STEELBAND HISTORY

INVADERS COMING !

One of the oldest steelbands in the world is BWIA Invaders. From their location on Tragarete Road in Port of Spain, Trinidad - "under de breadfruit tree" - they have sent forth panmen to the universe. Here's how it all started 60 years ago

Each J'Ouvert morning, when Invaders set out on the street, an army of five or six thousand follows. It is a victorious army reclaiming emancipation 50 years after the battles for the street.

"The road make to walk on Carnival day," sang Lord Kitchener of an era when steelbands were community gangs asserting supremacy over the streets, by braver danger (force or finesse) or later by music. Street music was as likely to be the noise of pelting bottles and stone as the rhythm of pan.

Remember the way it was, in the 50s and 60s, when brave citizens of Trinidad and Tobago in the sedate suburb of Woodbrook took courage in hand to go out on the street behind the band on J'Ouvert. They were typical bourgeois souls, but come carnival, they were willing to lend force of numbers to territorial claims. They went prepared to fight or flee.

"Woodbrook people are decent, but not cowards. And when Invaders started to riot, it was because we had to fight to defend them. Tokyo and Desperadoes used to say we can't come in town. They would send us all kind of threats. Well, they had to learn to respect we. And we achieved it."

Francis Wickham, founding member of Oval Boys, which later became Invaders, is philosophical about why Invaders had to be a "badjohn" band. He is big and well-built for 72 years. His cap, the armless jersey, the towel hanging out of the pocket of his army-cut corduroys, are badges of street savvy, but his demeanour is calm, his tone even, barely pitched above the drone of the sanding machine working on pans in the yard.

In the 1940s, he explains, the boys in the area used to lime in the Oval (home of the Queen's Park Cricket Club). It had a "galvanise" (galvanised iron) fence in those days, and the entrance was across Tragarete Road from the yard where they lived "under the breadfruit tree."

They played cricket and football, and made rhythm on "old pans we pick up all 'bout the place." They were the Oval Boys, making music for Carnival.

Most of the founding members are now dead, but Wickham remembers them with fondness: Birdie and Aussie Mannette, Kelvin and Beresford Dore, Harold Mascall, Estick, Bob Hewitt, Francis Innis, Fitzroy Hunte, Ellis, Clarence Gulston, Conrad Hunte and John Doyle. Ellie Mannette didn't start Oval Boys, but came in later. He was their best tuner, choosing and moving to "caustic soda" pans, then bigger, oil drums, getting more and more notes, more octaves, improving the sound all the time.

When they started, the small (biscuit, sweet oil and salt butter) pans were held in one hand, and played with one stick in the other hand. At first, Aussie did the tuning, getting two or four notes depending on the size of the pan. They learned from Alexander's Ragtime Band in Newtown, led by Humbugger, George Goddard and Totee, who tuned pans before Spree Simon was on the scene.

Wickham remembers one Oval competition in which Alexander's won, Oval Boys were second and Hell Yard (later All Stars) were third. "Hell Yard wanted to beat us up. But we didn't know nothing 'bout fight. We accustomed to school and church, we were li'l fellas." [MORE]