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06/08/2016 07:00 AMThe first time Ed Mapp heard the sounds of a steel pan band, he was a teenager growing up in his parents’ home on Orchard Street in New Haven’s Dwight neighborhood, in a tight-knit, church-going community of West Indies immigrants.
The music sounded like joy.
He hunted down all the steel band records he could find, and played them over and over and over. Later, after he got married and moved to Branford, he took a Caribbean cruise with his wife, and jumped at the chance to play, his first time ever, a steel pan with a band on the ship. Years later, in the fall of 1999, he heard the rector of New Haven’s historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, where he and his family worshiped, had purchased a set of used steel pans and was setting up a band. Mapp jumped again at the chance to join.
He’s still a panman and is now the band’s manager. He’ll be playing with the band during its upcoming free performance at the International Arts & Ideas Festival in New Haven on Sunday, June 19 at 5:30 p.m. on the New Haven Green, just as he’s played in numerous other performances at concerts, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and even at Cedar Woods senior living center in Branford, where he now lives.
Not only does playing in the band continue to fill him with joy, he says the joy it brings others provides additional benefits.
“Oh yes, I get more hugs and kisses,” he says, laughing. “Well, at my age, believe it or not, I’m 88, so it’s one of the things that keeps me going, rather than pills and doctors. It taxes the memory. We have to learn new music, and it’s really part of my life right now. It’s very rewarding to be able to go and perform. The young people in the band, they keep me going.”
There are about 20 members of the band, with some as young as 14, and some who come from as far away as New York City every weekend to play with the band at the church in New Haven on Saturday nights. Steel pans have historically played a part in Caribbean street culture and originally were made from discarded items like frying pans and oil drums, appropriated by former slaves in part as a protest against the British government, which tried to ban other forms of music in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Trinidad. St. Luke’s plays steelband soca, calypso, reggae, classical, sacred, jazz, popular, and island folk music. While the music is wide ranging, the steel pans have a distinctive, rich, buoyant sound, described by some as sounding like holidays and sunshine.
“We have a very diverse repertoire. We do all types of music. Naturally, we do all of the Caribbean music, we also do religious music. We do Motown. We do a little bit of everything,” Mapp says. “Hopefully it’ll be a nice day out and it’s 5:30 on a Sunday afternoon and I hope folks will come out and hear us.”
Under the direction of founding director Debby Teason, assistant director Donna Johnson, and current director Kenneth Joseph, St. Luke Steel Band has garnered the 2003 Artist’s Award from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, two gold medals at the PANorama Caribbean Music Fests in Virginia Beach. They will play a free performance Sunday, June 19 at 5:30 p.m. on the New Haven Green. To find out about other events at the International Arts & Ideas Festival, visit zip06.com and www.artidea.org.