By KIM JOHNSON
TONIGHT at the Steelband Festival prelimi-
naries, a fixed pattern will be followed. Every
band's tune of choice will most likely be a
faithfully rendered classic, with what Pat
Bishop referred to as "a flowing melody"—
that is, she explained in the last Festival
brochure, "the listener had to be able to whis-
tle a part of it easily." The piece will also be
"technically challenging" or, "Sticks must be
flying." And, finally, it will conclude with a
"long and charismatic coda"— end with a
crash and a bang.
But it wasn't always so. Not in the decade
beginning in 1952 when steelbands were sim-
ply part of the Music Festival, which was
adjudicated by foreign musicians. The first
Music Festival was organised by the Trinidad
Music Association in 1948 and although sev-
eral vocal and instrumental categories were
j adjudicated by a Barbadian musical expert,
I Gerald Hudson, there was no steelband. One
i had been sent to him at the Queen's Park
] Hotel, but he hadn't been impressed.
i By 1952, however, things were different.
I By then the watershed Trinidad All Steel
Percussion Orchestra (Taspo) had made steel-
bands fully chromatic, capable of playing
every note from tenor to bass—alto pans and
tenor booms had been invented to fill the
gaps. So the next step was unavoidable —
participation in the Music Festival.
A few TMA middle-class members were
wary of the panmen. According to George
Goddard's Forty Years in the Steelbands,
some objected that the panmen were profes-
sionals because Red Army and Invaders had
visited Guyana and Aruba respectively, and
besides many bands played at functions for
fees. But English-born Helen May
Johnstone, the founder and main inspira-
tion of the Music Association, appreciated
grassroots culture and she overruled their
objections. She even suggested a piano
accompany the ping-pong soloists, but pans
weren't yet tuned to concert pitch and could-
n't blend properly with other instruments.
A compromise was made: the preliminar-
ies to be handled by the Steelbands
Association, which knew how to deal with
the masses. Eleven ping-pong soloists
played one selection of any type of music.
Twenty bands played two of either a calyp-
so, a mambo, a rhumba or a classic, plus the
test piece, at the Cocorite Youth Centre.
Most chose a mambo and a classic.
Both solo and ensemble finalists included
y
dark horses. Solo
finalists included
three Taspo mem-
bers—Dudley Smit
from Rising Sun,
Belgrave Bonaparte |
from Southern
Symphony and
Patsy Haynes from
Casablanca. There
were also Carl
Greenidgefrom BELLERAND...now
Kentuckians and
the unknown Hilton Jarvis of Central
Casanovas in Santa Cruz.
The ensemble finalists to move into the
TMA leg of the competition were North Stars,
Southern Symphony, Chicago, Trinidad All
Stars, Free French and the surprise selec-
tion—Boys Town.
The finals were held on March 10 at the
Globe Cinema, which was packed with "Stiff
highbrows and noisy 'pan' enthusiasts,"
according to the Trinidad Guardian . The
adjudicator was a Welshman, Dr Sydney
Northcote, the professor of singing, harmony,
counterpoint and competition at the Guildhall
School of Music.
"Red Army was outside looking for some
band," recalls Monica Johnstone, May's
daughter-ih-law. "There were some scary
moments." But the show went ahead, each
band playing a folk song test piece and a tune
of choice.
The big guns blazed away with their
heavy classics: Free French chose Handel's
"Largo", Southern Symphony chose Strauss's
"The Blue Danube" and Trinidad All Stars
chose "The Dream of Olwin".
"The pans were sweet; the beaters capa-
ble; the music rich and varied; and the audi-
ence appreciative (too audibly so)," reported
the Guardian. And when the Globe stopped
ringing and the applause died down,
Northcote announced the winners: ping-
pong soloist Dudley Smith from Rising
Band'
BELLERAND...then
Sun—no surprise there.
The Welshman had been pleasantly sur-
prised by the sound of pans. "When I first saw
steel instruments, I wondered what kind of
music they would make," he said after the
competition. "I was astonished that they
could make such mellow sounds." But the
adjudicator was less than satisfied with the
top bands.
He buffed Free French, for instance, for
then- variations of "Largo". "Why change the
music?" he asked. And he criticised others for
playing too fast. Anthony Williams, whose
North Stars placed last with "Come Back To
Sorento", explains that, "In those days we
used to learn the melody by ear, mainly from
the radio or a record, and then we would put
anything we want in the harmony."
The band Northcote gave the first place
to was Boys Town, the "fish band" from
Point Cumana.
Today, the memory still brings a tear to
67-year-old Clem Bellerand who founded the
band, tuned their pans, arranged their music
and led the unknown Boys Town to victory
against the Goliaths of that first steelband
festival, 16 days after his first son was born, a
victory which precipitated a week's festivities
in the tiny fishing village of Point Cumana.
Steelband had begun in Point Cumana
early—since Alexander's Ragtime Band came
to St Peter's Day in Carenage in 1939. But
Boys Town was only launched in 1951 after
Bellerand led the youngest players out of the
village band, Stardust, because the older
members were exploiting them. It was a year
before the festival when he named the new
band after the Mickey Rooney film, The Men
from Boys Town.
As the festival drew nearer, the test piece
was played regularly on the radio for contes-
tants. But Bellerand hadn't a radio—he had
to rush across with the band to his wife's
cousin's house where there was a Rediffusion
so they could hear the test piece. As for their
tune of choice, Bellerand decided on a ballad
sung in operatic style, "You are my Heart's
Delight", which he liked but knew only
vaguely. He sought out a villager who knew
music, an old drunkard named Narsus Henry,
and brought him from the rumshop to the
panyard to sing it for the band.
Long after his victory, Bellerand discov-
ered that Henry hadn't remembered the
entire tune and what Boys Town had played
left out part of the chorus. But perhaps
Northcote didn't know the whole thing either.
"And the point is what we played was well-
played and it pleased Dr Northcote,"
Bellerand recalls proudly.
Ballantyne will be
back tomorrow
IN ORDER to accommodate the two articles
on this page, both of which relate to Pan is
Beautiful VIII, the World Steelband
Festival which begins this evening at the
Jean Pierre Complex, Port of Spain, we
have had to hold over the Jillian
Ballantyne Column which usually appears
here every Friday. Dr Ballantyne's column
will appear on the Today Page tomorrow.