President Kangaloo tours steelpan manufacturing facility

PRESIDENT Christine Kangaloo and her husband Kerwyn Garcia, SC, toured the Musical Instruments of TT factory on Wednesday. The facility will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Friday – World Steelpan Day.

The pair was given a tour by sales and business development director Akua Leith who said the dream is to have the Diego Martin facility become a campus where steelpan craftsmen and tuners are trained.

“The visit of the president is an auspicious occasion for us. We have been reaching out to stakeholders. We want to tell the story of how steelpan came to be where it is and showcase what it’s doing because we have a lot of plans pertaining to development, getting artisans trained up, we have a premium product we want people to see.

"We also want to talk about what happens next, pan in schools, pan in communities. I believe we need more craftsmen and women to be enticed to become steelpan builders and tuners, so we want to invite UTT and MIC to collaborate with us to train people,” Leith said.

The tour included the showroom, the administration and sales areas, the production rooms where the pans are taken from flat surfaces to the different pan types using both traditional and pneumatic hammering methods;

Quality control systems, grooving room, tempering, polishing, branding and customisation rooms where instruments are engraved, quality control rooms, and the tuning corridor, which contains soundproof rooms for tuners, as well as portraits of legendary tuners such as Rudolph Valentino Charles, Dr Clifford Alexis, Bernie Marshall and Winston “Spree" Simon, among others.

Leith told Kangaloo and Garcia that the factory offered a package where people could purchase a pan, stand, pan sticks, and an online course in playing pan for $9,300.

In addition to chrome-plated, powdered, and painted pans, people could purchase a 24-K gold-plated pan, in a move Leith described as aspirational marketing.

Leith said they would like to have 1,000 instruments produced by the end of the year.

“A little more than half the interest we’re seeing is coming from foreign markets, but we’re hoping to see that change over the years as people come to trust us more locally. In terms of sales, we’re at about 30 per cent of what we’re looking at. We have 25 people on staff which is adequate for now, but we do want to train more artisans.”

Leith said while the facility is fully independently funded, the company is open to public-private partnerships. He said $12 million was spent to establish the facility, located at the e TecK Diamond Vale Business Park, Diamond Vale, Diego Martin.

Kangaloo and Garcia were gifted a tenor pan by general manager Nicholas De Freitas. Kangaloo said she took it as a challenge to learn to play pan, and she knew she and Garcia would compete to play the instrument.