EXPRESS Saturday, July 20, 1996 Page 13
Defence Force
pans ramajay
By KIM JOHNSON
IT MIGHT have raised some eyebrows whenthe Defence Force Steelband, having placedfifth in last year's Pan Ramajay, moved intofirst place in this year's preliminary round.
But it wouldn't surprise anyone who knows the
members of the band, starting with it's leader, Sgt Cecil
"Jimo" James, a man born into a steelband family if
there ever was one.
James's father and uncle, Ancil "Sonny" and
Fitzroy "Gaga" James, were founding members of
Casablanca and their sister Daisy played with the
band in 1944 when she was six, making her perhaps
the first female pannist.
And when a 1950 faction sheared off from Blanca
to follow Philmore "Boots" Davidson and Kenny Hart
and form City Syncopators, the fledgling band was
allowed to nestle under the Jameses' house.
As a child, Cecil also spent time with a relative in
Tacarigua, where he signed up for music lessons at
the orphanage (St Mary's Children's Home) specialis-
ing in French horn. His main focus was on pan, how-
ever, and from the sixties he played with the "Synco"
stage side, right up until 1981 when he captained the
band. (For Panorama he played with Dixieland, then
Tokyo, All Stars and Invaders.)
He can still remember that memorable year when
North Stars' "Poet and Peasant Overture" just edged
out Synco's version of the same piece for first place in
the Pan Festival. "That same year I remember there
was a Regiment band in the Festival," says James.
Not only does the Defence Force steelband leader
come from a family with a musical tradition, so too
does the band's director and arranger Earl Wright, a
former director of the Regiment band.
With his two brothers Orville (who now heads the
Symphony Department of the Berklee School of
Music) and Wilbur, Earl learned both piano and pan as a child
and began playing and arranging for Hilltones steelband
around 1961, when he was 16 years old. In the seventies he
arranged for Birdsong when that band was a regular
Panorama finalist and then moved on to Nocturne Symphony,
whose former leader, Aldwyn "Madman" Jordan, had first
taught him to play pan.
He left Nocturne Symphony in 1994 when he began arranging
for the Defence Force Ramajay side.
Wright'had been in the Defence Force since 1968, however,
having joined the same year his brother Orville left—the same
year the first Regiment Steelband collapsed through attrition.
HEAVY JAMMING... as the Defence Force Ramajay panside
puts in some practice time at Teteron.
Photo: CQLIN SHEPHERD