BIRTH and INFANCY of the STEELBAND
1991 George Goddard Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939 - 1979Steelband Pioneers:
Ellie Mannette, Victor Wilson, Winston "Spree" SimonWe have the benefit of the recollections of three other steelband pioneers - Winston "Spree" Simon, Ellie Mannette and Victor "Totee" Wilson. Veteran steelbandsman, Ellie Mannette tuner and former leader of the Oval Boys, now Woodbrook Invaders steelband, in a story serialised in the Trinidad evening newspaper, The Sun in March - May 1986
(1) under the caption "The Story of Pan", is reported to have given the following version during an interview with American steelbandsman, Andy Narell:(2)Let me give you a little history of the art - form called the steelband. It originated in Trinidad... from the many ethnic groups which make up the population of Trinidad. It came about in the year 1935. The person I really know to have started this art - form is a gentleman by the name of Alexander Ford ... they called him "Humbugger". I was nine years old (in 1935) when the art-form began. I was too small to jump along at the time but, two years went by, and at the age of 11, I thought I was old enough to take part in it. I started tramping the streets with the big guys and playing the small drums which they were playing then... It was exciting because we switched from the bamboo joints. Prior to the steelband, we had bamboo which you call bamboo tamboo and they played these bamboos as well as bottles and spoons, and brake drums of all kinds, creating whatever rhythmic noises they could have created to parade and sing.
When that was outlawed in the early 30's and the steelband came in 1935 it was something new...
The real beginners band in the island... the first band in the island... the first band ever, was Alexander's Ragtime Band. I started as a little boy following the 'Alexander band' because it began in 1935 and I started in 1937. As a result, I am an off-spring from the Alexander's Ragtime...
Another Ellie Mannette interview, conducted by Gary Gibson, is reported in the April 1986 issue of Percussive Notes, the official publication of the Percussive Arts Society:
The predominant form of music was skin drumming - Camboulet [sic] it was called; Shango and Shouter were some of the names of the rhythms played on the skin drums. Skin drumming came from Africa and was present in the very earliest part of the 20th century. The practice was outlawed by the British government in 1931 because, as these groups grew in number, they created problems, such as playing late at nights and generally being a public nuisance. Also, the government thought that the groups were sending ritual messages to each other through the drumming... The government thought that, because of the oppressed situation - it way very dissatisfying for the natives - at some time there would be an uprising...
The skin drums were used each year during Carnival by people parading in the streets. After skin drums were outlawed, when the next Carnival season came around the people had nothing to play. So they started to play on bottles and spoons and bamboo joints. They call it Tamboo Bamboo, because they'd cut bamboo in various ways and in various lengths and sizes; they cut holes in them, burn them, do whatever. And they created different percussive sounds on these bamboo joints. And with the bamboo, they used an iron (brake drum) and any type of steel possible that they could make a sound. They also had different sized bottles filled with water. This went on from about 1931 to 1934... Then groups of people started fighting among each other, and fight seriously [sic] to the extent that they were taking some of these bamboo joints, sharpening them like spears, and stabbing each other. It was a real trouble era at the time... So Tamboo Bamboo was banned completely ...I remember it clearly. When Carnival came around in 1935, the boys wanted to play. And they had no skin drums to parade with; they had no bamboo to parade with. So... Alexander Forde went around and started gathering garbage cans prior to the celebration. The other groups thought that he couldn't do it and it wasn't going to work... But Forde brought out a band of entire steel-garbage can tops, grease barrels, biscuit drums, paint tins - whatever he could find to create rhythm... [His band was called] Alexander's Ragtime Band... So the next year, everybody came out with steel... In 1937, I started gathering garbage cans myself. We had a number of youngsters living around the neighbourhood and we would practice in my father's backyard. We called ourselves the Oval Boys because we lived right opposite the big pavilion (called [the] Oval),... That went on from about [19]37 until [19]41...(3)
According to Anthony Mark Jones, in a booklet titled Steelband - Winston "Spree" Simon's Story, Simon gave these recollections:
I don't know who first said, "let us beat pan in place of bamboo." It could be that the growing crowds at carnival time wanted a louder sound; it very well could have been the young people of that period wanted a change in musical accompaniment, or they probably yearned for a sound closer to that of accepted conventional musical sounds... Whatever it was, I know I was a pioneer, and a premier one at that, in the coming of the new sound and some of the innovations and systems of pan construction that remain to this day.(4)
"Spree" Simon went on to date the events: "In the year 1939, between the months of May and June... the John John Band was parading the streets of the village (district)..." "Spree" Simon's account also explains how from a chain of events that started accidentally, he came upon the technique of obtaining four separate notes from his pan. In a tape recorded interview of Victor "Totee" Wilson on August 19, 1983 at his Cipriani Boulevard, New Town home, in reply to questions put to him by the author, Wilson said:
I really used to beat bamboo... I was about 16 but a lot of the fellas were in their thirties... Coming down from Jour Ouvert, some of the cutters... booms... foules mash up, so we had no "voo doom" to come down with, so we had to "la la". I went to see a cricket match and I carried a ladder to Elizabeth Street... I saw a pan but it was in Jeffers' gateway; it was a zinc pan... a pan with a double rim and I carried it in the yard and burn it ...the zinc became like biscuit flakes; I threw water in it... I dent the centre in four and I got "ting tong tong tong" and every time I run back I got "tong tong ting tong", so I would swing from ting, tong, ting, tong and reverse. I put about four in the band... four or five in the band. A fella by the name of Estein Small had a biscuit drum, what they now call the bass... that was in the early thirties... bamboo went out about 1939...
New Town band changed its name from Calvary Tamboo Bamboo to Alexander's Ragtime Band. About 1935 Carlton "Humbugger" Forde was like a conductor in the Band. It was only when he took over to bring out the Band on Tuesday that the band really had a leader, I am 66 years now... Mando really picked up a pan in Tragarete Road, but he first beat the pan to keep up time with the bamboo to go uptown, that was the year before I introduced the pans in the band...
After seeing Mando beat the pan, I say I could do better than that; it was galvanise he was beating. I played in the Tamboo Bamboo Band for two to three years before introducing the pans... The name Alexander's Ragtime Band was taken from the motion picture which was advertised years before it came to Trinidad.(5)
In a second tape recorded interview on April 6, 1986, Victor Wilson made the following statement in reply to questions again asked by the author:
All of us came from tamboo bamboo band... from a place called the "Big Yard" at the corner of Woodford Street and Tragarete Road... When we introduced the pan in the band the name of the band was changed to New Town Band, after a while the elder fellas left; they used to play the bamboo, so we were left with pan alone... We had guys like Freddy, Black Boy, Blackhead, Paychee, Popo, Mando, Buddy, Jean, Ray, Charlie Coombs, Theo Colston, Popoyack among others. This was either 1930 or 1931. Humbugger was like the leader but he did not... beat pan... he was like a bandsman... Eventually the people called for their yard and everybody shifted in 1946. The band was taken over by youths and it came from Picton Street, but this time under the name of CB's... Police used to play the boom, Blackhead... the cutter, Paychee... boom, Popo ...iron, Popoyack... bass, Mando... cutter, something like a ping pong with two notes... Ellie Mannette in the newspaper wrote, and I cannot understand it... that he started in the steelband movement at age 11 years; I am stating that I started at the same age, and I am 68 years of age. James Alexander was nothing in the band, and Hamil Alexander made no contribution to the band...(6)
Frederick "Mando" Wilson, a cousin of Victor Wilson, was also interviewed. This was at his Morvant home on April 27, 1986. In reply to questions put to him by Hollis "Chalkdust" Liverpool and the author, Wilson said:
© 1991 Mona GoddardI was born the 3rd of April 1915, and I first became involved in the Steelband between 1935 and 1936. The first man to beat pan that I hear... was a fella from Gonzales they called "Little Drums". He came from Escallier Lands in Gonzales... into the Savannah with a dustbin beating and the whole of his crowd and others who were in the Savannah followed him ...with this pan beating... And it is from there pan came into being... It was a race day, either Boxing Day or New Year's Day... Sylvia Gonzalez came and asked me a couple of questions and I gave her what I could... A bottle of rum really fell but I did not pick up any paint pan. At the time we were already beating pan... We came out as Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1935...(7)
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Historic Update: 08 January 1998; Last Update: 16 July 2014 23:45:00 TT
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