“Ah young and strong and ent fraid ah soul in town; who think they bad to me I will be more than glad; ah got meh gun and pard­na ah ent mak­ing fun. If yuh smart clear de way, and if yuh think yuh bad make yuh play …”

The Mighty Spar­row

—Gun­slingers

Bad­johnism!

That is a fea­ture of the ear­ly steel­band times in the post-WWII era when men faced each oth­er with fists, head butts, steel knuck­les, white han­dle ra­zors, put­neys (a lo­cal­ly as­sem­bled firearm), big stones, iron bolts, bot­tles and any­thing us­able as a weapon.

Vi­tal­ly con­nect­ed to the emer­gence of bad­johnism were the jeal­ousies which de­vel­oped amongst the pan­men, in­di­vid­u­al­ly search­ing for sound, for the cre­ation and im­prove­ment of the pan; on oc­ca­sion it led to vi­o­lence.

Then there were the con­flicts which emerged out of the man-woman re­la­tion­ship of the times.

The at­ti­tude amongst the men: “They had to keep the la­dy that was theirs and to guard against any in­vad­er; and if it took a fight to keep your woman, then so be it.” Hu­man be­ings are com­plex crea­tures.

“Ah went to jail, and when I come out, meh pard­nas tell me meh woman went to live with a man in the east. Well I gone up they to bring she back home; fight break out,” Rene­gade Bad­john, Lit­tle Axe.

The great pan pi­o­neer, El­lie Man­nette, had a woman for whom he got a scar from a blade of an op­pos­ing suit­or.

“I heard they had a bad­john in San Fer­nan­do who was get­ting plen­ty fame; I take ah bus and gone down dey and beat him to a fraz­zle,” Car­lie By­er, list­ed on the Bel­mont Pub­lic Li­brary wall as a Guer­ril­la Fight­er.

“In­vaders beat­ing sweet, com­ing up Park Street, Tokyo com­ing down beat­ing very slow, and when de two bands clash, ma­mayo if yuh see cut­lash, nev­er me again to jump in ah steel­band in Port-of-Spain.” Lord Blakie’s au­then­tic and in­sight­ful ac­count of the his­toric fight be­tween one band from the west and the oth­er from the east at Green Cor­ner, which was the de­mar­cat­ing point, the Red Line de­pict­ing the ter­ri­to­r­i­al war zone be­tween the East and West.

One of the most no­to­ri­ous clash­es was the one be­tween Des­per­a­does and San Juan All Stars out­side the Colo­nial hos­pi­tal.

As re­cent as the 1960s-1970s, a young, black, emerg­ing Wood­brook mid­dle-class found­ed Star­lift led by Ray Hol­man (Hon­orary PhD), who had his ground­ing in the mighty In­vaders. Ray be­gan pro­duc­ing his own mu­sic for Panora­ma: “Jump­ing up for las lap … it was ad­van­tage, they went on the ram­page, it was pan on de run every man and woman, it was pan on the move, these pan­men didn’t ap­prove, big fight Car­ni­val Tues­day night,” Ray’s ac­count of an at­tack dri­ven by jeal­ousy over an emerg­ing band.

Dri­ving bad­johnism was a war­rior spir­it that need­ed ex­pres­sion. Neville Jules, leader of All Stars, said mem­bers of the band took lessons in wrestling, per­haps to sat­is­fy an in­ner need for an ex­pres­sion of phys­i­cal su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

But let’s go back to the his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances of the pe­ri­od. The en­vi­ron­ment was rough; mon­ey and the bare ne­ces­si­ties of life were short for those at the low­est end of so­ci­ety; so too were op­por­tu­ni­ties for those with­out skills, a ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion, and those mar­gin­alised by the val­ues of a so­cial class and colour along­side the “hoity toity”.

The goat-skin drums were banned in the 19th cen­tu­ry. The tam­boo bam­boo cre­at­ed a mea­sure of sat­is­fac­tion, but it did not fill the yawn­ing space in­side the young men and women of the era for a mu­sic, an in­stru­ment which fed the soul.

The search there­fore be­gan for a sound through which those who lived in the com­mu­ni­ties of west­ern and east­ern Port-of-Spain could sat­is­fy that need to ex­press their in­ter­nal pas­sions.

The point be­ing made here is that the pur­suit of the in­stru­ments, the sound qual­i­ty, the es­tab­lish­ment of a steel­band so­ci­ety, and the de­sire to lend val­ue to the pur­suit were be­ing fought against dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices by the state au­thor­i­ties, the po­lice, the mag­is­trates, and the jail­ers to the sat­is­fac­tion of the priv­i­leged class­es. Out of such a vi­o­lent­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment, the steel pan, the steel­bands, and the play­ers emerged.

Prince Bat­son, who first led the Cross of Lor­raine and in­to All Stars, de­scribed him­self to me as a “pan pick-up­per”. His du­ty was to roam com­mu­ni­ties, fac­to­ries and oth­er places for dis­card­ed and need­ed drums for Neville Jules to con­vert in­to in­stru­ments. In do­ing so, he risked hav­ing a po­lice ba­ton reg­is­tered on his back.

The All Stars cap­tain and arranger told me of his ex­pe­ri­ence tun­ing pans in Hell Yard, where he had to put up with neigh­bours emp­ty­ing the night “poe” close to his ex­per­i­men­tal ground.

The re­al­i­ty is that vi­o­lence al­ways at­tend­ed the cre­ation and emer­gence of the steel pan, the steel­bands, and the men and women who emerged post-WWII to be the war gen­er­als of the pan; but it was a com­plex gen­er­al­ship.

To be con­tin­ued next week.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.