Guyana is awash, virtually daily, with an array of ‘bad news’ stories. The ‘good news’ items are around, but they don’t always make the headlines; they remain invisible. This one I’m about to tell you goes back some years to around 2007 when steelband music had declined in Guyana. One or two bands were still around, but the art form generally was in the doldrums. However, with Carifesta looming here, the Minister of Culture, Frank Anthony, wanted to look at reviving steelband. He suggested the formation of a national steelband to debut at Carifesta, and appointed Andrew Tyndall, himself a panman, as Coordinator for the move. “We put out a call for former players to help reignite the thing,” said Tyndall, “and that also brought responses from a number of youngsters playing pan in school.” In the beginning, some of the senior players were dubious about a band with these young school children, but instructors (Andrew Tyndall, Cecil Bovell, Cary Gillis and Charles Gillis) were attached to the schools to start teaching. Tyndall recalls: “It was a very exciting time; we worked late in the night, and the senior players soon saw the enthusiasm of the youths, and we were off.”
Some of the schools had pans, but the ministry had purchased some new instruments, and the effort included our local tuners, ordering the tenor pans from Trinidad. Carifesta 2008 came and Guyana had a national steelband of over 100 members, with a wide repertoire of music, making good presentations at several venues.
After Carifesta, Tyndall said Minister Anthony decided the pan effort had to take a youth emphasis if it was to succeed, and instructors were hired to work with the schools that had pans but no one to teach the young players. These instructors – Cary Gillis, Terrence Benjamin, Compton ‘Ras Camo’ Williams, and Frank Lynch – began working regularly with the
