Shereen Ali

When, 30 years ago, some young men in Laven­tille gath­ered to beat out rhythms on al­most any­thing they could find, lit­tle did they know that their fun would even­tu­al­ly be­come an ac­tu­al band–the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion.

To­day, this per­cus­sion band com­pris­es 32 peo­ple, from young teens to griz­zled old­er men who joined decades ago, when they them­selves were just 12 or 13.

"Around 1985 we were recog­nised as Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion, but long be­fore that, we were just a bunch of lim­ing guys," says Col­in Mitchell, one of the long-stand­ing mem­bers of the band whose in­fec­tious "iron" sounds are in de­mand at Car­ni­val and at events through­out the year.

The band, in the ear­ly days, would go to par­ties to have fun, and play for ad­mis­sion. Their rep­u­ta­tion for in­fec­tious, dance­able per­cus­sion soon grew.

They won the first-ever Rid­dem­Ra­ma Com­pe­ti­tion held in Trinidad, in 2005, and be­came the sec­tion of choice for mas artists Pe­ter Min­shall and lat­er, Bri­an Mac­Far­lane, on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day.

The band has al­so played for the na­tion­al foot­ball team So­ca War­riors when they went to Ger­many for the 2006 World Cup.

In 2008, in Caribbean Beat mag­a­zine, writer David Katz wrote of his first en­counter with the band one J'Ou­vert morn­ing: ".....sud­den­ly an­oth­er type of sound was up­on us: two dozen play­ers bang­ing com­plex polyrhythms on a va­ri­ety of known and un­known in­stru­ments, yield­ing an in­stant­ly pow­er­ful sound that evoked the an­ces­tral home­land of Africa, yet was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly root­ed in the present, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the re­sound­ing rings of a tyre iron–the in­ner part of a car wheel.

"The scrap­ing of a met­al grater merged with the shak­ings of a tas­sel-cov­ered gourd, and the metro­nom­ic tap­ping on a plas­tic block by the on­ly woman in the crew meld­ed with the con­gas, cow­bells and oth­er pieces of iron be­ing struck with met­al sticks. There were mus­cu­lar youths pound­ing oil drums known lo­cal­ly as du-dup. On the back of the truck, a fat man clad on­ly in his un­der­pants blew deep, an­gry trom­bone notes and an­oth­er drew harsh tre­ble blasts from a truck horn.

"Most im­pres­sive of all were large, dou­ble-sided drums called djun-djuns...as two shirt­less gents banged away on them with curved wood­en sticks, cre­at­ing a stu­pe­fy­ing din, I be­came com­plete­ly mes­merised...."

The band's in­stru­ments still in­clude the du-dups and the djun-djun, but they don't use the tyre iron any more: their iron sounds have grown more so­phis­ti­cat­ed.

"We grew past that car hub phase. Now, each iron has a dif­fer­ent, dis­tinct sound–that start­ed about 2005. We go di­rect­ly to weld­ing shops, and choose the thick­ness of steel we want to use for dif­fer­ent irons; we choose the de­sign that we want for dif­fer­ent tones," said Trevor Mc­Don­ald, the Laven­tille Rhythm Sec­tion's pres­i­dent, on Fri­day.

"What dis­tin­guish­es a rhythm sec­tion from any­thing else is that with­out iron, you don't have a sec­tion," said Mc­Don­ald.

"Some of the larg­er African drums that we use–like the African djun-djun–give the bass sound of the band. Iron is a lighter sound, rather like the tenor pans of a rhythm sec­tion in a pan band, if you want to com­pare it to pan. And du-dup is a tra­di­tion­al in­stru­ment that goes back way back in­to the his­to­ry of pan–it used to be an ear­ly form of pan with just two notes."

"We al­so use con­ga drums, tim­bales, snare drums, scratch­ers and jam blocks," added band mem­ber Col­in Mitchell.

While some mem­bers of the band had a great time play­ing sailor mas this year with the Massy All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra's por­tray­al of Ships Ahoy at a French Fes­ti­val, all of the Rhythm Sec­tion mem­bers are look­ing for­ward to the com­plet­ed con­struc­tion of their new band build­ing in Laven­tille.

Ex­press ed­i­tor and colum­nist Kei­th Smith, him­self a Laven­tille res­i­dent, had worked pas­sion­ate­ly for the band, rais­ing funds for the build­ing un­til his death by can­cer at age 65 in 2011.

Said Mc­Don­ald: "We are in the process of putting up our band room, which we've been try­ing to do since we first bought a piece of land 15 years ago. Our for­mer man­ag­er, Kei­th Smith, was in­stru­men­tal in get­ting us start­ed on the build­ing, rais­ing funds and help­ing to ac­quire spon­sors."

The band is very grate­ful to the Gov­ern­ment for its help with some fund­ing for the build­ing.

Al­though the band's in­stru­ments are now housed in a ground floor of the new struc­ture, the un­fin­ished brick struc­ture still needs a roof, fix­tures, and ex­ter­nal work.

The band en­vis­ages the build­ing as a mul­ti­pur­pose struc­ture, in­clud­ing an of­fice, a day­care cen­tre, and a prac­tice area for the com­mu­ni­ty at large–so that not on­ly mu­si­cians, but any­one who needs to prac­tice dance, dra­ma, or oth­er art forms, can find a space in Laven­tille. They would love these re­hearsal premis­es to even­tu­al­ly trans­form in­to a self-con­tained com­mu­ni­ty busi­ness space.

"We are al­ways open to new mem­ber­ship," said Mc­Don­ald: "Our aim is to give youths some­thing pos­i­tive to do. Any­body from T&T is wel­come."

He com­ment­ed that there are many youth in the band who are glad to have a cre­ative, healthy out­let, with­out which their lives in this some­times trou­bled ur­ban area would have been "very dif­fer­ent."