SAN­DRA L BLOOD

mindup.slblood@gmail.com

In his Christ­mas Day Face­book greet­ing, in part, he urged to bring an end to what­ev­er racial and re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance ex­ists; nev­er for­get that we are all one peo­ple…let us bring God (who­ev­er we con­ceive Him to be) back in­to our lives…to be kind to each oth­er, and to pray for our na­tion and our world…”—golfer, au­thor, for­mer head of news and cur­rent af­fairs at the state-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion TTT and for­mer colum­nist for Guardian Me­dia (then Trinidad Guardian), Neil Giusep­pi—would have com­piled ma­te­r­i­al and read news that cov­ered di­verse types of sit­u­a­tions that in­fect­ed and af­fect­ed the na­tion.

To­day, he as well as oth­ers lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, have tak­en note of how sweet T&T has evolved in­to a seem­ing­ly-hate­ful, bit­ter and cold place while try­ing to ex­ist with a lov­ing heart, as­crib­ing it to pos­si­bly the sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in stan­dards on many fronts.

On Box­ing Day, aris­ing out of the homi­cide rate at a whoop­ing 605-plus, a dis­tin­guished au­di­ence took to What­sApp and shared a sto­ry writ­ten by Giusep­pi 10 years ago as a tool to in­spire youth to pick up an in­stru­ment in­stead of guns, and make sweet mu­sic. Many young peo­ple, more so male, are fre­quent­ly seen idling on street cor­ners, or idling on a whole, play­ing in­to the adage: The dev­il finds mis­chief for idle hands to do.

“What a decade in Trinidad and To­ba­go! There was an era when “the young men, in­stead of tak­ing up guns and in­volv­ing them­selves in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, formed mu­sic bands known as com­bos. On al­most every street cor­ner through­out the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) could be found these com­bos which com­prised main­ly of gui­tars and key­boards. One of the best was the Casanovas Com­bo whose leader and key­boardist, Mon­ty Williams, was the son of the great band­leader, John Bud­dy Williams.”

Giusep­pi spoke of oth­er fa­mous com­bos like Sil­ver Strings Com­bo, The Es­quires Now, Bert Bai­ley and the Jets, The Rock­er­fellers Com­bo, An­cil Wy­att, His Gui­tar and Com­bo, John­ny Lee and the Hur­ri­canes and the Group So­lo, led by the mas­ter key­boardist, Robert Bai­ley, son of the late Olympic ath­lete, Mc Don­ald Bai­ley.

One of the first com­bos in T&T was the Jar­vo Broth­ers whose biggest hit, Teo, was played for over 60 years af­ter their first record­ing.

“The bor­ough of Ari­ma, where I was born, gave the na­tion Bertie Fer­min and the Chimes Com­bo as well as the Del­tones Com­bo. There was hard­ly any room that could be found in venues like the Chi­nese As­so­ci­a­tion in St Ann’s, the Per­se­ver­ance Club in Mar­aval and the Chun Shan As­so­ci­a­tion on Char­lotte Street when these com­bos played with each try­ing to out­do the oth­er in mu­si­cal mas­tery.

“Ex­cite­ment, how­ev­er, tend­ed to reach fever-pitch when fans would gath­er in their thou­sands at fêtes to wit­ness the clash­es be­tween the two men who were ar­guably the best key­boardists that the coun­try ever pro­duced, Robert Bai­ley of the Group So­lo and Mon­ty Williams of the Casanovas Com­bo.”

He said the fêtes that be­came pop­u­lar among the younger crowds were house par­ties known as “Dutch” par­ties where every­one would be ex­pect­ed to walk with a bot­tle of some type of bev­er­age in or­der to gain en­trance see­ing the smart alecks fill dark-coloured bot­tles with wa­ter just to gain en­try with­out pay­ing.

Even in house par­ties to­day, the ma­jor­i­ty of guests min­gle out­side the par­ty.

“I hold very pleas­ant mem­o­ries of danc­ing many a night away at these Dutch par­ties to the sounds of the var­i­ous com­bos, but al­though the mu­sic of that era was dom­i­nat­ed by the com­bos, those days al­so pro­duced leg­endary or­ches­tra lead­ers whose mu­sic tend­ed to at­tract a more ma­ture au­di­ence.”

De­scribed as mu­si­cal wiz­ards, he said they gave T&T the “big band” sound. Some lead­ers were Sel Dun­can, Fitz Vaughn Bryan, Mano Mar­cellin, Clarence Cur­van, Joey Lewis, Ron Berridge and the Dutchy Broth­ers, but while T&T was swarm­ing with com­bos on al­most every street cor­ner then, it was not the on­ly place where these com­bos could be found.

He touched on Ralph Blak­eney and the Rhyth­maires from Guyana whose ren­di­tion of the Mo­hammed Rafi clas­sic, Suhani Raat, was a hit at every par­ty, al­so Trop­i­cal Is­landers of Bar­ba­dos with one of their biggest hits hav­ing been Ju­lianne, a mod­ernised ver­sion of the Giusep­pi Ver­di clas­sic, Cho­rus of the He­brew Slaves.

Con­trast­ing­ly, to­day, mak­ing it eas­i­er to mas­ter and ben­e­fit pro­duc­tive­ly from mu­sic, Giusep­pi ex­plained that at­tend­ing a fête in those days al­so pre­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent type of ex­pe­ri­ence.

There were no disc jock­eys with so­phis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed equip­ment as ex­ists to­day. The mu­sic was pro­vid­ed by a DJ who walked with a record play­er which he had to load one record at a time, which cre­at­ed de­lays of sev­er­al sec­onds be­tween the end of one tune and the start of an­oth­er.

He said that was a space where the men would get the lucky dance with a girl de­pend­ing on who reached across the floor first to ask her to dance.

Youth Clubs got in­volved in host­ing par­ties too. A most pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence Giusep­pi said, was while at­tend­ing a ball at the Ari­ma Ten­nis Club or­gan­ised by a pop­u­lar Youth Club called A Teens run by Ur­su­la Bleas­dell, “Aun­ty Bab­sie”, as was pop­u­lar­ly known and who did great work over the years help­ing the young peo­ple of Ari­ma to de­vel­op in­to fine cit­i­zens of whom the Bor­ough and the en­tire na­tion could be proud.

Nev­er com­pro­mis­ing or­der and dis­ci­pline, Giusep­pi ex­plained the danc­ing pro­to­col for every­one who at­tend­ed the ball which en­tailed a card hand­ed to each male with the mu­sic that would be played that evening and in the or­der in which it would be played.

A la­dy was cho­sen, re­quest­ed to be re­served for a par­tic­u­lar song to dance, and if she agreed, her name is writ­ten on your card and vice-ver­sa. When the time came for the par­tic­u­lar tune to be played, you would seek her out know­ing that no one else could beat you to it since you had made your reser­va­tion ear­ly.

“It was a most-unique and classy sys­tem. That era is one which will for­ev­er re­main in my mem­o­ry as one of the best in my en­tire life­time. What glo­ri­ous days!”

With to­day’s tech­nol­o­gy, the process is much faster as youth mes­sage each oth­er. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on De­cem­ber 27, Giusep­pi said he’s to­tal­ly re­lax­ing, play­ing golf and en­joy­ing fam­i­ly and loved ones, while a bit con­cerned about youth.