RAY FUNK
How do you build a steelpan programme at a college in Texas?
If you’re percussionist Michael Mizma, you come up with unique strategies to build up steelbands at local intermediate and secondary schools in the area which you nurture and support, bring in leading pannists to work with your students and get grants for new commissions of music for pan. Prof Mizma has been teaching at San Jacinto College near Houston, Texas since 1990, and while pan is just one of the many aspects of his work in the music department – where he teaches a broad range of percussion classes, as well as classes on music technology, audio engineering, and music business – no one can doubt that Trinidad and Tobago’s national instrument has had a major role in his professional life. He is very much a pan jumbie.
Mizma first heard pan when auditioning for graduate school and soon after heard the sound again while biking the streets of Toronto, where he met Earl La Pierre. He was hooked, and joined La Pierre’s Aftopan Steel Orchestra and participated in the Caribana steelband competition that summer. The next fall semester he began his master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The steelband, with instruments made by Cliff Alexis, was always a favourite activity and ensemble.
As with many pan pioneers in the university system in the US, Mizma started introducing pans in other ensembles in his college before he had bought enough instruments to form the first steelband at San Jacinto College in 1997. Since then, he has come to Trinidad to play with Birdsong, brought in visiting artists, and is constantly exploring new ways to expand his programme. In developing the steelband programme at San Jacinto, he has had strong support from the administration and the heads of the music department.
Early on, Mizma understood that getting first-year students interested in joining a steelband wasn’t easy when they had had little to no exposure to pan, or in some cases no musical experience. He knew he needed a way to help start steelbands in the music programmes of the local schools whose students entered San Jacinto.
To jumpstart them, he took the older pans he had replaced with newer instruments for his students and created a starter set that could be loaned to different schools. As these programmes developed and bought their own instruments, Mizma then passed on this starter set to other schools.
The first time he tried this, it didn’t work. But he didn’t give up and five bands in three school districts have benefited from the pan loan programme.
Mizma has also made new affiliations with three more high school bands in the region. The result is that steelband is a respected part of the local music curriculum. Now, to get these programmes better exposure, Mizma has started to have joint concerts showcasing both his college ensemble and those of the other schools in the area.
“Over the years, our steelband has increased the size of its audience tenfold,” he said. “As the popularity of the ensemble grew, we h
