Local steel pan legend wins Trinidad & Tobago lifetime achievement award

DeKALB – Retired Northern Illinois University Steel Band director Cliff Alexis started playing steel pan when he was 14 years old in his home country of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. But in the 1950s, the country still was considered a British colony and didn’t look too fondly on steel pan players, he said.

Alexis still has scars on his head from being beaten by a police officer with a night stick after he was caught playing steel pan. He said society looked down on pannists at the time because the instrument was more prevalent in more economically depressed areas of the country.

“And now, I’m seeing that the police have a steel band,” Alexis said. “How does that work, when the police used to chase us off the street?”

Decades later, Alexis was awarded one of the highest lifetime achievement honors that can be given to someone from Trinidad and Tobago.

“To me, it has come full circle and accepted by everyone,” Alexis said. “It’s now called the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Alexis received the Chaconia Medal (silver) award last week for his work and contributions to the steel pan. The medal is given to anyone who has performed “long and meritorious” service to Trinidad and Tobago to promote national welfare or strengthen community spirit. Not only has Alexis made worldly contributions to the instrument as a clinician and a builder, but he was one of the co-founders of the NIU steel pan program and a director of the NIU Steel Band before he retired last year.

Alexis joined the NIU School of Music staff in 1985 after he taught at a high school in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he learned how to build steel pans. Along with Al O’Connor, he started the steel pan studies program at NIU after creating the locally well-known NIU Steel Band.

Alexis’s responsibilities included maintaining and upgrading the school’s large inventory of steel pans and arranging, composing and co-directing the band with O’Connor and, more recently, with famed steel pannist Liam Teague.

Teague, a co-director of the NIU Steel Band, said Alexis has been bestowed many accolades over the course of his career, and he described Alexis as very humble for as successful as he is. He said he’s always excited to see Alexis be recognized for his lifetime work with the instrument.

Teague said Alexis not only was one of his biggest mentors before and after Teague earned his master’s degree in the NIU steel pan program, but he also has become one of his closest friends.

“With him having the vision to speak to Al O’Connor about starting the degree path at NIU, that has changed so many lives, including mine,” Teague said.

Yuko Asada, co-director of the NIU Steel Band and longtime steel pan builder protegé of Alexis, said many other universities have tried to create their own steel pan programs since NIU started its, but many didn’t succeed. She attributes a large part of NIU’s band being around for more than 40 years and its continuing steel pan degree program to Alexis’s role in the creation of both.

“I’m able to do what I can do today because of Cliff [Alexis],” Asada said.

From Alexis’s humble beginnings, Teague said, it’s amazing to think of how far Alexis and his legacy with steel pan have come.

“It’s really a story made for Hollywood,” Teague said. “I’m just really proud of him, and I will just try to continue it and be like Cliff Alexis and follow in his footsteps.”