Put a con­duct­ing ba­ton in the hand of com­pos­er/arranger/pan­nist/mu­sic ed­u­ca­tor, Khion de Las. Have him stand in front of a band of in­spired stu­dent mu­si­cians with jazz on their minds. Then know for cer­tain that the UWI Arts Jazz En­sem­ble is in­tent on Keep­ing the Stan­dard (high).

Trinidad and To­ba­go ed­u­ca­tor and mul­ti­ple-award-win­ning pan play­er/com­pos­er Dr Ray Hol­man was a guest pan­man at the third an­nu­al Phoenix Pan Ris­ing Fes­ti­val (PPRF): A Fes­ti­val of Steel­pan, in Phoenix, Ari­zona, USA, on April 3, and at the 15th an­nu­al Tuc­son Field of Steel (TFS) con­cert in Tuc­son a day lat­er. He al­so con­duct­ed two clin­ics and vis­it­ed the Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment Mu­se­um, where he “fact-checked the ex­hib­it,” ac­cord­ing to Wes Hawkins, Phoenix Col­lege (PC) pro­fes­sor, mu­sic ed­u­ca­tor/teacher/per­cus­sion­ist and per­former.

An econ­o­mist by pro­fes­sion, Shar­i­fa Ali-Ab­dul­lah grad­u­at­ed from the pres­ti­gious Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York—an Ivy League in­sti­tu­tion—with a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Man­age­ment.

“The lit­er­a­ture of a peo­ple be­longs to those peo­ple. Writ­ing is a way to in­form, teach, warn, and wres­tle with things. It shouldn’t just en­ter­tain but al­low us to un­rav­el and re­claim.”

In pol­i­tics, as in the­atre, vol­ume of­ten mas­quer­ades as con­vic­tion. But his­to­ry re­mem­bers a dif­fer­ent kind of woman: the one who re­turned—not to shout, not to con­quer, but to re­build the in­sti­tu­tions that had once tried to de­stroy her. Michelle Bachelet was one of them.

Five years ago, Meena Jadoo­nanan sur­vived paral­y­sis af­ter an ac­ci­dent. Grate­ful for a sec­ond chance, she has since ded­i­cat­ed her life to up­lift­ing un­der­priv­i­leged fam­i­lies and giv­ing hope to strug­gling sin­gle moth­ers.

Zainab Ab­dul­lah wears many hats—wife, moth­er, ed­u­ca­tor, and coun­sel­lor—but above all, she strives to be a con­stant source of mo­ti­va­tion to those around her.

Vis­it­ing pa­n­yards for Car­ni­val 2025 was eu­phor­ic for me, and it all start­ed with the Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra.

Herbs are plants with aro­mat­ic prop­er­ties used for flavour­ing food, med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, or fra­grances. They typ­i­cal­ly have soft, green, leafy parts and can be used fresh or dried. Ex­am­ples in­clude basil, mint, rose­mary, thyme, and pars­ley.

The Hin­du Prachar Kendra ob­served Navra­tri with De­vi Sat­sang and Kanya Pu­ja at their Shri Ram Vi­jay Mandir in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, on March 30.

Pro­duc­tion One’s re­mark­able an­nu­al pro­duc­tion of Jazz Artists on the Greens is now pret­ty much tak­en for grant­ed as one of those un­miss­able mu­si­cal events. Its 20th edi­tion on a rainy Sat­ur­day, April 5 helped prove the point, de­spite the chal­lenge of oth­er com­pelling events that day.

Two of the top fe­male acts in So­ca will be hit­ting the stage to show­case their lat­est projects this Sat­ur­day night - al­beit in very dif­fer­ent places and for vast­ly dif­fer­ent shows. Whilst QOB De­stra Gar­cia presents her long-await­ed Gospel al­bum and con­cert en­ti­tled Re­flec­tions at Queens Hall in Port of Spain, Trinidad; the Sokah Found­ing Grand­daugh­ter of Ras Shorty I, Nailah Black­man will head­line the DC Car­ni­val and Cul­tureFest DMV’s "Sat­ur­day Night LIVE!" con­cert se­ries on the same Sat­ur­day night April 12, at Wash­ing­ton D.C.’s his­toric Howard The­atre in the USA.