Russ’s protégés at Elmwood once reached the finals of the National Schools Music Festival at the Royal Albert Hall, and within a few years ILEA had installed dozens of steel bands in schools around the capital. Their motives went beyond music, and fell in line with the well-meaning but horribly patronising thinking that too often informed the official approach to multiculturalism forty years ago. For a number of relatively complex reasons, a disproportionate number of black kids were getting into trouble, and to ‘give them a bit of their culture’ was seen as the best way to fill some sort of hole.
Dr Lionel McCalman, Nostalgia Steel Band’s current captain, is a senior lecturer in Education and Community Development at the University of East London, and the UK’s most knowledgeable steel pan archivist. Every year he runs the well-attended, never-less-than-lively International Conference on Steel Pan, which discusses and holds seminars on steel pan, calypso and mas, the three elements of the Caribbean carnival. Born in Guyana, Lionel came to London as a child in 1965, and takes a rather cynical view of the ILEA programme of which he was a beneficiary:
Dr Lionel McCalman, pan maestro, Nostalgia captain and music historian.
‘Steel bands became very attractive to the ILEA at the time – the late sixties to early seventies – because schools found, in the beginning, that this was a very, very simple instrument to teach, and it covered them as regards doing something for the Caribbean pupils. After three or four lessons they’ll play a simple tune, like “La Bamba” or whatever, and they’ll play for the assembly and everyone will clap. But try to teach “La Bamba” on the trombone or something, and you know where you’re heading for – you’re heading for nothing. So, yes, it was perceived as an easy instrument, and head teachers liked it because they could look at the Caribbean kids and say “If they’re not achieving in that then they can surely achieve in this”.
‘It looked to the world like they were signing up to the equal opportunities agenda. I think it probably did give the kids the sense of achieving something, never mind they were all leaving school with no GCSEs at the same time.
‘But while the story is a catalogue of what they [ILEA] did wrong and all of that, the schools programme is what kept steel band going in this country, because there’s no evidence to show that ordinary Caribbean people are keeping it alive. Not to the scale that, say, Irish families might keep their traditional music going. The actual teaching and the setting up of the bands was done with all good intentions, and because it’s so easy for the kids to master, it mushroomed. Today there are over a thousand steel bands in schools in London, and another three thousand in schools up and down the country.’
Once the ILEA had decided steel bands were the way forward, practical involvement started with Gerald Forsythe. A steel pan player and maker who came to London from Trinidad in 1960, he was always very keen to promote his island’s culture, and was tasked with setting up a steel band at Islington Green School in north London in 1970. The attendant media coverage and the more or less instant enthusiasm from the kids led to requests from other schools, and Forsythe was appointed the country’s first peripatetic steel band teacher. By the end of the decade he had been appointed Steel Band Organiser for the ILEA, and was in charge of hiring teachers and organising the curriculum in the capital. He continued to teach first hand at numerous schools and youth groups, set up festivals and workshops, and was captain of the National School Steel Pan Orchestra. Lionel remembers Forsyth’s greatest contribution as being that ‘through the steel pan he uncovered and nurtured musical talent that might otherwise not have been noticed, and very often he took it to great heights.’
Russell, who continued to teach and give demonstrations after ILEA got involved, still believes that the steel drum is the perfect instrument for introducing children to music, as it’s such a user-friendly item:
‘Kids grow up with the formal instruments and that can be intimidating, they look at the piano and think they are going to have to be Mozart or something. But they look at a steel drum with no notes on it or anything, and think “Well I could get in there too.” They think anybody could have a bash. Because there are no formalities in it they look at it and think they could have a bit of fun. They feel they could do it and bash! Then before they know it, they’re playing something that sounds like music, and I think that’s a liberating feeling. If you give a kid a violin, then they’ve got to be really into music and couldn’t just jump into it and have a bash.
‘Yes, it has some rules, because every instrument needs them, but at the same time it will always have that carefree way about it. It shouldn’t end up like the conventional instruments when you are told “Oh, it has to held that particular way”. There are a few rules to steel bands, but you don’t need to get so bogged down in the rights and wrongs that people get scared of it. Everybody can enjoy it, and I think that’s why it appeals to English people in general, because it seems so carefree.’
THESE DAYS IT’S BECAUSE OF THE SCHOOLS programme that the steel pan has most resonance among young people in London. Diana Hancox is a steel pan teacher and Director of the Steel Pan Academy, a Warwickshire-based organisation that’s committed to giving access and opportunity to steel pan teaching and learning for all ages, with a focus on schools. Diana backs up Russ’s notion that the instrument is especially child-friendly. Steel pan is so popular in primary schools that some schools in which the Academy teaches have as many as a dozen different steel bands. The number of young pan players continues to grow steadily, although the recession is starting to affect things:
‘Sadly, the children on free school meals that used to get free music lessons are no longer funded to do so. The Academy tries to allow a few students to have free lessons but as we get no government funding, this is limited.
Ever since Aldermaston in the 1960s, protest marches have involved steel bands. Here, Nostalgia continue the tradition at the TUC’s 2012 anti-spending cuts protest.
‘We often do class workshops in schools that don’t even have pans, because it greatly increases their musical understanding which makes it easier for them to learn. Because the pans play different parts, and playing pan involves playing in a group, their understanding of timing, how music fits together, and so on, increases. And because early pan is taught without standard notation, we also access those pupils that might struggle with other instruments.
‘I would, of course, like to see steel bands in every school, with increased access for all pupils. The Academy has managed to get a number of pupils onto music scholarships with their pans, but I would like to see more development on grades for pan in this country – not for all pupils, but for those that wish to take pan to university level. But the standard of teaching has to be there – not all pan players are teachers, and I have had to take over some pretty poor teaching at times. And not all music teachers understand pan, and again I have gone into schools where pan is so wrongly taught by music teachers who use them as xylophones. A respect for the instrument and its value is needed, but also an understanding that teaching itself is a skill, and just being able to play an instrument at a high level is not enough to teach and motivate our pupils.’
TOGETHER WITH INVITED PLAYERS including Diana, Nostalgia marched in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, in a section representing Commonwealth immigration. Lionel sums up the current state of play:
‘As an orchestra we play a lot of festivals around Europe, particularly in Switzerland where they love the steel pan. Over here there seems to be a revival lately for single or twoor three-piece pan-round-the-neck players at weddings or garden parties or corporate functions. That goes up quite a bit in summer. Recruitment for the band, and others like us, usually comes about through people who see us at gigs, remember playing a bit of pan at school, and would like to start again.
‘That’s why taking part in the London Olympics Opening Ceremony was so important to us. Of course the atmosphere was electric, and for the fifty steel pan musicians who took part in th
is historic event, the memories will remain with them for decades to come, but it was great to have the steel pan taken seriously in the UK, and being projected on a world stage like that as coming from the UK as well as the Caribbean. That’s the sort of thing that will attract people to the instrument when they see it as a part of something that historic, and we’ll always sort anybody out with a drum if they want to come down and have a try.’
Most noticeable, though, is the effect London steel pan playing is having in Trinidad, home of the art form. Dudley Dickson, acknowledged to be the best pan tuner in the world, is a Grenadian who developed his craft and learned all he knows in London, then took it to Trinidad and the US where the demand is greatest. Because the London pan world is every bit as multi-culti as Nostalgia’s band members, it brings in all sorts of outside influences, and the music created in this city is far more eclectic. Nowadays, of course, this gets carried across the Atlantic instantly, as Lionel explains:
‘You’ve just go to look on YouTube and you can look at all the top pan players and study their style or learn their new tunes. So really, everybody’s influencing everybody else, and there is no best country in the world any more. But it means others are copying us, and we more than hold our own in London.’
CHAPTER THREE
Sounds of Freedom and Free Jazz
South Africans in exile move modern jazz to progressive rock
SOUTH AFRICAN JAZZ DRUMMER Louis Moholo-Moholo is telling the story of how, in the early 1960s, Blue Notes’ pianist Chris McGregor – the white South African son of the headmaster of a Church of Scotland mission school – would blacken his face and venture into the Cape Town townships. Not that McGregor thought such latter-day minstrelsy would fool local residents – it was simply the best way to avoid police attention when getting to his gigs in the black areas.
‘When Chris, the only white member of the Blue Notes, would come to the townships to play, he had to wear a hat pulled down low and dark glasses, and put some [shoe] polish on his face. South Africa was under heavy manners back then, and bands with black and white players weren’t permitted. When I used to play with some white guys in town, I was playing from behind a curtain because we couldn’t be on the same stage. I wasn’t allowed to play in front of a white audience – even my mother wouldn’t be allowed to come in the hall where I was playing.’
Life is far less fraught for Louis these days. The cheerful, laid-back 73-year-old lives comfortably in Cape Town, tours internationally, and gigs locally when he fancies it – ‘I played the week before last in a small club, with just a duo, I do things like that, otherwise I don’t bother, man, just keeping it cool!’ He tells me he was listening to a Blue Notes live in Amsterdam album in his car, just before I called him, and as my call was completely out of the blue, we marvel at the sheer spookiness of it all for a good few minutes. He laughs a great deal, and with language peppered with hipster-ism, it’s sometimes hard to grasp the brutality of the era he’s describing.
The Blue Notes circa 1963. Left to right: Nick Moyake, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo.
After the Afrikaner-rooted National Party was elected to power in 1948, new legislation introduced apartheid as official government policy. Racial segregation was nothing new in South Africa, but for it to be enshrined in law for the first time introduced new levels of oppression. Over a decade later, it would affect how Louis was able to ply his trade, as the inclusion of McGregor as the sole Caucasian alongside Louis Moholo-Moholo, Dudu Pukwana (alto sax), Nikele Moyake (tenor sax), Johnny Dyani (bass) and Mongezi Feza (trumpet), meant that the Blue Notes were a multi-racial sextet, and therefore illegal on several counts. In a particularly vindictive piece of harassment that outlawed quartets or bigger groups, no more than three black musicians were allowed to play together, on the pretext of precluding anti-government conspiracies. Further legislation made it illegal for black people to be anywhere liquor was being served, so the police targeted township shebeens and weekend-long yard parties, and dancehalls were shut down or, in many cases, burned to the ground.
Arbitrary police violence against musicians was commonplace, on the catch-all grounds of sedition. This increased massively during the State of Emergency that followed 1960’s Sharpeville Massacre, when the authorities cracked down on black African culture as a means of spiritual repression. The government bracketed jazz alongside South African music as having a political aspect, assuming – mostly correctly – that jazz musicians were supporting and fundraising for such resistance groups as the African National Congress, or its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, founded in 1961 by Nelson Mandela.
In spite of all this, South African jazz thrived and the 1950s were a particularly fertile time, thanks in part, somewhat ironically, to the Group Areas Act of 1950. By designating which ethnic groups could live in which districts of South Africa’s cities, the Act triggered a massive upheaval of the population, and created vast slum conurbations where urban and rural black South Africans, and people of widely differing backgrounds, were forced to live close together. The resulting cultural crossflows produced modern yet traditional-sounding South African musics including kwela, marabi and mbaqanga, which combined with the hugely popular influences of Art Blakey, Monk, Miles and John Coltrane. The result was a uniquely African bebop style, epitomised by the Jazz Maniacs, a large band with a mission to orchestrate marabi along the lines of Duke Ellington. Although they didn’t last long, they inspired a younger generation of township jazzers that included Abdullah Ibrahim – then still answering to the name of Dollar Brand – and Hugh Masekela, both of whom were in the seminal Jazz Epistles group.
THE BLUE NOTES BEGAN LIFE during the late 1950s, as a bebop outfit with a sideline in danceable township jazz. Later, as these two aspects came together and the group’s personal playlists shifted towards the likes of Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, they started to throw off restrictions. Their style evolved into a pulsating free jazz that acknowledged its township environment with celebratory, dance-oriented modern South African accents. Characterised by an improvisers’ lack of restraint, an immediate, infectious joyousness, and a very African singularity, they won a huge following in their homeland. Their music, Louis believes, was so popular because of its inherent political statement:
‘It was modern, and it was international and it was African; it was important for people to be able to have that sort of expression.’
South Africa in the 1960s, however, was hardly the most accommodating environment for innovative, culturally aware black jazz players. To grow as artists they were going to have to go abroad. Not surprisingly musicians formed a large part of the South African cultural exodus of the 1950s and 1960s. Which suited the authorities. Artists seldom had problems getting out; then their passports would be cancelled, leaving them unable to return. In 1964, the Blue Notes followed Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela and got out. Louis remembers the decision:
‘It was impossible for us to work. We had to go away from South Africa to preserve the music – they [the authorities] were arresting every development of black people developing something of their own, and we were too restricted. So we left to save the thing, but also to show the world that we are not all really racist ourselves, because there we go playing with a white cat.’
The group accepted an invitation to perform at the Antibes Jazz Festival on the French Riviera in July 1964. They made such an impact on the European jazz scene they spent nine months gigging in France, Switzerland and Scandinavia, before fetching up in London in the spring of 1965 as a quintet, Nikele Moyake having returned to South Africa. Starting on 26 April, they played five nights to great acclaim at Ronnie Scott’s club, before opting to make the capital their home. Incidentally, the positive statement that Louis believes was made by their multi-racial line-up was spectacularly misinterpreted in Denmark.
‘White people sometimes didn’t understand us. When we were in Copenhagen when we played with Chris
McGregor, they thought we were some of those people who were like pimps, that we were selling out! They’d say to us “You’re not supposed to play with a white cat on the bandstand – you’re supposed to be fighting every white person in South Africa!” And it wasn’t like that.
‘The thing was, Scandinavia was very straight, it was one of the countries that really helped liberate South Africa, and I don’t blame them for that reaction. They had heard that every white person in South Africa is evil, so they were not really wrong in how they reacted. The good thing was we were in this position to be asked “Why are you playing with this white man – are you one of the pimps?” So we were able to explain, and in the end it was cool, man.’
IRONICALLY FOR THE BLUE NOTES, it was not unusual for white men to black up before going on stage in London. While many would agree in retrospect that it should have been breaking some sort of law, back then the Black And White Minstrel Show was one of the most popular programmes on TV, while the stage version was setting attendance records.
This thoughtless offensiveness from the BBC was a vivid example of how Britain’s approach to race relations had shifted in almost two decades since Lord Kitchener’s quayside calypso. By the time the Blue Notes arrived, race had become entrenched in London politics as well as London life, and doors that had been thrown open were slamming shut. The Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 required prospective immigrants to be in possession of government-issued employment vouchers before they could enter the UK. These vouchers were linked to declining job opportunities with the likes of the NHS or London Transport; the idea was that the closer Britain came to being rebuilt, the fewer vouchers would be issued. Because South Africa quit the Commonwealth in 1961, pre-empting their being kicked out for the National Party’s refusal to comply with a ruling that prohibited slavery or segregation, the Blue Notes were not subject to the Act.
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