Odysseys: Steelpan art helped her bring Guyana to Pittsburgh
By Mila Sanina / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 3, 2014 12:00 AM, Source - Post-Gazette
At Leigh Solomon’s wedding in Pittsburgh, cultures clashed and came together. That day 12 years ago, Leigh, a native of Guyana, married an Italian, David Pugliano, whose parents emigrated from southern Italy and settled in Pittsburgh.
“At my wedding, the Italians were dancing to soca and reggae as the Caribbean folks were doing the tarantella,” she said. People staffing the celebration were peeking in and wondering, “What’s going on in there?”
Lots of remarkable things. Music was provided by a band composed of Ms. Solomon, in wedding dress, and her sisters. Each played a steelpan, also known as a steel drum, a popular Caribbean musical instrument that has been an integral part of Leigh’s family story.
Ms. Solomon’s family moved to the Steel City in 1984. Leigh was 5 years old when her parents decided to settle here after moving to the Bronx in New York City from Georgetown, Guyana, on the northern coast of South America. Her uncle was studying at the University of Pittsburgh at the time. He told her parents that New York was too busy and Pittsburgh would be more to their liking as a place to raise four girls and build their lives.
It was not a hard sell, so they moved.
Language was not a barrier for the girls, but little things created challenges. Since Guyana was once under British rule, the girls spoke what their mother called “Queen’s English,” with accents that other children had difficulty understanding. “Our food that we brought for lunch looked odd to others,” Leigh said. “I remember hiding my lunch. I brought rice and beans and tea, and that was something other kids have not been used to.”
Two things made the transition easier. First was the family. No matter what barriers the outside world presented, the Solomons’ Pittsburgh home was a safe haven. It was “Guyana all the time,” Ms. Solomon said. “There were four of us, so it meant that it’s a group of friends, when we got home we could play in the backyard and have fun and we were not so focused on making friends at school, although we did so eventually.”
Second was her father’s passion — a steelpan. It bound the family together. Mr. Solomon was a known steelpan maker in Guyana, and the instrument helped the family build ties to Pittsburgh because the girls were performers. Audiences clapped and that helped Ms. Solomon and her sisters build confidence.
A steelpan was also an ice-breaker. When people in Pittsburgh would learn that the girls were performers, they would ask, “So do you sing?” That question motivated Ms. Solomon and her sisters to talk about steelpans, Guyana, their family and their culture. “No,” they would say, “we play the steelpan.”
“Having something and knowing something that other people were not familiar with was also a strength because you could become a teacher,” she said. “In a way, I have been a lifelong teacher, because I was so young talking about the steelpan and showing adults something they have never seen before.”
Ms. Solomon and her family have always advocated for Pittsburgh. “I’d say we believed in Pittsburgh when it wasn’t cool, when it was not really cool to be from Pittsburgh. We were huge advocates of the city. Why do it there? Let’s do it in Pittsburgh. Why does that festival have to be there? Let’s do it in Pittsburgh.”
These days, Pittsburgh is the base for the business of Leigh’s father, who makes instruments for people from all over the world. “People often ask him, ‘Where is your factory?’ and he would say in Pittsburgh. ‘Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh has a steelpan factory?’ ” she said.
As a mother of three and a person with a multicultural family, she said that although Pittsburgh praises and aspires for more diversity, it could do more.
“I want more children to be raised in the world that I was raised in, where it’s open to other cultures,” she said. “I was walking with my girls through Brooklyn and they are not scared or asking why is that woman wearing that thing on her head. It’s not only about being curious but also accepting and knowing that the world is much more than their city or the country you live in. I knew that when I was 5.”
This article is part of the Odysseys project through which the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is trying to track immigrants from 193 countries in the United Nations, folks who made Pittsburgh their home. Read about countries we have found, and help us with those we are yet to make a connection with at post-gazette.com/odysseys. Please contact us if you know someone from countries we do not have on the map yet.
Source - http://www.post-gazette.com/ne...stories/201411030023