Meet Aaron Mentos of St. Kitts and Nevis - Steelpan Performing Artist

My name is Aaron Mentos, I am a musician, producer and instrumentalist born into a musical family. I was born in the US and started comping my father on the double seconds when I was in kindergarten. I played a number of different instruments growing up. The pan, drums, the guitar, bass guitar and cello.

My connection to the pan is cultural and a lot of what I learned was from constantly being surrounded by pan players. My dad taught the youths in the pan yard at the Caribbean and African Social Club in Springfield growing up. Even though I mostly played the guitar and bass guitar in these settings, I started realizing how important the pan is to my culture as I grew up and started focusing on it more.

I am a naturalized citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, where my family is from because I played for the U-23 Football team for the qualifiers of the London Olympics. Since becoming a citizen I have co-founded a non-profit with Isaiah Marshall-Thomas of Trinidad called "Alley To The World."

This non-profit focuses on using music as a tool to keep the youth in St. Kitts focused on positive values. Since starting the program, we have built a music studio at Charles E. Mills in my hometown of Sandy Point, St. Kitts and have run two summer programs for the youths teaching them the basics of recording and pan playing. We then recorded their orchestra at the end of each program. We plan to continue this initiative further as the COVID restrictions begin to loosen up.
 

Bio provided to When Steel Talks by: A. MENTOS