Advertisement
Published: November 14th 2011
Edit Blog Post
2011 Steelpan & Jazz Festival
We were able to attend 2 great evenings of this festival - what a treat it was~! It was a very busy week. Wednesday, Oct 26th we went to the village of Felicity to participate in the Hindu Festival of Lights (Divali). Friday we went to the Queens Hall in the capital city of Port of Spain to listen to 7 steel pan bands compete for a 150,000 TT prize (6TT= $1). Queens Hall is an excellent auditorium with great acoustics that opened in 1969. The audience was dressed to the nines with their elegant evening wear for this evening of music. The cruisers that attended stood out a little because as you might imagine we don’t carry evening wear on our boats – some did better than others, but luckily that didn’t make a difference.
The evening was filled with talented musicians of all ages. It was great to see many of the groups were filled with young people; it is obvious that the steel pan bands are going strong. Steel pan jazz is simply a genre of jazz that includes the steel pan. Most of the groups included traditional jazz instruments such as the saxophone and trumpet. The groups played arrangements of familiar jazz numbers as well as jazz arrangements of traditional calypso music by
The symbol says it all
The symbol shows the various instruments we heard during this fabulous festival. Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow. Most of the bands ranged in size from 11 – 14 members and all of them were a mixture of males and females. They not only did an excellent job with the music itself, but combined with the “costumes” and their choreography it was an exciting evening of entertainment. Luckily the judges made their decisions quickly so we were able to find out the winners before leaving. The Codrington Pan Family won first prize while well known Exodus and Renegades came in 2nd and 3rd. It must have been a very difficult job for the judges as all were impressive in their own right. This was an international steelpan jazz challenge (competition) with the First Citizens Bank donating the prize money.
Saturday night was another excellent evening, still part of the Steelpan and Jazz Festival, at the Queens Hall. Trinidad born calypso-jazz trumpeter, Etienne Charles and his band were the main event. Currently living in New York, Charles is an excellent musician and arranger. Many of the songs from his recently released CD, Kaiso, were featured during the evening. The second half of the show included special guest Lord Superior on guitar & vocals,
Steelpan Jazz Competion
It must have been difficult for the judges as we enjoyed all 7 steelpan bands that comepeted - what a great evening's entertainment. 3Canal vocal group performing some great carnival music and a chamber ensemble conducted by Jessel Murray. Etienne Charles knows how to combine the various sounds to make one superb performance. It was obvious that Charles has not forgotten his roots in Trinidad and was very happy to be playing for a hometown audience. On a few occasions Charles made reference to some words commenting that it was good playing for people who understood these references and didn't require an explanation. Unfortunately for us visitors we were a bit left out and required some help from members of the audience sitting nearby. Luckily these are gracious and kind people who were eager to help us understand.
During both evenings we had interesting conversations with others in the audience. On Friday night the gentlemen in front of us very patiently answered our questions about the pan, the various groups that were playing and music in general. We found out that he plays in the National Steel Pan and has been playing for 15 years. He was a wealth of information and we greatly appreciated his assistance. On Saturday night Victoria turned around at the end of the concert and asked if
A great musician
Trinidad is very proud of one of their own, Etienne Charles. He gave a great performance and it was obvious he enjoyed playing for a home audience. we enjoyed the evening. We had a lovely conversation with her, another great interaction. She asked us to spread the world to our friends about our feelings on Trinidad and we assured her that we will continue to do so.
After the steelpan jazz competition we had to stop at a local food vendor area that is always set up down near the new performing arts center. Many of the local foods that we now know were sold here so everyone enjoyed their “snack” before heading back to the boat. If you haven’t noticed, food seems to also be part of these outings. We will have to get away from Trinidad or we will be rolling out of here!
As a result of our great times in Trinidad we are finding that it is easier to stay than to leave. November 1st, the “insurance companies’ official end of hurricane season” has now come and gone. We are now working on crossing off things on our “to do” list so we can get moving soon. We are watching the weather, but are enjoying ourselves and are in no hurry to leave. Hopefully we will find ourselves back here again in
We didn't stop at this vendor
Yes, the delicacy barbeque pigtails were offered at the food mart, but we decided on something else! the future!
Many of you may think we will never leave, but we are working on pulling together a river trip to see the native Wareo Indians. Just the other day we found a couple other boats that are interested so we are excited about this upcoming adventure. We plan on leaving either the end of this week or sometime next week as one of the boats is still on the hard and working on getting launched very soon. Seeing that we have waited this long, a couple more days will be fine as we need to go to buy items to trade. Another adventure to look forward to!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.053s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0266s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb