If the contribution to public life of musician extraordinaire Leslie Clement were ever to be measured, among the metrics would have to be an assessment of his role in shattering the myths of a doomed people and of a lost generation.
There can in fact be few worthier counter-narratives to purported failure than the evidence of confident young people creating music and art in the midst of pervasive discrimination and looming despair.
I remember one afternoon outside the assembly hall of Bon Air Secondary fairly well. It was past rehearsal time. A young guy bearing a tenor sax, at the top of his cracking adolescent voice: “come quick, come quick … they going and start!”
And the hustle of soft shoes on terrazzo floors. Watch that guy with the bulky trombone. The girl with the weight of a tenor pan, balanced only by a long skinny arm that slows the pace of the short guy behind brandishing a trumpet and hustling to his place in the brass section. Behind them a thick, lumbering frame at half their pace. “I go take my bouff, yes.”
Then some evenings later to sit only a few rows back in a cold auditorium on the UWI campus. Far enough to capture the photos, but close enough to know that Clement’s baton was to be ignored at your peril.
“Look at me! Look at me!” was simultaneously the message on young faces, as we cheered and clapped and bowed our heads to clear proud tears. This was the T&T Steel and Brass Symphonic Orchestra (TTSBSO) on show.
The director once conceded that all this music was to “help us cope with the challenges that face us and help our spirits to heal.” What, indeed, some were tempted to ask, can these children of the “hot spots” bring to table and to stage?
Once we were challenged to look at our concert programmes and at the scanty list of corporate benefactors. Who, at the end of it all, is bringing fruit to table and to stage?
The website remains incomplete and lacks an editor’s eye. “Our focus at the TTSBSO is the holistic development of young people. Through music, we aim to provide our youth with both a positive use of leisure time and an avenue to experience success.”
They could have stopped right there. Whoever “they” were. Leslie? His wife Judith? Resident MC, Shelly-Ann Lovell? Sons Isaiah and Josiah? Daughter Aiesha? Or was it one of the hundreds of young men and women, boys and girls, “rescued” (as one follower of the group described it) by the music introduced by Clement and his team?
We speak so much these days of “reaching out” to communities in conflict and danger, yet never consider that the “outreach” of this era has tentacles that originate far from a supposed centre. From the so-called “east” extends a TTSBSO arm.
Then, last Thursday, came the sudden passing of Leslie Clement– teacher, counsellor, musician, father and mentor not to dozens or scores, but to hundreds. It is difficult for all of this to efficiently reach a part of your soul and a memory occupied by so much music and to register a closing flourish or final note.
I cannot say I have exchanged more than brief, respectful greetings with this giant. I had, however, followed his work with the UWI Arts Wind Ensemble and watched him in action at Daaga Hall numerous times.
I don’t even know if he ever saw the times I thanked him on these pages for rescuing a generation of young people and, by extension, extending such salvation to the rest of us.
With names too numerous to mention, we can recall the moments protégés Adrian Kong on the saxophone, trombonist Joshua Pasqual and singer Martina Chow helped our spirits to heal. The times we followed the batons of Stephen Villafana and Kerry Stephens to the attentive eyes of an awaiting generation.
“Put an instrument instead of a gun in their hands,” he was fond of saying.
Farewell, Mr Clement. Thank you for the music. Thank you for the hope.
