Last week, Guyana celebrated 51 years as a republic. The anniversary was marked by a fairly elaborate official ceremony in the compound of the Parliament building, with an array of performance events. There were also other recorded pieces in a national television broadcast. But the occasion passed in low-key fashion without the usual flamboyant events, noise, festivities and spectacle as the country, like the whole world, is still unrecovered from the stranglehold of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A number of parties and night clubs defied the health restrictions and precautions with unsanctioned revels, but the general tone was subdued and quiet. Significantly, there was no Mashramani, reflecting the silence across the channel in Trinidad and Tobago where there was no carnival.
The relative hush of this unpopular situation offered the opportunity to give some thought to Mashramani, its state as a national festival, and its functions. Further, since the steel band has been totally silent throughout this period, how has it fared as a Mashramani event, and has it benefitted in any way from the festival?
Basically, the steel band has been under threat for its very survival. In Guyana it has had a checkered history. After an early era of great flourish and robust popularity, it fell into lean times, virtually disappeared, and then rose like the Phoenix from its ashes to reclaim a noticeable place in Mashramani. Where is it today?
Significantly, the nation’s foremost institution of higher learning took an interest in it. The University of Guyana (UG)’s Vice-Chancellor had at one time appointed as Artist in Residence, Compton Narine aka Cammo Williams, musician, composer, solo pannist, and former member of Ken Corsbie’s famous All Ah We theatre group. But even before that, the steel pan found its way into the university’s academic programme, under the astute initiative of Professor Joycelynne Loncke. Courses were designed around the study of steel pan, and at one time there was a students’ University Steel Orchestra.
To go further, the current Vice-Chancellor had secured from a donor, a complete set of pans for these studies. All of these are vital moves pivotal in securing knowledge of the music and its instruments, national acceptance and to some degree, the robust survival of steel pan in the country. However, the band fluctuated because student members came, graduated and left. At the moment, COVID-19 has stifled its developments at UG, and it has to be hoped that current tutor Leon McDonald can revive the work started by Prof Loncke.
Nationwide, the bands have been silent for nearly a year. But at this time in 2020 the prognosis was good. According to Andrew Tyndall, steel bands had reappeared in Guyana and recaptured their former popularity, and interest was healthy. Tyndall is at the core of steel band activity. He is the administrator of the National School of Music and, when necessary, acts as the Director of Culture. The National School of Music was instrumental in the formation of a National Steel Ensemble, a professional unit which has represented Guyana repeatedly at Carifesta, and has enhanced Guyanese steel pan. Tyndall leads the band, and was Director of Mashramani in 2020.
He remarked on the healthy state of the music after the very successful Panorama Competition during Mashramani 2020, when there were record crowd attendances at the show. There were more bands competing than before, and there was a return to competition in the Large Bands Category, which was won by the Police Force Band.
There are now several steel bands in secondary schools, and an increase in the numbers of others. There is no proof, however, that the former glory, when steel bands had a fierce popular following and frequent appearances on the road, has been recaptured.
At one time in history, steel pan was a factor in national popular culture. There were several steel bands practicing in Guyana in the 1950s moving into independence time. They took part in national culture; there was ferocious rivalry and sometimes violence when bands met in border clashes on the streets. There were competitions and the tradition of ‘tramping’ in which crowds of people danced down the road behind a band. Such was the fervour generated by these tramps that playwright Ian McDonald was moved to write the drama “The Tramping Man” in 1969. Steel bands were incorporated in carnival events for independence in 1966.
There is some documented evidence of the prominence of Guyanese steel bands in the fifties and sixties. Apart from the newspapers, there is evidence of lucrative vaudeville shows and performances that flourished across the Caribbean, right through the 20th century, fading out by 1970. Trinidadian calypsonian Raphael ‘The Roaring Lion’ de Leon, wrote of trips to British Guiana for vaudeville, and of Guyanese Shanto King Bill Rogers in Calypso from France to Trinidad. Rogers himself preserved newspaper clippings from the 1930s, and in particular from the 1950s where steel band performances were concerned. Some of Rogers’ records are published in Bill Rogers: The Life of Bill (Bhagee) Rogers and the Origin of Shanto Music in Guyana by his son Roger ‘Young Bill Rogers’ Hinds.
Bill Rogers was also a vaudeville impresario, promoter and producer. Hinds describes some of his ventures: “Throughout the late 1940s and the early 1950s, Bill Rogers actively promoted steel band in British Guiana. His first venture was on February 11, 1947, when he presented the ‘Carnival Revue’ at the Olympic Cinema in Charlestown. Appearing on the stage for the first time were Guianese steel bands. They were part of a steel band competition. The bands in the preliminary rounds were ‘Poland’ from Charlestown and ‘Red Army’ from Lacytown. The winner of that round went up against ‘The Kitty Symphonic Steel Band’ from Kitty”.
Nostalgias: General Memories of Guyana by Godfrey Chin mentions the place of the bands in the popular culture and provides lists of bands and their clashes during the 1950s. A picture of all these activities and how the steel pan contributed to Mashramani can be found in the publication, The Origins and Development of Guyana’s Mashramani by Al Creighton.
What is provided for 1951 is a truly impressive list. Many of the names chosen by steel bands reflect the combative nature of the rivalry at that time, the notions of invincibility, sense of excitement and exoticism or the high musical quality that the bands entertained about themselves. The list includes Cassablanca, Tripoli, Commandos, Eight Army Juniors, Kitty Symphonic, Texicans All Stars, Ebony (the first all-girls steel orchestra), Kaietukians, Invaders, Quo Vadis, Pagans, Penguins, Troubadours, and Silvertones.
These bands often performed in vaudeville shows in the cinema houses, and very often these performances were advertised as competitive showdowns between bands. British Guiana, therefore, obviously knew a period of high intensity and frequent appearances when people would buy tickets to hear these bands perform. After independence there seemed to have been a cooling of this trend. Vaudeville shows were winding down in the 1970s. In Guyana, activities, competitions and prizes awarded to bands began to experience decline. Most of the organisation became limited to the annual shows of the Jaycees, and large national events.
When Mashramani was invented in 1970, a steel band competition was included, and so was the parade of bands on the street on Republic Day. But these did not appear to succeed in keeping the high level of fervour previously exhibited, and the steel pan tramps faded away.
In the 1980s there was some amount of revival, because there were healthy competitions in Mashramani and there were a few large bands, such as the very dominant Chronicle Atlantic Steel Orchestra, that virtually served as the official national band.
In the 1990s the steel bands went into another decline that threatened to wipe them clean out of existence. Mashramani itself suffered a long weak period. But it pulled itself gallantly out of this in the early 2000s and had a positive turnaround as a festival. The Panorama competition was re-instated, but it still took some time for the bands to return in significant numbers.
Steel pan as a musical tradition in Guyana has seen fluctuations. It has not re-grounded itself in the popular culture and consciousness as in the fifties, but Guyana has reclaimed it as a consistent feature in the national representation at a series of Carifestas – 2013 to 2019 – and the National School of Music has been a catalyst. The steel bands seemed on their way to resurgent prominence, encouraged by the popular turnout at Panorama 2020. But now they are silent under the low, heavy clouds of the COVID-19 conditions.
