Oscar Pile Speaks: The Spread of Steelband
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"The history of the steelband in its early days - you find that a man by the name of Manning [Eustace Henry] who used to live in St. James [Trinidad], he left here and he belongs to St. Lucia [or] Antigua [somewhere] around there. He left here with a pan and eventually when he went there - they knows nothing about steelpan - he opened a band. And you find Antiguans - by he doing this Manning … and Henry - they got two steelbands over there in the earlies [named] Hell’s Gate and Brute Force.
I left Trinidad and went to Tobago and when I went there I opened the steelband there [called] Paramount in Delaford Tobago. I met a guy who from Trinidad - left Trinidad - and was living up there by the name of Cecil Baptiste - I believe he is dead now.
Whilst I was in Tobago, I met Viking the calypsonian. He helped the band they call « Our Boys » today.
Also Rannie [Randolph] Babb - yes, [the] retired police officer - he was in Tobago and he also assist[ed] another band and open[ed] another band who knows nothing about [steel]pan - and so steelpan start in Tobago.
Our tuner Randolph Simmons « Croppy » was such a favourite that sometimes you [would] have to look for him. And when we get up in these places like Tunapuna [or] Arima, we find him up in some hole tuning pan for some guys - so he spread the gospel too.
Due to the various steelband clashes and thing and forming the steelband organization as such mehself, myself, Sidney Gallup, Natty [Nathaniel] Crichlow, and [the] same Lennox Oscar Pierre. We had to go all part of the country with Carlisle Kerr - that time we used to travel by train - and by going to these various places you would hear a pan knocking in a yard. And when we go in that yard, you will see one fellar playing a pan. We encourage him and they would get a group and form a steelband. So this is how it spread."
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