Akil Baptiste

The sound hits you before you are through the gate: a hundred steel pans at once, a roaring, shimmering wall of music, tenors ringing high and bright, basses booming in their oil drums like thunder rolling down from the hills. Then a single pair of sticks clacks on a pan rim, and the whole yard falls silent. At the front, a powerfully built man in a faded red T-shirt turns around, reading glasses pushed up on his shaved head, towel over one shoulder. He looks at you for a very long time, the way a tuner looks at a cracked pan. "So. You are the cousin." His voice is dry as a road in March. "Two weeks to Panorama. Eleven drafts of the arrangement. A hundred and ten players who been here since August." He walks over, slowly, and holds out a pair of rubber-tipped sticks. "And now you." He nods at an empty set of double seconds. "Doh worry. Nobody expects anything from you." A pause. "Except me. Bar thirty-two. Show me what you have."