BIRTH OF TWO PAN
PIONEERS
ELLIE MANNETTE AND
WINSTON SIMON
PEOPLE OF THE
CENTURY
PART ONE
Section 2
October 25, 2000
Pages 2, 3
As
the 1930s came to a close, two youngsters were in the forefront
of an activity that was of great interest to the police. In fact the police would have loved to know
these persons, though not to keep them for any length of time, for they were
too young to be guests of the police.
Their names were Winston Simon, and Ellie Mannette and they were skilled
in what the police would have called ‘making noise,” and of course few people
would have disagreed with them.
(Although the number of people disagreeing with them would have been
considerably lessened at Carnival time).
These
two boys emerged during the period when the rhythmic instruments, which bore
Carnival crowds along were lengths of bamboo, knocked together and called
tamboo bamboo. (“Tambour” pronounced
“tamboo”, being the Patois and French word for drum).
Apparently,
by the mid-1930s young Carnival revelers were finding that tamboo bamboo did
not make enough noise for them. They
took to beating old iron, or anything like old iron, which they could put their
hands on. Dustbins were particularly
sought. It was not safe for the
householder to leave a dustbin outside the gate. Paint cans and brake drums came high on the list.
The
first time we hear of these steel-beating boys was at Carnival 1935. On that Carnival Tuesday (5th
March) the Trinidad Guardian spoke of an early-morning band “surging
like a river” into downtown Port of Spain, with members beating out pulsating
rhythms on old cans and drums.
The
tamboo bamboo bands first adopting steel were Alexander’s Ragtime Band (named
after a United States orchestra of the same era), and Hellyard, which later
became “All Stars” steelband.
Alexander’s Ragtime Band belonged to New Town, while Hellyard was on
Duke Street. These are the bands
believed to have been referred to by the newspaper).
The
year 1935 was a little too early for Winston Simon to come out at Carnival, for
he was only five then. He lived in the
southeast Port of Spain district of John John, and a “steel-beating” group of
the area, calling itself John John, appears to have come together around
1937. By then dozens of such groups
calling themselves steelbands had sprung up.
They came out, not only at Carnival time, but on Discovery Day, which
was the first Monday in August, as well as at any other time when there were
celebrations in the street.
It
was in 1939 that the nine-year-old Winston seems to have come into his
own. In an interview given several
years later he gave an insight into those early days and shed light on what he
is best known for - certainly not making noise. He said: “I was the little drummer boy for John John band. Once when the band was on the street I lend
me pan to somebody, and went and hand me jump-up, and when I come back for the
pan I saw the face was dent in, and I was so vex. I went and was trying to beat out the face of the pan with a
stone, and then… and then I find when I hit the parts with the dent I was
getting like notes, like different kinda tones. And then I knock and knock and it had four separate tones, like
music, and in the end I used the same stone and play a tune. Four notes.
A tune that they call: “River vine, vine cavalli.”
This,
in fact, was the birth of the steelband as we know it today. Although the steelband seems to have started
in 1935, with certain tamboo-bamboo groups banging on steel for the first time,
it was really after little Winston discovered notes on the pan in 1939, that
the steelband took wings, as it were, and soared.
For
although the rhythm was good, especially to Jouvert revelers, it was only when
the melody came that the “magic” came to the steelband.
The
1939 incident with nine-year-old Winston Simon completely shattered the normal
course of events so far as these steel-beating boys were concerned. And maybe “boys” is the right word here, for
the majority of the players were teenagers.
After
hearing of the John John kid who was playing music on the steel pan, they all
wanted to know how it was done. Spies
were on the move, for the rivalry was so sharp that no group was allowed to
gain any advantage for long.
And
despite the extreme inter-steelband hostility of those early days, with groups
having to keep within their own territory, it was soon discovered how it was
done and almost every one of the steel-beating groups had an instrument like
Winston’s, only that the dents in the pans were not accidental but deliberately
made – in fact, carefully made, using heat to get the steel surface more
manageable. Since in knocking out the
notes one got several “pings” and “pongs”, the instrument was called the “ping
pong.”
Around
the same time that Winston brought John John into the limelight, a little group
was formed in Woodbrook, in a little home opposite the Queen’s Park Oval and
almost in the shade of a breadfruit tree.
The
fact that the breadfruit tree happens to be still standing is hardly the
purpose of this tribute, but the leader of the group calling itself Oval Boys,
and practicing under the breadfruit tree, made an unforgettable contribution to
the steelband movement.
For
the little home on the spot was owned by the Mannette family, and the leader of
Oval Boys in 1939 was 12-year-old Ellie Mannette.
Ellie’s
ping pong soon became known all over Woodbrook in steelband circles, for the
dexterity of this Woodbrook boy was equalled only by Winston. Ellie was to be seen under the breadfruit
tree pinging and ponging, with his little woodfire beside him, testing the
clarity of the notes, brining, out its sweetness. His little brother Birdie, might have been already busy composing
little tunes for the steelband to play.
It
seems that it was in 1941, on the appearance of an American war movie called The
Invaders, that Oval Boys changed its name to Invaders.
Express
Section 2
November 1, 2000
Pages 40, 41
The
year 1941 was an interesting year because after that Carnival, which took place
on February 24 and 25, the steelband movement went under a cloud as far as
revelers were concerned.
There
was to be no more Carnival for some time, in fact it was a matter of chance
that Carnival 1941 was sanctioned at all, for owing to the Second World War,
which was raging, Governor of Trinidad Sir Hubert Young was extremely reluctant
to allow it.
Although
each band had its ping pong, outside of steelband circles people were not
conscious of this instrument, and that Carnival Tuesday, 1941 (February 25) the
Trinidad Guardian said, speaking of Carnival Monday: “The music in the
majority of cases was furnished by the biscuit drum and dustbin orchestras (?),
the performers on which instruments exhibited a degree of skill and brought
forth the rhythm which particularly suited the maskers…”
(Incidentally,
the question mark there meant that the journalist was questioning himself
whether the drums and pans should be called instruments).
Carnival
was banned in 1942, and many things happened between 1942 and the end of the
war in 1945 to further stifle the progress of the steelband. One of these things was caused by the
steelbandsmen themselves: the tendency to riot and to cause uproar, which
stemmed from the intense rivalry among the groups.
This
saw so many of these young men into and out of jail. The other factor was the widespread complaints about the noise
when steelbands were practicing, which led to the banning, in 1944. During the years of the war the steelbands
were not allowed to be on the streets, and so since it is the war that nearly
eclipsed them, it is odd that it is the war that was responsible for brining
them vibrantly to life.
For
there can be no doubt that it was the steelband experience of the V-E and V-J
days that made the great breakthrough, causing the masses to be in love with
steel. And where do Winston Simon and
Ellie Mannette come in?
When
the Allied Victory in Europe came on May 8, 1945, and a two-day celebration
(May 8 and 9) was sanctioned, the steelband boys came onto the street in force.
They
were still banned from the streets, but the joy and headiness of the end of the
war was so great that the police took no notice of them.
Prominent
among the steelbands was the John John band, at this point calling itself
“Destination Tokyo”, after a war film of that name; and the steelband from
Woodbrook, Invaders. Another prominent
pioneer band was All Stars.
But
several other bands had been formed in the time between – some very recent –
such as Red Army, Casablanca, Bar 20, Sun Valley, Free French, Poland, Tripoli,
to name a few.
In
Port of Spain, Destination Tokyo and Invaders must have stood out because of
those two wizards of pan, Winston Simon, then 15 years old, and Ellie Mannette,
then 18.
In
the din of the V-E and V-J days it cannot be said what was the impact that
melody brought to the steelband, or if it made any impact at all, but it is
known that most of the bands were playing the four-note melody “River Vine Vine
Cavalli”.
Even
when the V-J celebrations came on October 14 and 15, the steelbands were not
playing many melodies as Lord Kitchener, in his calypso “The Beat of a
Steelband”, testifies. Singing of V-J
day, he said in song: “Yes I heard the beat of a steelband, But I really
couldn’t understand, when I tried to make a distinction, between John John, Bar
20, and Poland,” and the reason for this, he sang, was because they all came
with a “Jum bam ba jubalam jumbam”.
The
truth was, there was too much noise to hear more, and it was the little
steelband competitions, which came afterwards which brought out the melodies.
Simon
himself was far beyond that stage.
Simon and Mannette had emerged as the premier tuners and ping pong artistes
of the time and indeed, when Carnival was resumed the next year, 1946, Simon
was to go down as “the first man to play a tune on the steelband in public.”
Simon,
who was now the ping pong player for Johannesburgh Fascinators, was coming
round the Queen’s Park Savannah with his band when he noticed Governor Bede
Clifford and party coming across from Government House to go to the
Savannah. When they got near, he
stopped, beat out a few tunes, and then he and the other ju-ju warriors pranced
away with delight.
The
Trinidad Guardian of March 6, 1946 (Ash Wednesday) records on its front
page that the player rendered “Ave Maria”, “Lai Fook Lee” (the road march of
1946) and “God Save the King”.
Simon
and Mannette carried the brunt of steelband innovations in the period
immediately after the war, and Mannette, apart from being perhaps the most
celebrated player, is credited with two of the innovations which have lasted
and made the ping pong - today’s tenor
pan – what it is today. Of course there
have been many innovations, especially by Bertie Marshall.
Mannette
is credited with the sinking of the notes of the steelpan, thus making it
concave, instead of the convex notes of Winston Simon. The sinking of the notes was a great deal
more desirable, especially for accuracy.
What he also did was to introduce the rubber-tipped stick, to reduce the
harsh impact of wood on metal.
These
two players remained at the forefront of the Trinidad steelband, and when in
1951 a group of 12 was chosen to represent the Trinidad steelband at the
Festival of Britain, they were both included.
Both
Winston Simon and Ellie Mannette returned to Trinidad at the end of the
steelband tour, but Ellie left for the United States in 1968 and did not return
until this year.
But
tribute is paid today to these two men of the century in Trinidad and Tobago,
for were it not for their contribution, the steelband would never have attained
a place in the sun.