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Merle Albino-de Coteau,
Esther K. Batson, Dr. Dawn Batson
Composers, Arrangers, Educators
Brooklyn, New York -
When Steel Talks
continues
its exclusive series of interviews with movers and shakers of the Pan
movement. In this interview Dr. Dawn Batson currently at
Indiana University, music teachers Merle Albino-De
Coteau from the Creative Arts Centre at the University of the West
Indies, and
Esther K. Batson, Dr. Batson's mother, share their
thoughts on the immediate future of pan, and women's contributions to the art form.
These
women were all adjudicators for the Something Positive's 2004
Youth Pan Festival on November 6,and also panelists
at the Pre-Festival Symposium held the night before. This year's festival
was dedicated to the
memory of it's founder
Cheryl Byron and was organized by Michael Manswell, the new Executive Director of
Byron's initiative
Something
Positive, Inc.
“Among the many art forms Cheryl advocated
among our youth, she was most passionate about the steelpan,” stated Manswell, the new executive director of the organization. “This
festival keeps her spirit alive,” he added.
Dawn Batson is one of the
founding members of Youth Pan Festival. It has been an annual
event since 1997 - except for last year, 2003, because of the death
Cheryl Byron. A wide
cross-section of the population attends the Pan Festivals. The
point of the event is "reaching towards excellence; there are no losers,
everybody leaves with a prize" says Dr. Batson. Asked about
the possibilities of mini-versions of the pan symposium being held across
the United States, Dr. Batson was optimistic in her outlook.
Batson also noted that one of
the aims was to produce degree candidates to pursue steelpan as a
concentration or major in higher education. Past pan players who
have won scholarships and benefited from the Youth Pan Festival program
are: well-known arranger and director for New York's CASYM Steel
Orchestra, Arddin Herbert, and ace soloist Freddie Harris
who wasalso co-arranger for Sesame Flyers Steel Orchestra
this year.
Merle Albino-de Coteau shared
key history about the very first all-woman steelband in Trinidad and
Tobago. The bombshell was that it was not the famous Girl Pat
Steel Orchestra but White Stars Steel Orchestra formed in 1951.
They were not well-known or spoken of much because this
particular female steel orchestra was in a correctional facility for
girls. As Albino-de Coteau puts it "they were punished twice [the
second time for playing pan]." She goes on to say that they were
"awesome musicians" and used pans provided by then-Casablanca's captain
Oscar Pyle.
Esther Batson noted that the
biggest challenge facing women in the steelpan art form was getting the
public to support pan women financially. De Coteau said it was still
a male-dominated arena specifically in terms of arranging. As she
put it "the men could arrange for panorama, but that it is thought that
the women could arrange the classical music." Batson stressed that
women could also concentrate on the marketing of the instrument and the
art form.