Pe­ter Ray Blood

"Africa is fath­om­less," said Hugh Masekela last Sun­day evening when ad­dress­ing a farewell re­cep­tion, held in his ho­n­our at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain. The world-ac­claimed South African mu­si­cian, who spent the past month in T&T, was host­ed by the Min­istry of Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and the South Africa High Com­mis­sion.

Among the spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests present were Min­is­ter of Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, South Africa High Com­mis­sion­er Mau­reen Modis­elle, South Africa Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Dr Earl Brew­ster, Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reynold Coop­er, Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism PS De­dra Bas­combe, Deputy PS Vel Lewis, Cul­ture Of­fi­cer 1 Mar­lon De Bique, Janelle "Pen­ny" Com­mis­siong Chow, and her hus­band Ald­wyn Chow, Leroy Clarke, Oloye Orawale Oranie, Ako Mu­to­ta, Dawad Phillip, David Brizan, Clive Zan­da, NC­BA pres­i­dent David Lopez, Tu­co chair­man Lu­ta­lo "Bro Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba, Pan Trin­ba­go vice-pres­i­dent Bry­on Ser­rette, 2013 Young Kings Monarch Stephen Mar­celle and artistes Atak­lan, Black Sage and La­dy Adana.

Masekela, who de­part­ed the coun­try last Mon­day, was in the coun­try to do a col­lab­o­ra­tive CD with Petrotrin Siparia Del­tones Steel Or­ches­tra, led by cap­tain Aki­no­la Sen­non, and un­der the mu­si­cal di­rec­tion of Carl­ton "Zan­da" Alexan­der.

In­tro­duced to ca­lyp­so by a Bar­ba­di­an doc­tor in Britain, Masekela said he had been in­trigued by the mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly hav­ing be­ing ex­posed to the works of Spar­row and the late Kitch­en­er. Fol­low­ing ad­dress­es by Dou­glas and Modis­elle, and be­ing pre­sent­ed with a Leroy Clarke paint­ing by the Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism min­is­ter, Masekela gave a suc­cinct re­sponse, one punc­tu­at­ed by many anec­dotes about his well in­formed knowl­edge of our mu­sic, life style, cui­sine and sense of hu­mour.

One time, Masekela evoked much laugh­ter when he said the on­ly de­light he had not ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T was "salt­fish," no doubt re­fer­ring to Spar­row's dou­ble en­ten­dre dit­ty of the same name. But, he spoke at length about the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and the ef­fu­sive re­cep­tion he got while be­ing in the coun­try, on his third vis­it.

"Your hos­pi­tal­i­ty here is un­par­al­leled," said Masekela, adding that the mu­sic of T&T was "sweet­er" than the man­goes he ate. He al­so hu­mor­ous­ly quipped about be­ing at­tacked by sand­flies dur­ing his stay in Siparia, adding that the in­sects seemed to know that there was "new meat," from South Africa, in the dis­trict.

An as­so­ciate of Phillip from their days of re­sid­ing in Harlem, USA, Masekela first heard Del­tones when the band per­formed on San Fer­nan­do Hill ten years ago. Im­pressed by what he heard, the Gram­my Award win­ning trum­peter ap­proached Alexan­der to pro­duce mu­sic which en­com­passed mu­si­cians from Cu­ba, Del­tones and Masekela.

Ex­press­ing sur­prise over the "mu­si­cal­i­ty" of the mem­bers of Del­tones ex­plained how he en­coun­tered Alexan­der and the bond sub­se­quent­ly formed be­tween them. He said that be­ing in the stu­dio for some time with the Siparia mu­si­cians made him feel as though he'd re­turned to do­ing ex­ams. He added: "I felt like a pig in dirty mud. The (Del­tones) mu­si­cians knew so much and were cor­rect­ing me." Masekela said the CD would be mixed in South Africa, mas­tered in Cal­i­for­nia, USA, with a fi­nal prod­uct avail­able by Sep­tem­ber 2013.

Def­i­nite­ly a Pan African­ist, Masekela said Africa has no bor­ders, de­spite con­cert­ed ef­forts made by colo­nial­ists for the past 200 years to keep Africans on the con­ti­nent and in the Di­as­po­ra sep­a­rat­ed.

He said that ca­lyp­so mu­sic re­mind­ed him of Ghana Hi Life mu­sic and the rhythms of some South African town­ships.

At the end of Sun­day's re­cep­tion, fol­low­ing a per­for­mance by Del­tones, Masekela and a few guests were en­ter­tained at Lega­cy House, Clarke's pala­tial res­i­dence in the hills of Cas­cade. Gifts of Clarke's books were pre­sent­ed to Masekela, Dou­glas and Com­mis­siong Chow.

Masekela left South Africa in 1960 af­ter the in­fa­mous Sharpeville Mas­sacre, which left 69 peo­ple dead, when Trevor Hud­dle­ston, vi­o­lin­ist Yehu­di Menuhin and British jazz sax­o­phon­ist and clar­inetist John­ny Dankworth helped arrange his ad­mis­sion to Lon­don's Guild­hall School of Mu­sic.

Masekela soon went on to at­tend the Man­hat­tan School of Mu­sic in New York, where he met many jazz lu­mi­nar­ies. In late 1990, Masekela re­turned to South Africa to vis­it his moth­er's grave for the first time. He now per­ma­nent­ly re­sides in South Africa.

The re­cip­i­ent of nu­mer­ous awards, 74-year-old Masekela has per­formed ex­ten­sive­ly glob­al­ly, and his na­tive Africa, per­form­ing with many of the in­ter­na­tion­al lu­mi­nar­ies in jazz.

Tongs On Fire

Some of my fond­est boy­hood mem­o­ries of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain was my fa­ther tak­ing me there to see the "big" foot­ball teams play off against each oth­er in front the Grand Stand. I can still re­mem­ber the acronyms for some of the na­tion­al leagues back in the day, like POS­FL and NAFL, and their larg­er than life play­ers who still re­main some of the most skilled foot­ballers I've ever seen.

I can still re­mem­ber the names of al­most every foot­ball team that graced the Sa­van­nah, the names of play­ers and even some of the sil­ver they fierce­ly com­pet­ed for, like the Best Dark Vir­ginia (BVD) Cup. Go­ing to watch teams like Maple, Colts, Prov­i­dence, Sham­rock, Ca­su­als, and lat­er Dy­namos and Mid­vale, was an ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed treat and one which fed my now un­quench­ing thirst for foot­ball. Hav­ing said that, I must ad­mit that my favourite team was Malvern, with foot­ball stars like Carl­ton Fran­co, Kelvin Be­ras­sa, Clive Niles, Tim Lam­bkin and Clive Bur­nett. I close my eyes to­day and still see the "Wood­brook Glam­our Boys" run un­to the field in their kit of white jer­sey with two ver­ti­cal 'wine' stripes, an 'M' mono­gramed on their left breast, and white pants, to mes­merise op­po­nents with their Cha Cha Cha brand of foot­ball.

Now, more than half cen­tu­ry af­ter­wards, Malvern Sports Club is still around and lit­er­al­ly kick­ing. This year, the club is on a fund-rais­ing mis­sion and is al­so in search of its best bar­be­cue chef. Tongs On Fire is the ti­tle of its BBQ cook off com­pe­ti­tion and 40 com­peti­tors are ex­pect­ed to face the judges to de­cide who can best bar­beque chick­en, pork ribs, fish and ex­ot­ic con­coc­tions. Funds from this ef­fort go to Malvern host­ing its sec­ond an­nu­al Open Class Hock­ey Tour­na­ment, on Oc­to­ber 5, at the Na­tion­al Hock­ey Cen­tre, in Tacarigua, from 12.30 pm.

Pro­ceeds of this com­pe­ti­tion will al­so be fun­neled in­to Malvern's Schools Out­reach Pro­gramme, an ini­tia­tive aimed at the trans­for­ma­tion of young men and women through valu­able struc­tured ath­let­ic pro­grammes. It serves as "Life Skills" to em­pow­er young peo­ple by pro­vid­ing pos­i­tive val­ues, healthy habits, and ed­u­ca­tion through hock­ey, foot­ball and crick­et; re­sult­ing in re­al life pow­er, on and off field.

A club spokesman said last week: "A pri­or­i­ty need for all ac­tiv­i­ties is fund­ing. In the past, we have re­lied on vol­un­teers or min­i­mal­ly com­pen­sat­ed staff. This has re­sult­ed in a high turnover, con­tin­ued dif­fi­cul­ty at­tract­ing qual­i­fied per­son­nel, and lim­it­ed con­ti­nu­ity for the par­tic­i­pants whose suc­cess de­pends on pos­i­tive role mod­els and the re­la­tion­ships they build with their in­struc­tors. We aim to turn this around and set this leg­endary club on a new, vi­brant path in­to the fu­ture."

Malvern � The Or­gan­i­sa­tion; The Mis­sion

Malvern Sports Club was es­tab­lished in 1942 by a group of young peo­ple who had come from the en­vi­rons of Wood­brook or through the ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, Tran­quil­li­ty and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege. Over the years it took on the man­tle of an "In­sti­tu­tion of Class," an or­gan­i­sa­tion with the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing young men and women with a valu­able struc­tured ath­let­ic pro­gramme that pro­motes the phys­i­cal, ed­u­ca­tion­al and life skills nec­es­sary to pre­pare and em­pow­er them for lead­er­ship in their com­mu­ni­ties and suc­cess in their per­son­al lives.

It wasn't too many years ago that Malvern earned a rep­u­ta­tion as leg­ends in na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions in hock­ey and foot­ball; win­ners of over 75 pres­ti­gious ti­tles in the sev­er­al leagues and the var­i­ous di­vi­sions. The Hall of Fame that was com­mem­o­rat­ed at the 70th an­niver­sary (2012), with in­di­vid­u­als like the Thomp­sons, Har­ris' and Leroy Sookdeo, Sher­lan Cabralis and Orie Trottman, in hock­ey; Carl­ton "Put­ty" Lewis, Carl­ton "Squeakie" Hinds, Kelvin Be­ras­sa, Carl­ton Fran­co and Clive Niles, in foot­ball; and, Lance Pierre and Roy Bar­clay; in crick­et.

Peo­ple of note that have been part of the Malvern mem­ber­ship, in­clude Sen­a­tor El­ton Prescott, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Rus­sell Hug­gins, and Colfire CEO Willard Har­ris to name a few.

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