I've only been in Port-of-Spain for less than three hours and already I'm caught up in the spirit of Carnival. Around me are six dozen men in brightly colored calypso hats, toreador pants, and ruffled orchid-pattern shirts. The blouses of the two dozen women with us are of the same flowery material, and they are wearing light blue crepe skirts and bright red bandannas. This is the musical troupe I have come all the way from Japan to join, a full-size steel orchestra, with nearly a hundred musicians and over three hundred instruments.

Tomorrow, the last Saturday before Ash Wednesday, we will take our turn on stage with a dozen other orchestras at the Queen's Park Savannah to compete for the coveted title of "Panorama Champion." Our troupe is among the finalists, having survived preliminary stages of the competition with 122 other steel orchestras. Our performance will be the highlight of the evening for a gyrating crowd of 35,000. My fellow musicians have been practicing feverishly, 16 hours a day, for the highest honor any steel band can hold. It is truly my good fortune to have been asked to join them.

You are asking yourself, how did I get here? To Trinidad? To the 10,000 square-foot acoustical space, called a "Panyard," where these champion-level orchestra members have gathered? How did I manage to be invited to play with them for a magical ten minutes on Panorama Night and, perhaps, the right to reign as the top steel band in the world till Carnival 2001?

My answer may astound you.

I dreamed it. I dreamed it from the first time I heard a steel drum played live, at a hotel reception on the east coast of Malaysia. That was in 1974. I dreamed it again when I bought my first album of West Indies steel band music in the 1980s. I dreamed it in the music shop in Santa Cruz, California, where I touched my own first steel drum in 1998. And I dreamed it every day since, until I could master one... just one... full calypso.

La Bamba.

That is the piece we will be playing tomorrow night. And after we finish, we will disband. Even if we win the title, we will form "side stages" of 20-30 members to fulfill our engagements till next Carnival Season. Our music will carry on, even after my brief stay here ends and I return to Tokyo.

I am still dreaming. But it is not the dream that you think. No, I am not dreaming of the roaring patrons, the stomping feet, and the Caribbean breezes carrying our music into the Saturday night air. I am not even dreaming of our trophy. Instead, I am dreaming of an oil tanker, the one that carried our steel drums to the island. And I am dreaming of the unknown craftsman who gave the drums voice.

Out of the refuse has come our music. Out of our dreams has come this opportunity to shine.

Thomas Ainlay Jr. ("Taj") lives in Tokyo, where he dreamed up his own publishing venture, Legacy Memoirs. You can read more about TAJ and his writings at TAJ's Alternative Reality.