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Laventille
Laventille is a ward of Trinidad and Tobago. Etymology The name ''Laventille'' hearkens back to colonial times, especially when the French dominated the cultural traditions of the island. One etymological derivation of the name is because the northeast trade winds come to this part of the island of Trinidad before reaching any other part of colonial Port of Spain – hence the metaphorical name ''"La Ventaille"'' (''"The Vent"''). Geographically, it is the source of Orographic precipitation for the capital city. Arts and culture Laventille is the place where steel pan was born, and it is the birthplace of innovators and world-renowned tuners such as Rudolph Charles and Bertie Marshall. It is the heart of the steelpan world, where pioneer Winston "Spree" Simon lived and created one of the century's new acoustical musical instruments. It is home to Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, one of the world's oldest steelbands, still in existence today. It also houses several other bands su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Port Of Spain
Port of Spain (Spanish: ''Puerto España''), officially the City of Port of Spain (also stylized Port-of-Spain), is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municipal population of 37,074 (2011 census), an urban population of 81,142 (2011 estimate) and a transient daily population of 250,000. It is located on the Gulf of Paria, on the northwest coast of the island of Trinidad and is part of a larger conurbation stretching from Chaguaramas in the west to Arima in the east with an estimated population of 600,000. The city serves primarily as a retail and administrative centre and it has been the capital of the island since 1757. It is also an important financial services centre for the CaribbeanCIA World Factbook Trinidad an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destra Garcia
Destra Garcia (born 10 November 1978) is a Trinidadian musician, singer and songwriter of soca music. She is also known by the mononym Destra. She is one of the most popular female soca artists in the world. Biography Childhood and early career Destra Garcia was born in Laventille to Lloyd Augustin Garcia and Debra Garcia. Her paternal great-grandfather was from Venezuela. Her maternal great-grandfather was from France while her maternal great-grandmother was from Spain. The eldest of four siblings, Destra was raised in the community of Desperlie Crescent, Laventille directly east of Port of Spain, and attended Woodbrook government secondary school and St James Secondary School where she discovered her passion for singing and music. She not only won her school's Calypso Monarch title for five consecutive years, she composed every one of her songs. Her musical roots came from her grandfather the late Frankie Garcia (Bourg Mulatresse, Santa Cruz), an island jazz musician. Her fat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desperadoes Steel Orchestra
The Desperadoes Steel Orchestra, also called Despers, are a steelband from Laventille in Trinidad, formed in 1945. Origins and evolution A number of youths in the Laventille Road area began calling their group Morocco/Dead End Kids, before some of them saw a movie entitled "The Desperadoes" at Royal Cinema on Charlotte in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1943. The name Desperadoes as in Steelband first came out at carnival in 1947.Thompson, Dave (2002) ''Reggae & Caribbean Music'', Backbeat Books, , pp. 96–97Dudley, Shannon (2007) ''Music From Behind the Bridge: Steelband Aesthetics and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago'', Oxford University Press, , p. 73 There were several rival bands at the time: Sun Valley, Hill Sixty, the Crusaders, and Destination Tokyo. In the early 1950s, Wilfred "Speaker" Harrison and Donald "Jit" Steadman began bringing Mas and later a professional focus that saw the band sign a sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola in 1962 with the band name changing to the Coc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolph Charles
Rudolph Charles (1 October 1938 – 29 March 1985) was a musician and instrument maker of the steelpan, but most notably, he was a pioneer and leader of the steelband movement in Trinidad and Tobago. Also known as Charlo, The Hammer and Trail, among other names, he led Desperadoes Steel Orchestra to 10 various victories from 1965 to 1985, including six Panoramas, two Classical Music Festivals, one Best Bomb and one Best Playing Steel Orchestra. Background Charles was born as fourth of nine children and grew up in Laventille, a ward of Trinidad, near the capital Port of Spain. He was one of the two well known and very popular Trinidadians who was born and grew up in Laventille the other is the Queen of Bacchanal Destra Garcia."Rudolph Charles - Twenty Five years Later, Steel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trinidad And Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of Grenada and off the coast of northeastern Venezuela. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the northeast, Grenada to the northwest and Venezuela to the south and west. Trinidad and Tobago is generally considered to be part of the West Indies. The island country's capital is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous city is San Fernando. The island of Trinidad was inhabited for centuries by Indigenous peoples before becoming a colony in the Spanish Empire, following the arrival of Christopher Columbus, in 1498. Spanish governor José María Chacón surrendered the island to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1797. Trinidad and Tobago were ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens as se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertie Marshall
Bertram Lloyd Marshall ORTT (6 February 1936 – 17 October 2012), known as Bertie Marshall, was a pioneer, musician and music instrument maker of the steelpan. Career Marshall was born in 1936, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. As a child, he roamed the streets of John John and Success Village, Laventille. As a boy, he watched pioneering tuners at work and came into contact with Winston "Spree" Simon who created the multiple notes on the convex metal containers used for making pans. These encounters sparked his interest in the steelpan and began his secret association with pan and panmen. Marshall began playing openly after his mother died in 1954, but had tuned his first pan long before that. At the age of 14, he got an old ping pong from Tokyo Steelband and tried to retune it, using his harmonica. By 18, he began tuning pans, guided by other tuners such as Carl Greenidge. Marshall was dissatisfied with what he called ping pong's inferior tone. By 1956, Bertie Mars ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winston Simon
Winston "Spree" Simon (1930 – 18 April 1976) was a Trinidadian inventor, pioneer and musician of the steelpan. Life Simon was born in Laventille, Trinidad. He is credited with the invention of the ''Ping Pong'' steelpan instrument. Simon also was part of TASPO, the ''Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra'' and visited Great Britain in 1951. Winston "Spree" Simon worked closely with Anthony Williams, who later invented the fourth and fifth soprano pan. Simon also gave Bertie Marshall significant impulses for his work in developing harmonical tuning. The American musician and composer Van Dyke Parks celebrated the life of Winston Simon in the song "Tribute to Spree" on his album '' Clang of the Yankee Reaper'' written and first recorded by the late great Lord Kitchener. Further reading * Felix I. R. Blake, ''The Trinidad and Tobago Steel Pan. History and Evolution''. * Stephen Stuempfle, ''The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago'', Phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steel Pan
The steelpan (also known as a pan, steel drum, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steelband or steel orchestra) is a musical instrument originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists. Description The modern pan is a chromatically pitched percussion instrument made from 55 gallon industrial drums. ''Drum'' refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steel drum is more correctly called a ''steel pan'' or ''pan'' as it falls into the idiophone family of instruments, and so is not a drum (which is a membranophone). Some steelpans are made to play in the Pythagorean musical cycle of fourths and fifths. Pan is played using a pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber; the size and type of rubber tip varies according to the class of pan being played. Some musicians use four pansticks, holding two in each hand. This grew out of Trinidad and Tobago's early 20th-century Carnival percussion groups known as ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Catholic Archdiocese Of Port Of Spain
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Port of Spain ( la, Archidioecesis Portus Hispaniae) is a metropolitan diocese of the Latin Church of the Roman Catholic Church in the Caribbean. The archdiocese encompasses the entirety of the former Spanish dependency of Trinidad, including the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The archdiocese is the Metropolitan responsible for the suffragan Dioceses of Bridgetown, Georgetown, Paramaribo and Willemstad, and is a member of the Antilles Episcopal Conference. The diocese of Port of Spain was originally erected as a vicariate apostolic in 1818 and elevated to an archdiocese in April 1830. Communications The archdiocese has its own special-purpose company, Catholic Media Services Limited (CAMSEL), responsible for coordinating communications. The diocesan weekly newspaper, ''Catholic News'', has been published in Trinidad since 1892 and since 2006 has been published by CAMSEL. There is also a local TV station which operates under the aegis of the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angostura Bitters
Angostura bitters () is a concentrated bitters (herbal alcoholic preparation) based on gentian, herbs, and spices, by House of Angostura in Trinidad and Tobago. It is typically used for flavouring beverages or, less often, food. The bitters were first produced in the town of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela), hence the name, but do not contain angostura bark. The bottle is recognisable by its distinctive oversized label. ''Angostura'' is Spanish for 'narrowing', the town of Angostura having been at the first narrowing of the Orinoco River. Beverages named "Angostura Bitter" or "Angobitter" are also offered from other brands (e.g., Riemerschmid, Hemmeter). Unlike the House of Angostura product, they contain angostura bark, possibly to justify the use of the word "Angostura" in their names. History The recipe was developed as a tonic by , a German surgeon general in Simón Bolívar's army in Venezuela. Siegert began to sell it in 1824 and established a distillery for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soca Music
Soca music is a genre of music defined by Lord Shorty, its inventor, as the "Soul of Calypso", which has influences of African and East Indian rhythms. It was originally spelt "sokah" by its inventor but through an error in a local newspaper when reporting on the new music it was erroneously spelt "soca"; Lord Shorty confirmed the error but chose to leave it that way to avoid confusion. It is a genre of music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1970s and developed into a range of styles during the 1980s and after. Soca was initially developed by Lord Shorty in an effort to revive traditional calypso, the popularity of which had been flagging amongst younger generations in Trinidad due to the rise in popularity of reggae from Jamaica and soul and funk from the United States. Soca is an offshoot of Calypso/Kaiso, with influences from East Indian rhythms and hooks. Soca has evolved since the 1980s primarily through musicians from various Anglophone Caribbean count ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TnT Port Of Spain 3
Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagent in chemical synthesis, but it is best known as an explosive material with convenient handling properties. The explosive yield of TNT is considered to be the standard comparative convention of bombs and asteroid impacts. In chemistry, TNT is used to generate charge transfer salts. History TNT was first prepared in 1863 by German chemist Julius Wilbrand and originally used as a yellow dye. Its potential as an explosive was not recognized for three decades, mainly because it was too difficult to detonate because it was less sensitive than alternatives. Its explosive properties were first discovered in 1891 by another German chemist, Carl Häussermann. TNT can be safely poured when liquid into shell cases, and is so insensitive that in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
