Schoolchildren, throughout Anguilla, from primary to secondary level, are learning and enjoying steel-pan music tutored mainly by Michael (Dumpa) Martin and Shelia Desouza.
Martin conducts the basic or practical tutoring for CXC students at the Comprehensive School and students from The Valley Primary School, the Orealia Kelly Primary School and the Adrian T Hazell Primary School. Ms Desouza conducts similar tutoring at the Alwyn Allison Richardson Primary School at West End, the Morris Vanterpool Primary School at East End and the Vivien Vanterpool Primary School at Island Harbour.
Other teachers, including Lennox Vanterpool, who heads the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School’s Concert Band, Kimba Southwell, Elson Richardson, Shermel Archibald and Daphne Jacobs-Richardson, teach general music theory for the playing of the variety of musical instruments used in the school’s teaching programme.
Like all the other tutors, Dumpa Martin says he enjoys what he is doing. Speaking at the old Valley Community Centre, next to the Comprehensive School, where he was conducting a session for grade six students from The Valley Primary School, he told The Anguillian:
“Most of the senior students, way back, started from the primary programme. I began the steel-pan music at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School in 1992 and in the Primary Schools in 1994,” he recalled. “When I came back from America in the 80s, there was no steel-pan music in the schools. I used to play at Johnnos, but I didn’t feel comfortable that I was the only pan player in Anguilla, while the cultural roots of the music belonged to the young people as well. I am proud and happy for them, and that we have now come a long way. Do you know what amazes me? It is to know that some of those students I taught now have children and I am now teaching their children – a second generation.”
Dumpa describes himself as an accomplished pan soloist, arranger and composer, with most of his music being of his own composition. “I am planning one day to write a book on steel-pan music,” he disclosed.
According to him, some of the steel pan instruments were made in Anguilla and others were imported from Antigua and Trinidad. “When the pans are off-tune, I do my own tuning,” he added.
