BOBILA STEELBAND a Catalan Steelband

by Tito Busquets & Carme Garrigo . revised by: Naima Busquets

Bobila - a Catalan Steelband

In L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona’s Metropolitan area), a new caribbean sound has arrived to the city. The steel pan takes part in a new public school for the arts, which is very rare in Spain. Additionally, the foundation of the first Catalan Steelband (Bóbila Steelband) is spreading the steel pan gospel all over Catalonia. Starting its 6th course, Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts is changing the cultural panorama in the most densily populated city in the Spanish territory.

A little bit of history

The place name L’Hospitalet, dates to the Medieval age, because Spitalet was a hostel for travellers who came at night to Barcelona, and found the city doors closed. Nowadays, L’H is always receiving extra-communitarian citizens from all over the world, and It is a very diverse city, with a strong individuality, uniqueness and collaboration. The society maintains its own identity and traditions whilst integrating the new and foreign ones.

Artistic education in L’H: Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts

This new public school for the arts, managed by the municipality of L’H since 2005, wants to plan a space where creation, education, practice and artistic dissemination interact with the city. The objective of the Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts is to democratize the access to artistic education and also to merge the society through artistic expression. Centre de les Arts has started its 6th year of activity in L’H with 875 students.

Why Steelpan?

You only have to look at Trinidad and Tobago and the history of its steel pan to see how this instrument is utilised as a cohesionary tool between people of different ethnic groups and the people responsible for the development of this fascinating instrument. The idea to create a steel band course came from Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts’ headmistress, Núria Sempere. She was fascinated with its history, development and sound. And obviously for its social capacity which gives students the work method - co-operation, team work and respect.

Bobila Steelband

Weekly practice is held at the Centre Cultural La Bóbila, and from which the band took its name owing to their generousity of lending their space to practice regularly.

Venezuelan,Tito Busquets, their lead pan player, first heard the sound of the steelpan in Barbados in 1997. He played drums and various percussion instruments and in 1999 he bought a Bertie Marshall’s tenor pan and started playing it. He plays percussion and the steel pan in the most popular percussion group of Catalan territory, Tactequeté.

Cristina Garcia, their double guitar player, is originally from Switzerland and started playing with Les Amis de la Casserole. After winning the 3rd prize (classical piece) in the Paris European Steel Pan Competition with the PANCH project, she founded the Ferrum Helveticum Steelband in 2000. In 2003 she moved to Barcelona.

Martin Horne-Zagalsky, is originally from Uruguay and plays the tenor. His interest for ethnical percussion saw him learn to play some new and interesting instruments, as steel pan and kalimba. He also learnt how to build and tune them. At the very beginning they did not have a rhythm section, so Pedro Hidalgo (african percussion teacher) from Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts, offered to be their drummer. He now plays the bass pans.

They also had players in the likes of Alicia Bella, from the south of Spain, Alexandra Apostolidis, Greek student, Radhika Aggarwal, an old member of Ebony Steelband and Francis James who all lived temporarily in Barcelona. Presently, they are a five member steelband: Tito Busquets and Martin Horne-Zagalsky (lead pans) Cristina García (double guitar), Pedro Hidalgo ( bass pans) and Carme Garrigó (double second) . They are exploring new repertoires, and many various pieces. They are also trying to increase their number of musicians and, of course, to perform as much as possible in the different spaces in L’H and other parts of Spain.Their aims now consist of being involved in all the cultural activities in the city, playing free concerts in open spaces and bringing the steel pan music to the entire community.

Research

Research by Bobila is necessary for the development of the steel pan instrument in Spain. Visits to the Trinidad is also essential to learn from the experts, to improve their playing skills and generally getting immersed in the Pan culture to accept, understand and respect its existence in its full entirety. They all have dreams about organising a tour of Trinidad and Carmen applied to work in University of Trinidad & Tobago to teach classical and contemporary percussion as a part-time teacher, with the goal of getting involved in the steel pan but she never received a reply.

Fortunately, one of their members, Tito Busquets, met Laurent Trouchard from Montagnac (France), who is a member of French steelband, Calypsud. He recommended Nestor Sullivan, manager of Pamberi steel orchestra (San Juan- Trinidad), who is assisting Tito in all aspects of the steel pan culture. Tito will document all his experience travelling to Trinidad with audiovisual support, which will be used later to introduce the Steel Pan and its culture more broadly in Catalonia. They are hoping to forge and maintain working relationships with steel pan players both in Trinidad and Europe.

Steel Pan Future in Catalonia

The most important goal for the Steel Pan in Catalonia, is to be integrated into thie school curriculum especially in secondary schools. Additionally it can be used to include young people in social exclusion risk situation, and extrapolating this experience to other kinds of collectives e.g. retired citizens (Silver Steel, for 60 year old students), students with learning or cognitive difficulties.

Bobila Steelband is actively promoting the steelpan to everyone who is interested in playing this new instrument in Catalonia. Bobila is also the influence for children and adults who are playing this instrument in Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts.

Escola de Música-Centre de les Arts provides the platform and opportunity (teaching, building, tuning and playing the instrument.) whereby this project can be achieved, and be extended to all parts of the Barcelona metropolitan area and the rest of Catalan territories.

In addition, steel pan is the most ecological instrument in XX and XXI century, because its derives from recycling used oil barrels, and it can be played by everyone, and it has also shown its social capacity through history. What else can you ask for, with such a complete instrument?