Remembering TASPO 62 years later

Trinidad Guardian

‘Rusty pans’ cause jaws to drop, eyes to widen

Ellie Mannette was one of the ping pong players on the Taspo trip. Trinidad & Tobago, W.I. - Sixty-two years ago, on July 26, 1951, a significant aspect of steelband history was recorded with an appearance by TASPO at the Summer Festival of Britain.

The acronym TASPO stands for the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra—a band formed in 1951 as a direct result of the violence that was rampant among the steelbands in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Opportunity knocked in the guise of the 1951 Summer Festival of Britain, an exposition of arts, crafts, exhibitions and cultural events from all over the United Kingdom, including its colonial possessions, that brought forth the suggestion from Sir Hubert Rance, Trinidad’s English governor at the time, that a steelband represent the island colony at the event.


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