Students try their hand at Caribbean instrument

 

By:  SARAH LAWSON/The News Journal

Posted:  June 4, 2010

 

MIDDLETOWN -- The sounds of island music lifted the spirits of the audience at the amphitheater outside Bunker Hill Elementary on Thursday night.

 

Dozens of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from the Appoquinimink School District struck steel pans under the direction of a professional steel pan artist from more than 2,000 miles away.

 

Tacarigua, Trinidad and Tobago native Aneysha deCoteau led students of Waters, Meredith and Redding middle schools during the exhibition -- the culmination of the school district's second artist in residency program.

 

Student pannists stood working 30 shiny steel pans with rubber sticks to familiar tunes like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Edelweiss" while a few sat in the front of the ensemble steadily tapping 10 African drums.

 

The faculty ensemble opened the show with a steel pan rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner," and students performed seven songs, "kalinda," or African stick fighting, and the limbo.

 

"Trinidad and Tobago is known as the land of calypso music, steel pan and limbo," said deCoteau, who at age 23 has been playing steel pans for 20 years.

 

She just finished a six-week stay at the school district, spending two weeks at each middle school instructing students in the steel pans.

 

The steel pan is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago. "Every town, every neighborhood has a steel band nearby," deCoteau said. "It's the most commonplace instrument there."

 

She's part of an initiative in Trinidad to bring the steel pan to every school there, and she said every Appoquinimink middle school child saw a video on the history and making of the drum and got a chance to play them.

 

Debbie Panichisin, curriculum director for elementary education in the district, said last year's residency saw the visit of an Italian sculptor. She said drums were contributed this year by the school district, the University of Delaware and the state Department of Education.

 

Harvey Price, head of percussion in the music department at University of Delaware, knew deCoteau from his travels to Trinidad and Tobago. He met her last summer on a business trip and saw her perform. When the district asked Price for suggestions for the artist in residency program, he thought of her.

 

He said the steel drum is a concert instrument and an educational tool.

 

"People learn about music faster through steel drums than they do through any other musical instrument," Price said. "At the end of two hours, they'll be playing music -- songs -- and they'll understand what they're playing."

 

The steel drum started as a "faux" instrument -- the bottom of 55-gallon oil drums --and an attempt by those in Trinidad who couldn't afford traditional instruments to make music. It officially emerged at Carnival, a national festival, around 1940.

 

"She taught us in steps. We learned a different thing each time," said Waters eighth-grader Naiyana Davis, who played "Limbo."

 

"Then she taught us the notes," added Waters eighth grader Rachel Doan.

Davis said the notes were the hardest part.

 

DeCoteau said her mother back home cried on the phone when she told her about a shy eighth-grade girl who now volunteers answers in her other classes after her rousing experience playing the drums.

 

"If you change one person's life when you go across there, your trip would have been worthwhile," deCoteau said her mother told her.

 

Photograph: Aneysha deCoteau of Trinidad and Tobago plays some Scott Joplin on the steel pans Thursday. (The News Journal/SUCHAT PEDERSON)