of additional classes including dance, self awareness and socialization.
``They just want to play,'' said St. Louis. ``They will play and play for a week if you don't say `Stop and put down the sticks.' When they come to the pans, it's a race. Everybody runs.
``So when I see that I say `U-hum, it's working,' '' he said.
ST. LOUIS WAS surprised by the number of students that are truly talented. If he could continue working with them for a year, he believes they could compete with other young steel drum bands in the Trinidad festivals.
The people behind the Pan Project see that, too. They would like to turn that whole block where the pan yard is located into a sort of cultural center for young people. They are already working on another building for a dance program that was a complementary feature of this summer's Pan Project.
Cooke wants to take some of the kids to Trinidad for the festivals. And one day the goal is to bring an international music festival and steel drum competition to Portsmouth.
But that's a long-term dream.
For now, they are more concerned about continuing what they have started for this group of youngsters.
They plan to bring St. Louis and others back next summer, but they are still struggling with funding and trying to figure out a way to keep the kids going through the school year.
WHILE A LOT of the people who made the program possible will point to the kids' performances as the most wonderful moments, for Raabe it was a simpler moment.
``For me, it was the day the bus didn't run and the kids got here anyway,'' she said.
She knows they feel the pull of the pan the same way she felt it after her summer in Trinidad.
``It's like if it calls you, it calls you,'' she said . ``It's almost indescribable . . . such an inner feeling. It was like the perfect combination of melody and percussion.
``The kids are at a point now where if it stops, we'll just be another group of adults that disappoint them,'' Raabe said.
``There are plenty of those around already.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by MARK MITCHELL
Color on the Cover: Yolanda Bishop plays the steel drums with the
Pan Project.
Donnesha Adams plays a bass steel drum. The youngsters learn to play
the pans by ear, not by reading music.
Keith St. Louis, leader of a Trinidad steel drum band, instructs
Monica McQuillia.
Pan alley comes alive with the sound of reggae music.
WANT TO HEAR THEM?
The Portsmouth Pan Players will give their graduation performance
at I.C. Norcom High School at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 22.
There is no admission charge, but donations will be accepted for
the steel drum youth project.
by CNB