San­dra L Blood

Back in the days, be­fore the 1950s, they were first named Young De­stroy­ers and first cap­tained by "Beh," this, cit­ed in a tran­scribed ver­sion of a record­ed in­ter­view on Ju­ly 3, 2005, with then 76-year-old Rudolph "Crab­by" Ed­wards as he re­layed his mem­o­ries. To­day, at 82 years old, Crab­by is still an ac­tive mem­ber in the rhythm sec­tion, which proves that in ad­di­tion to serv­ing as a recre­ation­al af­fair, it is a ther­a­peu­tic brain stim­u­lant for its se­nior cit­i­zens. Can you then imag­ine the ad­van­tage to the youths? I found his con­tent to be most ed­u­ca­tion­al and in­spir­ing. For ex­am­ple, among oth­er sig­nif­i­cant bits of in­for­ma­tion, how many are aware that Wil­fred Har­ri­son and Don­ald Stead­man were the sec­ond and third cap­tains, re­spec­tive­ly, be­fore the fourth, the great Rudolph Charles? That the late Win­ston "Spree" Si­mon was the first per­son to ap­ply notes to the pan, but El­liott "El­lie" Man­nette ap­plied ad­di­tion­al notes?

Or that Robert "Rob­bie" Greenidge was the first steel­band arranger to win a Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion with his own tune?

What tremen­dous pieces of his­to­ry. Where is the best-sell­er pa­per-back that con­tains the slate of this steel or­ches­tra's trea­sur­able his­to­ry, or can Des­per­a­does be­come a best-sell­er? Ob­serv­ing the de­gree of loi­ter­ing and hope­less­ness with­in the Laven­tille area; lis­ten­ing to many of the res­i­dents' ut­ter­ances for fail­ure; hav­ing ex­trap­o­lat­ed mo­men­tous da­ta from Crab­by's his­tor­i­cal Jour­ney with Des­per­a­does and draw­ing com­par­i­son to what I learnt, I de­duced that there is need for in­tro­spec­tion and re­flec­tion. There lies a trea­sure chest of ex­pe­ri­ence and as­sets to be tapped in­to. The prob­lem is that there seems to be clue­less­ness from with­in the folds as it re­gards max­imis­ing the trea­sures to ben­e­fit it­self and com­mu­ni­ty. And so, now known as Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra, the mem­bers ap­pear to have slipped down their self-made slip­pery slope, hit­ting rock bot­tom af­ter this year's Panora­ma se­mi-fi­nals.

"When they are down, the hill is down, but when they are up, they are the im­pe­tus for the op­pressed," stat­ed the or­ches­tra's cur­rent man­ag­er Ju­nior Hut­son, so one can on­ly con­cep­tu­alise the emo­tion­al chaos. But who are the op­pressed? Why are they op­pressed? Where do they ex­ist? How many are there? Do they hope for great­ness? How do they hope to achieve great­ness? In my 2011 ar­ti­cle, "Des­pers -a bea­con of hope," I opened by stat­ing: "Snug­gled co­zi­ly on the sloped ter­rains of a con­tro­ver­sial, ad­verse, yet re­source­ful com­mu­ni­ty is the mu­nif­i­cent gift...some­thing is spe­cial up there but the peo­ple seem to have missed it. To what did I re­fer should the peo­ple didn't or sim­ply couldn't con­strue? The mu­nif­i­cent gift; the larg­er-than-life mur­al paint­ing is Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra, favourably known as Des­pers or de Ra­does-a po­ten­tial mu­sic con­glom­er­ate that can cre­ate wealth, peace and har­mo­ny among their turfs. Ear­ly last year, the or­ches­tra's first fe­male man­ag­er and a cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer with an elite com­pa­ny, San­dra Awai, at­tempt­ed to con­vey a fresh lev­el of think­ing and op­er­a­tions. But ev­i­dent­ly, the cor­po­rate or non-tra­di­tion­al style of lead­er­ship did not sit well with some of the peo­ple, as she re­signed, twice, cit­ing dis­con­tent­ed fac­tions who bla­tant­ly or furtive­ly re­belled. Time, abil­i­ty and ex­per­tise are pre­cious; they must nev­er be wast­ed!

Bring­ing so­cial re­lief to Laven­tille us­ing Des­pers as the ve­hi­cle to get there was an as­pi­ra­tion, but with­in the last quar­ter of the year, the ball be­gan to roll all over again as yet an­oth­er cor­po­rate fig­ure, cur­rent man­ag­er, Ju­nior Hut­son was in­stalled with the same pro­jec­tion for the same peo­ple. The re­al­i­ty and bot­tom line are: the soon­er the peo­ple come to recog­nise that they are wor­thy of the best but must be ob­jec­tive and co-op­er­ate with the best, the bet­ter. Once that men­tal­i­ty is har­nessed and act­ed up­on, three-quar­ter of the work is done, as ideas from with­in or ex­ter­nal to the band geared to­wards im­prove­ment, will be viewed, un­der­stood and eas­i­ly wel­comed as an as­set. Swift and con­tin­ued suc­cess is im­mi­nent. A wide ar­ray of (pos­i­tive) char­ac­ter-build­ing pro­grammes are avail­able but many peo­ple, na­tion­wide, have be­come lazy, sub­jec­tive­ly com­pla­cent and refuse ve­he­ment­ly to be both­ered. Thus, this type of mind­set comes around and nips us all hard in the rear at all spheres of life. As a re­sult, one can cor­rob­o­rate that stag­na­tion, op­pres­sion, de­pres­sion or fail­ure re­al­ly speaks to an in­se­cure, scared, pho­bic men­tal­i­ty, and weak spir­it.

Con­se­quent­ly, the Car­ni­val sea­son self-evic­tion from the right­ful home (Laven­tille) to Cadiz Road, Bel­mont, to es­cape the now ex­pect­ed on­slaught of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties against vis­i­tors to the band, ve­hi­cles, per­form­ers them­selves and be­tween ri­val­ing res­i­dents, has formed part of a chain of com­e­dy con­tent. David Rud­der once sang, "Some­where up in Laven­tille, many years ago..." but brings au­di­ences to a fit of laugh­ter with his nov­el phrase, "Some­where down on Cadiz Road..." If not bad enough bob­bing and weav­ing from crime, can you imag­ine com­pound­ing mat­ters, chal­lenged be­ings are ac­tu­al­ly caus­ing this trea­sure to be­come a laugh­ing stock? Hope­ful­ly, Rud­der is us­ing some deep, re­verse psy­cho­log­i­cal ploy as if to say, "Con­tem­plate on your po­ten­tial, strengths and op­por­tu­ni­ties. Use your boun­ti­ful trea­sures to your full ben­e­fit. Cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that al­lows for great­ness, safe­ty and peace, not to be con­sid­ered the 'whip­ping boy' of so­ci­ety."