Though his band is not participating this year in Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day Association’s (WIADCA) panorama competition, Trinidadian pannist Brian Nicholas is still very busy practicing and preparing Blacklove Steel Orchestra for prospective performances.
Nicholas, the founder and chief executive officer of the Brooklyn-based Blacklove Steel Orchestra, told Caribbean Life that he is “looking at a broader picture” in which he envisages Blacklove’s future participation in WIADCA’s panorama, competing with “seasoned pan groups.”
With its 15-member orchestra, comprising eight females and seven males, representing the Caribbean Diaspora – mainly from Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Haiti, Grenada and Puerto Rico – Nicholas, however, said that Blacklove Steel Orchestra has participated in the past four years in the annual CLACC-C Junior Panorama Competition in Brooklyn.
By playing in New York City public schools, and with postings on social media, Nicholas hopes Blacklove Steel Orchestra will attract new members.”
A native of Laventille, overlooking the Queens Park Savannah, in Port-of-Spain, the Trinidad capital, Nicolas migrated to the US in 1973 and, three years later, started playing with UMOJA Steel Orchestra.
Nicholas said 2020 was a turning point in his life, with Black Love Steel Orchestra’s registration in October, aided by Brooklyn community advocate Hazel John, a native Trinidadian.
He said the move “legalized” Blacklove Steel Orchestra in becoming “more established among the many steel pan groups in Brooklyn and making a name” for himself and the steel orchestra.
Nicholas said Blacklove Steel Orchestra is “a powerful name,” and that the band is “a support mechanism, setting financial gains through its performances while providing community youths with extra-curricular activities to keep them happy and engaged.
“Its mission, as a family-oriented non-profit, is to include the community through the youths who wish to experience the phenomenon of playing the steel pan instrument, symbolizing the effects of family love within the community,” he said.
Nicholas said his love for the steel pan came from his late father, Knolly Nicholas, who also held classes for youths in the Woodruff/Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn neighborhood, “a home for various steel band groups during the era of the 1980s and 1990s and where pan was the stalwart of community entertainment.”
He said Blacklove Steel Orchestra’s vision is expressed through its services, “which benefit today’s youths – from the Gen Zs and the Alphas not excluding the Millennials.
“That’s the power of love that emanates through Blacklove Steel,” he said. “It is both intriguing, captivating and mesmerizing, causing total abandonment within the companionship, and pure togetherness of its pan players.
“As players become more wrapped up in the powerful love for the pan, once they are engaged playing and performing on the instrument, these pan enthusiasts, pan lovers, pan seekers, pan players and even pan haters, too, have no choice but to confess and abandon their cares to the consoling tonal frequencies emerging from the steel pan,” Nicholas added. “That intoxication, while performing, shows Blacklove in all its spiritual and cultural directions, boiling down to eating, breathing and sleeping pan.
“The pure intoxicating love is a sort of insanity for pan players,” he continued. “This is like missing a daily dose of vitamin or worse.”
Nicholas said “that same energetic spirit and strength sets Blacklove Steel apart and an edge above the rest.
“Its pan lovers exist to play, play, enjoy and capture the souls of its audiences every instance of Blacklove’s performances,” he stressed.
Blacklove Steel Orchestra is located at 245 East, 34th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11203.
For further information, email: blacklovesteel63@gmail.com or call Nicholas at 347-336-8802.
