GEORGE “Sonny” GODDARD
1924 - 1988 Trinidad
Pan Player, President NATTS, Campaigner, Author
Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939 - 1979 by George Goddard (1991)

About George Goddard's book which was published posthumously:

Edited with an Introduction an Epilogue
by Dr Roy D Thomas

Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939 - 1979
by George Goddard (1991)
ISBN 1 85465 034 3 Pb
© 1991 Mrs Mona Goddard

First published 1991
Karia Press
41 Rheola Close
London N17 9TR

Printed by Scrip-J Printers Limited
187B Tragarete Road
Port of Spain
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

Cover photographry: Aldric Dottin
    From the back notes of
    Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939 - 1979

     ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  • George Goddard was born on April 28, 1924 in New Town, a district of Port of Spain, Trinidad. His childhood and adolescent years were also spent in that district and by age 17 he was involved with one of the earliest steelbands - Alexander's Ragtime Band. From the 1940s, he became more and more deeply involved in the steelband movement: In 1950, he was elected assistant-secretary at the inaugural meeting of the Steelbands Association, and in 1957 he was elected to his first term as president, a post he was to hold several times in subsequent years. George Goddard died in January 1988.
    ABOUT THE EDITOR
  • Dr Roy Thomas was until 1989, senior lecturer in Economics in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. He is currently a consultant.

In his book George Goddard makes the following DEDICATION:

  This book is dedicated to the many persons who contributed in various ways to the development of the Steelband in Trinidad and Tobago:
  All the great "artistes of pan" - tuners, arrangers, players - too numerous to mention individually;
  Canon Max Farquhar (chairman) and members of the 1949 Steelband Committee: Lennox Pierre, Beryl McBurnie, George Mose, Carlyle Kerr, Bertie Thompson, CR Ottley, Charles Espinet, E Mortimer Mitchell, Patricia Carter (secretary);
  Andrew Carr (chairman) and members of the Steelbands Advisory Committee (1958): Amoryll Harper, E Boswell Inniss, BW Celestain, Marguerite Wyke, Charles Espinet;
  Executive officers and committee members of the Associations of Steelbands: Steelbands Association, 1950 - 1963; National Association of Trinidad and Tobago Steelbandsmen, 1963 - 1971; Pan Trinbago, 1971 to the present;
  The past presidents of these associations: Sydney Gollop, 1950 - 1956; Nathaniel Crichlow, 1956 - 1957; Albert Jones, 1959 - 1960; Junior Pouchet, 1960 - 1961; Cecil Hunte, 1961 - 1962; Aldwyn Chow Lin On, 1971 - 1972; Roy Augustus, 1972-1974; Bertie Fraser, 1974 - 1976; Melville Bryan, 1976 - 1978; Arnim Smith, 1979 to the present (November 1987);
  Albert Gomes who, both as newspaper columnist and as a government minister, staunchly supported the steelbands in the early days;
  Flavius Nurse who, at a critical stage in the late 1950s, rendered sterling service as secretary of the Steelbands Association; The calypsonians who sang favourably of pan and panmen - Kitch, Terror, Sparrow, Maestro, Shadow, Chalkie, Black Stalin;
  Staunch friends and supporters of the steelband movement: Ronald Williams, businessman and parliamentarian; Muriel Donawa-McDavidson, parliamentarian; Nicky Inniss and Amin Mohammed, business executives and panmen in their own right; Dennis Mahabir, former mayor of Port of Spain; Donald Pierre, former Minister of Education; Captain Rupert Dennison of the Police Band; Umilta McShine, musicologist; Sir Solomon Hochoy, who became our first [Trinidadian] Governor General; Deputy-Commissioner of Police Cyril Barnes; H Hamilton Holder, educationist and former mayor of Port of Spain; Arthur Bentley, producer of all the Pan Festivals between 1963 and 1971; Ivan Williams, former chairman of the Carnival Development Committee; Charles Tyson, legal adviser and defender of the steelbands; Bruce Procope, attorney, who drew up the first constitution for the Steelbands Association in 1958;
  Last [and] not least, my family - my wife, Mona; my sons, David, Hayden, Gerald and Richard; my brother; Julian; my sister, Mrs Daphne Blood - all of whom understood what I was struggling for and gave me their love, support and encouragement.

George Goddard
November 1987

© 1991 Mrs Mona Goddard

GEORGE “Sonny” GODDARD
[About George Goddard by Dr Felix Blake]

  George Goddard. Here was a man who stood steadfast and unshakeable in his quest for the upliftment as well as the rights of the steelband man and the steelband movement. There were times during his tenure as president of the national steelband association when it seemed he was the steelband movement. It is indeed no exaggeration to say that George Goddard 'put his life on the line' for the progress of the steelband in Trinidad and Tobago. He had so many battles with the powers that be - a difference of opinion with his employers is said to have cost him his Ministry of Health job - that he gained a reputation for being cantankerous. But he was always respected as a man of integrity.

  It will be forever to Goddard's credit that a Trinidad and Tobago steelband association (Pan Trinbago) exists today. It was he who nurtured it in its formative years, notwithstanding the difficulties of bringing unity and understanding of a common cause to volatile and sometimes fractious steelbandsmen. His belief in the future of the steelpan was unshakeable, his empathy with the entire pan brotherhood informed by what he perceived as the unfair hand dealt to panmen by society; and his dedication - even at some sacrifice to his personal life - never wavered. And so, his vision of a strong unified and democratic organisation of steelbandsmen prevailed and survives to this day.

  When George Goddard fell mortally ill, the steelband association's secretary. Arnim Smith, ensured that Pan Trinbago set aside ten thousand dollars [TT] to help offset the cost of medical treatment for this tireless campaigner for the steelband movement. His untimely passing in 1988 was mourned by all panmen. It is a loss assuaged in part by the remembered years - 40 altogether - that George Goddard gave to the steelband movement and the record he left for all posterity in his monumental work, Forty Years In The Steelbands. 1939 - 1979.

 © 1995 Dr Felix Blake: Pg 255; THE TRINIDAD & TOBAGO STEEL PAN: History and Evolution
[Presented without permission; permission being sought.]

  On Saturday 3rd January 1998 Mrs Mona Goddard gave this site, www.seetobago.com (now www.seetobago.org), her kind permission to publish on the internet her late husbands book Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939 - 1979.
  To Mrs Goddard, and her family, I wish to extend my thanks and gratitude for a task that will give me great pleasure to do.
  It is through Mrs Goddard's kindness that the steelbands of Trinidad and Tobago may now show their histories, to a wider audience, and be better understood; in a continuance in spirit, of that very cause, for which George "Sonny" Goddard was himself, such a profound advocate.

JGdeB

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