We Music: Celebrating the Legacy of Desmond Waithe (2023)

ABOUT "WE MUSIC"
At this special time of year for us in Trinidad & Tobago — in the season of Emancipation, Independence, and Republic Days; Steelband Month and World Steelpan Month — and with Desmond Waithe’s birthday on 10th September, we take a journey through his life in pan and choral music. Through both interviews — with Desmond himself and people who know his music well (Gretta Taylor, Dr Roger Henry, Dr Leah Brown, John Arnold, Marva Newton, and members of the Marionettes Chorale) — and through classic Marionettes recordings of his vast oeuvre of local, regional, and diaspora choral arrangements, we explore his style, his impact, and his ground-breaking contribution to what we know now as “calypso chorale”.

CHAPTERS
00:00 – Dedication & Old Time Days
4:01 — I: Back to the Beginning
16:12 – Opening sequence
16:56 — II: "He has that folk element in him"
41:29 — III: "Pan & choral, side by side"
1:00:20 — IV: Calypso Chorale
1:36:46 — V: Legacy
1:53:07 — Credits & Parting Shot

• THE JOURNEY TO "WE MUSIC: CELEBRATING THE LEGACY OF DESMOND WAITHE"

Having produced a made-for-TV Christmas special in 2020 drawing on that archive, the next thing we wanted to undertake in 2021 was one entirely of Desmond Waithe’s arrangements — a celebration of him and his music. He had also just arranged Nappy Myers’ “Old Time Days”, and asked us to record it. Given the public health restrictions at the time, we rehearsed and recorded it virtually (   • Old Time Days by Richard Mayers, arr. Desm...  ).

But then the news came that Desmond’s illness had progressed. That changed everything. Because not only did we want to record his final arrangement and get a hold of every recording we’d done of his music, we also wanted to capture him talking about his life and work, and speak to other people who could speak to its significance — not just to us, but nationally, regionally. Over time, despite struggling to find and also access archival recordings of old performances of his work, as well as even photographs of key moments in his life, we accumulated nearly 15 hours of interviews, tributes, and recordings of his music.

Though he never saw this finished production, he did see the completed "Old Time Days", the interviews we did, and the special tributes from choir members that they'd sent in. We wanted him to know how much we loved him, cherished him, admired him, would honour him always.

We hope this productions helps people to get know Desmond better as a man and an artist — to see and understand and appreciate his musical journey through pan and choir, as well as his tremendous oeuvre of local, regional and diaspora arrangements. We hope they hear the complexity and magic of his arrangements in ways they might not have before, and understand his wider national impact — particularly his contribution to what we know now as “calypso chorale”. We'd love people to discover or rediscover calypso, soca, and folk music that they may not have known before or may have faded from memory.

This is a project honouring that music, and the man who dedicated his life to preserving it, interpreting it, and keeping it alive.

• ABOUT DESMOND

Desmond Waithe was a profoundly accomplished musician and educator, with an unprecedented body of local and regional choral, folk, and steelband arrangements. An alum of Tunapuna Boys, Fatima College, and Mausica Teachers’ Training College, he served as the Musical Director of the BP Renegades, having also served in that capacity with Exodus’ Exocubs. He has enjoyed several successes with both orchestras at various music festivals in Trinidad & Tobago, France, Austria and more recently, Germany. He also taught in the Music Department of the University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT) for over 10 years. Desmond worked with a wide range of adult and youth choirs — from Sacred Heart Girls to La Petite Musicale and his very own Stentor Chorale — for whom he has done numerous choral arrangements. He began working with the Marionettes in 1980, when we commissioned him to adapt his celebrated steelband arrangement of Sparrow’s "The Slave" for the choir. He joined the choir the following year, and made several international tours with us as arranger, chorister, and cuatrista. In 1993, Desmond was awarded the Humming Bird Medal (silver) for Outstanding Contribution to Music in Trinidad & Tobago; and in 2022 received a posthumous doctorate from UTT.