Owen Matthew Michael Serrette - ‘The Celebration of Life’

Trinidad & Tobago, W.I. - Former president of Pan Trinbago and managing director of Solo Harmonites & Pan Knights steel orchestras, Owen Serrette, passed away on March 6, 2022. 

Born in East Dry River, Port-of-Spain in 1940, Owen Serrette’s family moved to Morvant when he was just one year old, a move that eventually saw him become a bona fide Harmonites Steel Orchestra member, a steelband he always faithfully served. Serrette did return to his birthplace as a child, at 10 Bonaparte Lane, Basilon Street, to attend Rosary Boys’ RC School.

It was during his return as a primary school student that Serrette first got involved with the steelband. At the age of ten he played with City Syncopators for the Carnival of 1950. At that time, calypsonians and steelbandsmen were considered “outcasts,” as eulogised in Sparrow’s calypso “Outcast” - with the famous lyrics: “If yuh sister talk to a steelbandman, yuh family want to break she hand, put she out, outcast.”

The celebration of Serrette’s life is on March 15 at the Church of the Nativity in Petit Valley, Trinidad.