By A.A. Fenty
I bet you know of many accomplished Sri Lankan Cricketers. But do you know of any Sri Lankan steelpan players!?
I recently met one. And a female at that. Dr. Prashanthi Mendis is an ethnomusicologist, an accomplished musician which includes her right to be described as a pan-player as well. (And yes the Sri Lankan Cricket Test bowler Mendis is a relative of Dr. Prashanthi’s husband.)
The biography, so far, of Prashanthi Mendis, makes fascinating reading for all music lovers, including steelpan enthusiasts. Here is a brief bio of an unassuming but talented, versatile, internationally-known artiste who just happens to be an attorney-at-law also, albeit in semi-retirement from that latter occupation.
A lover-and player of the world’s music
Our ethno-musicologist, Mrs Mendis, was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka more than fifty years ago.
Probably closer to Western/British musical traditions than to her native, Lankan/Indian music, Prashanthi took to the piano by age four and had mastered the violin by age seven. Just a little afterwards, she was winning international music awards and prizes.
This was rich ironic reward for her independent-minded mom, Dagmar, who unlike daddy Trevor, sensed that her little, Newstead Girls School-trained daughter was destined to connect to the world’s musical instruments and not just the Lankan/Indian dolak, taba, harmonium or sitar.
But who or what is an ethnomusicologist?
Even as she studied law, Prashanthi drawn by an irresistible love for various musical forms, also made time to study the origin, use and mastery of a wide array of the musical instruments which produced specific music for various ethnic and cultural groups around the world. That is what a dedicated ethnomusicologist does.
Thus, as Dr. Prashanthi accompanied her then Sri Lankan Ambassador spouse Dr. Dayaanthan Mendis, later an expert consultant in Legal drafting, around world capitals, she added to her expertise as an accomplished violinist and pianist. The African Xylophone/Balangi, the Venezuelan quatro and the Caribbean Steelpan are just a few of the instruments which lent themselves to her charming mastery.
Prashanthi-and pan
It was in the early eighties when the Mendises arrived in picturesque St. Kitts/Nevis in the Caribbean. Dr. Dayaanthan was to work on drafting Civil Aviation Treaty Law and Dr. Prashanthi was to begin a lasting musical affair with the steelpan.
As the very first notes of a steelband – the Kittitian Coronets Steel Orchestra – caught her trained, creative ear, she knew she had to investigate. Just what sounded so beautifully, tantalisingly different as it/they produced such sweet melodies? Band leader Mellie Hewlett satisfied her instant curiosity and he himself was captured by Dr. Prashanthi’s all-encompassing and competent musicality. After just one session, when he introduced her to the arrangements of notes on particular pans, she started to play and sounded like a really good regular pan-player.
So much stunningly so, that Mellie Hewlett presented her with a spare tenor pan as her reward for his surprise! Right in the Panyard!
Prashanthi had “simply” transferred the musical notes from a piano format to a pan arrangement and quickly mastered technique. She was to become an accomplished- and international Double-tenor player, for ten years in the island. Later she took pan to the finest of the world’s musical capitals. But not before some impressed but sympathetic St. Kittitians wondered about her “sanity”. Her wonderful accompanist Elaine, once confided to her:
“Prashanthi, some prominent music lovers are wondering what such a brilliant violinist, pianist – and lady – is doing in a pan-yard. But the little lady who had pledged to herself to learn pan in St. Kitts, also became loyal to pan – in the face of some traditional prejudices; played it in St. Kitts churches and schools and when she left, even had the sons of two Government Ministers active in Steel pan music.
DR. MENDIS TAKES PAN TO THE WORLD
Space dictates only the briefest descriptions of Prashanthi Mendis’ journeys with her steelpan world-wide. Using her double-tenor-pans from Trinidad and Tobago, then Germany, she made time to direct the Harston School Steel Band in Cambridge, UK; to herself perform at BBC concerts; to stage solo performances at three of Austria’s finest concert halls in Vienna and at the Johann Strauss Festival (2004) in Oradea, Romania. She has also thrilled, on tour audiences in Africa, the USA and other parts of Europe, with both pan and piano and violin.
In fact; after her performances in Vienna and Romania, Johann Strauss only surviving family descendant – Aigner Strauss commended Prashanthi, saying that the master Johann and his family composers would have been delighted to know that their waltzes and marches could be played on the amazing steelpans. And it was also Dr. Mendis who would have the relatively staid European concert-lovers clapping and swaying to her music in those prestigious halls.
Thanks, she says, to the spontaneity and chemistry that is the Caribbean legacy to the musical world.
IN GUYANA…
Her husband is now on assignment, through the Commonwealth, to CARICOM at its Secretariat in Guyana. It was he who discovered Christ Church on Waterloo Street in Georgetown in 2008, then saw and heard the Parkside Steelband practising in the Parish compound.
He reported to Prashanthi his discovery of a place to worship, replete with some association with her beloved pans. Dr. Prashanthi then met Andrew Tyndall, current Steelband Development Officer with the Culture Ministry and his band members. And it was St. Kitts all over again. She has judged Steelband Mashramani Competitions, offered advice to young players, seeing some “marked improvement over the years, whilst appreciating that much more is to be done and has played at the Sidewalk Cafe on occasion.
A mother of one daughter, Dr. Prashanthi Mendis, pan-player, also loves to dance – winning gold once for Latin American Dance in her homeland – and, sometimes to cook. But her first love(s)? Music – and pan.
