Panpodium Issue 23

pan podium special event feature

CROSSFIRE STEELBAND – ON AN EXCURSION TO RIO CLARO

In the 1940s, fights in Trinidad were unfortunately a common occurrence, men with a fighting spirit would take any opportunity and sometimes no opportunity at all, just a glance could be enough to trigger their unrestrained and raging need for bloodshed, a need that always took over any common sense and there was no stop to their frustrated and fiery temper.

One morning, fifteen of us from Crossfire steelband took our drums on an excursion to spend the day playing at Rio Claro, South East Trinidad. We played during the train journey, entertaining all the passengers in our carriage. While we were taking a break a voice was heard from the back of the carriage urging us not to stop, it was Carlton, better known as “Back Head’, offensive and dreaded for his constant need for a fight, a real “bad john “as we say in Trinidad.

Not giving him the benefit of our attention we carried on playing and stopping at random when it suited us, we knew too well to ignore his presence but when he became so persistently loud and obnoxious we all decided to stop playing altogether. He suddenly got up, picked up two of our drums and threw them overboard, looking at us defiantly he took a knife out of his pocket, snatched two more drums and before he could throw them, Eamon Thorpe’s brother, Roger, (a bad john himself) stopped him by grabbing his arms while in the motion of swinging the drums through the open door, we just stood there looking at the knife and at the two of them holding and pulling at the drums when finally they fought fiercely with one another, everyone around them scampered to other carriages.

While fighting, both coming closer to the door, Roger in a final struggle pushed ‘Blackhead’ out of the open carriage door, Blackhead fell out of the speeding train onto the rail tracks, and we all screamed, “He is dead! He is dead!” Roger, his face bleeding all over his shirt looked behind where Black Head would have been lying only to see him brushing off his clothes and walking away from the tracks. Our excursion had taken an abrupt turn and while accompanying Roger to the hospital he went into an epileptic fit.

For this incident, ‘Blackhead’ was prosecuted and given a 3 months jail sentence.

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Pan Podium • Summer 2011 • Celebrating 60 Years of Pan in the UK

pan podium special event feature

CROSSFIRE AT FORT GEORGE, EASTER 1947

Defying the ban on all street parades, we had decided to take our band, “Crossfire”, on a musical picnic up the hills, to Fort George fortifications rising 1000 feet over the western side of Port of Spain and its harbour.

We left our pan yard in Hyderabad Street, St James, walking and playing our steel drums which were hung around our necks. Friends and family followed carrying baskets of food and drinks, knowing very well that playing in the streets outside the carnival season was forbidden. My mother, Stella Betancourt, who would never have missed a party for anything in the world, came to share the afternoon of entertainment with us. She was also there along with the other adults to supervise the teenagers we still were, in order to protect us from getting into trouble.

All the players from the band wore white shirts; white flannel pants white shoes and red berets that my mother made for us. On the shirt’s pockets, in green, she had embroidered a coconut tree. To avoid been seen by the police, we walked through the narrow back roads, having only the St James Main Road (the Western Main Road) to cross. That Easter afternoon on the hills, was filled with music, dance and laughter.

On our way back that evening, we took the dirt road down the hills, playing, with the crowd of followers who had gathered along the way jumping and singing. We came to the same main road crossing at Cocorite when a British inspector driving along on the same main road got a glimpse of the crowd, drove to the St James police station, reported the offence and sent some policemen to deal with the rebels.

We were almost home when they caught up with us, just as we were walking along the wall of the Mucurapo cemetery, two police vans arrived and before they even stopped, policemen were running out of the vehicles with batons and bull pistles in their hands shouting, “Police raid “! The steel drums around our necks came flying off so fast over the cemetery wall that we did not even anticipate the damage our drums would suffer, others just dropped their pans on the side of the road, but we were all running as if we had seen spirits ( ghosts) rising from the graves.

From the nearby houses, people who saw the policemen chasing us came out with sticks or any other apparatus they had come across to confront the policemen, shouting at them to leave us alone as we were so close to home. The drums dropped on the side of the road were eventually taken to the station by the officers while the ones in the burial ground had not been found and were later recovered by us. Luckily, a member of our band was the son of a sergeant who was based at that same police station and assisted us in getting back all our instruments.

Pan Podium • Summer 2011 • Celebrating 60 Years of Pan in the UK 21