Joslynne hits a high note

Joslynne Sealey has just very successfully managed Trinidad and Tobago’s 26th Biennial Music Festival, which ended on a note of excellence on Sunday, March 28. This was the second festival that Sealey has managed. Somewhere in 2000/01, the former manager resigned. Having been a member of the Festival Committee from 1993, and not wanting to see the festival flounder, Joslynne very easily picked up the gauntlet and ran with it. “We weren’t ready for 2001, which is when that Festival was due, so we did it in 2002 at the Woodbrook Youth Centre as Queen’s Hall was still unfinished,” says Joslynne.

Having come up from a child in the Festival, and then as conductor of the Bishop Anstey High School choirs, she knew the procedures. Also, says the graduate of McGill University, “I am very, very happy, with helping the youth to go through with their musical talent. It is a very positive thing in the midst of all these troubled times and shows that there are many children who are perfectly normal — going to school, doing their homework and coming to sing, and we have to keep that flag flying very high. I am satisfied and I think that this is where I am supposed to be at this point in my life. If God spares my life and gives me good health, I will see that the festival goes from strength to strength.” Some of the things which contributed to the success of this festival, says the well-known musicologist, were “the excellent media coverage; we added a number of new classes to bring back a lot of interest; the young people are very highly-talented and well-trained; we looked for donors of new cups; and above all the festival went back to Queen’s Hall, so it all worked well together. There was also a tremendous increase in registration, over 1,700 in Port-of-Spain, between 8/900 in the South and a 40 percent increase in Tobago.”

One thing which is obvious when chatting with Joslynne is her great love for this biennial event, which takes two full years of work at a very small stipend and many other limitations. First and foremost is the fact that she and her staff of two, Irma Ifill and Bonnie Hector, are forced to work out of a very small office at the Dretchi building. “We are dying for some room and wish someone would offer us more space.” What is obvious, however, is this woman’s skill in the usage of space as everything from neatly filed and labelled music scores to the 100 cups that are returned nearer to the festival for cleaning and labelling, are boxed and stacked. The 2004 festival is barely over and Joslynne is about to start planning for the 2006 event. “It takes a year to find nice music that really suits. From next week, I will come in with a keyboard, a kettle to make my tea, and start going through 15 boxes of music given to us by Pat Bishop from a New York music store which was closing down. Between those, my catalogues, and music used from as far back as the ’60s, I will choose the syllabus; we can always go back to pieces used 20 years ago. We do not have new music to buy here like in New York and other places where you can go into the stores and browse and buy.” She plans to do that when in Toronto, where she is head judge for Caribana in August.

Joslynne, a lyric soprano, has done a lot of singing and travelling in the past, and as a member of Beryl Mc Burnie’s Little Carib, she even danced with Man Better Man in 1966. In 1986, she travelled with Catelli All Stars as a singer. But this is now all behind her. She does not miss the stage and has no regrets about it. Her life took paths undreamt of in her youth. “It seemed the doors just opened and I walked through. I did not plan my life like this at all. I wanted a family and children. I have one daughter and can only say the Lord put me on this path and it has been a very rewarding one. Even my scholarship, which came through former Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, happened when I was already in my mid-30s, but I took my daughter with me and with a full scholarship graduated in four years.” As Joslynne gets underway with the selection of a syllabus for 2006, she hopes that anyone who finds nice music would send it to her as she selects all the choral and vocal test pieces, and Shirley James the instrumentals.  Staging the festival is a huge undertaking with a lot of events within the main festival.
 
“We have to find overseas and local adjudicators, organise a media launch, mini preliminaries at various venues, down to a piano tuner to tune all the pianos, and accompanists. For opening night I brought past Festival winners Kerry Roebuck and Lorna Myers from abroad, but have to thank God for sponsors like BWIA, which always helps with tickets. And for the first time the festival tried to give some remuneration as it does not usually pay anybody.” The Government was the biggest sponsor and as Sealey now writes them thank you letters, by early 2005 will be writing to remind them about the next Festival. Other main sponsors were bpTT, Scotiabank and RBTT; the lesser ones included Nipdec, Carib, Coca Cola, Coblentz Inn, and even Tranquillity Methodist Church allowed the fledgling organ class to be tested on their pipe organ. Maybe it was Trini Diary’s pre-publicity of the programme which brought people to the Hall everyday: “It was always half-filled, people came in wheelchairs, a lot of ladies spent their mornings listening to the children and we had an audience for the two competitors in the Organ Class.”

Another obstacle was the extremely small office accommodation provided at the Hall. But says Sealey: “We made it do and with my supportive volunteers, who were there day and night, I was able to do all that was necessary down to using my skills as a draughtsman from my job years ago in the Lands and Surveys Department, to assist in writing up certificates when the computer did not work. I went out and bought food when we had to be there late, water or whatever was needed. I was at the Hall for every session as the festival was not going to be allowed to collapse. It had been going since 1947 and I said if it kills me I will do it.” Joslynne is on the lookout for very good volunteers but must be able to depend on them and they must commit to certain days. “I have no money but do need more volunteers. My small core love it like I do. They are dedicated and see the benefit for the youth of the nation. I am about to have a luncheon to thank them. It is a tradition I intend to keep as the festival could not run without them.”