Pan Magazine - 1985
The name of Lord Baldwin came up repeatedly. We’re talking about pan in Antigua, right? So who is this Lord Baldwin, anyway—a seasoned bard, perhaps, in the kingdom of calypso, pan’s long-time companion folk art? Not quite. Would you believe, real honest-to-goodness British nobility! Lord Baldwin happened to be Governor of the Leeward Islands just in time to anoint the fledgling Antiguan steel band movement, declare it worthy of respect and preservation, when the hoity-toity of Antiguan citizenry were poised to deliver a death-dealing kick-in-the-rump to what they considered a public nuisance.
Lord Baldwin was Governor in the late 40’s through 1950 and he came out strongly in support of pan music as a genuine cultural bonanza. He offered to become patron of Antigua’s first steel band, Hell’s Gate, and had them perform at Government House functions. Upon his encouragement, musical heavyweights such as Vere Griffith and Bertha Higgins got into tutoring the bands. And the somewhat iconoclastic patrician from merry England also initiated the first steel band competition in 1949, with Hell’s Gate, Red Army and Brute Force entered.
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Antigua’s first steel band, Hell’s Gate, in a vintage 1949 photo. |
There is some disagreement over the circumstances that led to the first steel band appearing in Antigua. George Joseph, one of the Hell’s Gate founding fathers, claims that pan made its debut on the island when an Antiguan who had lived in Trinidad for some time came back to Antigua with one of the early steel pan prototypes, reportedly a six-noter. This, according to Joseph, was in 1946. Eustace “Manning” Henry, who was also a Hell’s Gater from day one, asserts that the first pan to be seen in Antigua wasn’t an instrument physically transported there from Trinidad, but was constructed in Antigua after some Antiguan young men returned home from Trinidad and passed on word about the new musical invention they had witnessed there. According to Henry, 1947 was the year of the first “organized” pan music made by Hell’s Gate.
- See more at: http://www.panonthenet.com/articles/pan_mag/antigua-pan1985.htm
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