This piece draws inspiration from two instruments traditionally found in a Jamaican Mento Band. The first is the rumba box, an instrument referred to as the marimbula in other regions. It looks like a large thumb piano cajón, and it provides the band's bassline. Because it only features five or six fixed pitches tuned to a scale, the bass is often implied rather than perfectly in tune with the other instruments. However, it adds a powerful rhythmic effect.

The second instrument is the bamboo saxophone, a unique folk instrument created and popularized by William "Sugar Belly" Walker. Its body is handcrafted from hollow bamboo with finger holes bored into the top. A smaller bamboo piece, often secured with masking tape, serves as the single-reed mouthpiece. At the bottom, a tin funnel or cardboard thread spool acts as a sound resonator. The resulting sounds are bold, honky, reedy, earthy, and unadulterated. Even though the musicians are primarily self-taught, their folk song improvisations are highly virtuosic. Full of character and life, these themes are perfectly tailored to the moment in which this mento music is being played.

The marimba mimics the rumba box very well, and the bass clarinet mimics the bamboo saxophone as a member of the reed family. The primary advantage of these two instruments is their extended upper and lower ranges, which allow me to play with the dynamics of their musical interaction. Starting from the traditional roles of melody and accompaniment, I reverse, warp, or even abandon these roles so that these instruments assume the acoustic characteristics of other instruments found in the mento band (i.e., the guitar, banjo, or drums). The result is, in some ways, a set of variations on the theme of a two-man band.

The title Ton yo han mek fashan (literally translated: "turn your hand [and] make fashion") is a proverb with two meanings: to make what could be deemed "useless"-- fashionable, and to make the most of an unfortunate situation.

I originally set out to do just that, utilizing only two instruments to conjure the presence of a full mento band. Ironically, the piece was composed during the global pandemic, a period that left me creatively paralyzed for eight months. To break through these dark times, I had to live the proverb myself—taking an unfortunate situation and using it to forge a work that was meant to be optimistic, vibrant, and full of joy.