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DAN OLSON: Cyril Paul grew up in poverty in Trinidad. When he arrived in Minnesota in the mid-1950s, he says he was treated like a star. Paul was a standout athlete.

He'd won a scholarship to St. John's College, now University, in Central Minnesota. His star status rose when people heard him sing. Since birth, Paul says he was surrounded by music in a village where children used their voices to make the sounds of steel drum.

CYRIL PAUL: Jubilant, jing, bang

Jung, bang, ba jubilant jung, bang

And our voices were the instruments. We had no instruments, except boxes and biscuit pans and dustbins and things like that, and drumsticks and coconut bamboo and whatnot. Those were the instruments that we--

DAN OLSON: Fast forward 70 years, the scene is a fundraiser recently at Cyril Paul's South Minneapolis church, St. Joan of Arc. Cyril Paul is still singing. The former track star leaps onto the stage for his turn at the microphone and races into an up tempo version of Angelina.

CYRIL PAUL: (SINGING) Angelina, Angelina, please bring down your concertina

And play a welcome for me 'cause I'll be coming home from sea

Everybody--

DAN OLSON: Cyril Paul's introduction to the Minnesota music scene came in 1958. Residents were celebrating 100 years of statehood. Planners arranged a talent show at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Seven students from St. John's College calling themselves the Latin American Combo, Cyril Paul and six white guys, took first prize. Calypso was popular. Paul recalls one of the tunes they performed was Yellow Bird, done here by one of Paul's later bands, the Calypso Monarchs.

CYRIL PAUL: (SINGING) Yellow bird up high in banana tree

Yellow bird, you sit--

DAN OLSON: After college, Cyril Paul became a teacher at a Minneapolis junior high school. The late 1960s riots in North Minneapolis fueled the flight of white families to the suburbs, and Paul remembers his junior high classes were increasingly populated with young African-American students he describes as disruptive and frustrated.

CYRIL PAUL: They wanted to do something with their lives. They didn't know what to do. They had no idea.

They couldn't read. They were always promoted. And we said, if we want to teach successfully, let's break down the classes, make them smaller.

DAN OLSON: The school district didn't go for the idea of smaller classes. A disillusioned Paul quit teaching shortly after. He devoted more time to singing professionally and hiring out as a music resource person in schools and churches.

Cyril Paul's ready smile and infectious music can't hide a deep restlessness to improve the human condition. He's not always optimistic on how things are going. He worries race discrimination is not disappearing and is growing more subtle, that young African-Americans have forgotten the hard won civil rights of their forebearers and that people generally in this country seem more absorbed with accumulating things than with helping their community.

CYRIL PAUL: The point is, we have to contribute. And all of it. I'm talking about all of us, not just the whites contributing large sums of money, but the blacks supporting ways-- if they can't find money, they will find time. Use their bodies to utilize this initiative.

DAN OLSON: Cyril Paul doesn't have a lot of money. But that hasn't stopped him from contributing. At age 78, he bicycled 2,200 miles from Minnesota to California to raise scholarship money for students in the West Indies. Paul turns 80 in March, still using his body and his voice to try to make the world a better place. Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio.

CYRIL PAUL: (SINGING) Angelina, Angelina, please bring down your concertina

'Cause I'll be coming home from sea

Everybody