I realized a few days ago how long I have been involved in what is commonly known as playing mas’ when I tried to recall my first Crop Over Kadooment Day.
What was strange was the fact that although I had been a member of the committee set up by the then Barbados Tourist Board to revive and modernize the celebration as a summer attraction, my memory kept flashing back to carnival instead of Crop Over.
Before you get the wrong idea, understand that the carnival I am talking about was not carnival in Trinidad, in St Vincent, in St Lucia, Grenada, in St Kitts or even in Rio de Janeiro. It was carnival in Barbados.
It had started around 1957, when the Barbados Junior of Commerce (Jaycees), which had quite a few locally-based Trinis at the helm, decided to bring mas’ to Barbados and introduced an annual carnival which both coincided with the calendar dates of the Trini affair and became a Bajan replica, until it was stopped in 1963 with the blame placed on the “behaviour” of the masqueraders on the street.
Understand that jumping was not like today’s Kadooment which is restricted to one day. Back then not only did bands hit the streets on carnival Monday and Tuesday, but during every evening/night of the preceding week or two as well.
Steel band music was the order of the day and Barbados had steel bands around every corner. By some quirk of fate, a schoolmate played in a band named Teenagers and while waiting for him to finish practice one evening, I was asked by the band manager if I wanted to learn to play and I nodded my head in the affirmative. Next evening, I was assigned to one “Steel Donkey” who was instructed to “learn” me the tenor pans.
Within weeks, I had become so good that I took over the tenors from “Steel Donkey” while he shared the bass drums.
Several, if not most, of the bands were located in St Michael and every evening we would all head from the various directions toward the City for the highlight of every road march, a band clash on Broad Street.
I can still vividly recall my first such experience. My band was entering Broad Street from High Street by Nelson when we saw another entering from the Milk Market end and coming from the opposite direction.
Unlike what happened in Trinidad at the time, band clashes in Barbados were not violent confrontations but exciting exercises in which each band and its followers tried to play louder and shout harder than the competition. Inevitably, the more impressive ended up with most followers of the other and basked in the victory.
That evening, we clashed in front of the then Barclays Bank but to this day, I do not know which band won. Just as we met each other, somebody mashed off one of my pumps. But the crowd of revellers was so large that I was not able to catch up with my band until it was all over.
Next night, I was at Kensington Oval watching Jackie Opel among those competing for the calypso crown of that year.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.
