Bradford, Bradford and Brotherton

Hi Debs, Before we played our last carnival of the season, Foxwood Steel did a couple of charity busking slots at Bradford Interchange bus station. On both occasions we made nearly as much as it cost us in transport and babysitters to get there. The first time we played was the day before Manchester Carnival and two days after Manchester's riots. The station had never been as empty. "Ah, well," someone opined, "you've picked a bad day for it, what with the riots." Hmmm. Still it was a lovely venue.

At Brotherton Carnival we played at the arena entrance welcoming carnival-goers as they came down from the big main road. We were Foxwood Steel [you, me, Bex, Nat, Diz, Gig, Mig, Lizzie, Katie,Vicky, Charlotte], Doves [Amy, Varshika, Sophie, Joe], Steel Rising [Karen, Ruth], South Steel [you and Charlotte in dual role, Caroline, Neil]; we played two long sets, only repeating Dead or Alive, while the hurdy gurdy played the Archers in the not-so background. What is it about sounds mingling in the air: when does it stop being charming and start being irritating?

Anyway we [Bex and Vicky] put up our fabulous events tent [think we should be getting a commission from Go Outdoors for all this product placement!], whereupon it didn't rain, and only the drummers didn't mind being in the shade; everyone else was trying to escape back into the sunshine. We played until it was time for the rock band to take to the stage. They got half way through their sound check before somebody cut through the mains lead up on the main road. After that we only competed with the hurdy-gurdy for sound attention. and left just as the electric was being reconnected and three would definitely have been a crowd.

Manchester and Leeds: The demise or not of steelbands in the Carnival Parade: A Tale of Two Cities

I saw it in the papers: No steelband in the Leeds Carnival Parade. Organisers blame the riots.

[This is us: Foxwood, Doves, SteelRising at Manchester two weeks ago]
Well, there never was going to be a steelband on a float at Leeds Carnival this year. By the time we phoned the organisers to check the arrangements there was nothing to arrange. The only steelband would be on the stage, and it was not our turn this year. I was told troupes don’t want to dance behind the quieter, relatively slower sounds of a steelband. And indeed I remember meeting one of the carnival queens over a decade ago in a special school where we both were teaching that term. I said we need a troupe for our band, and she said “I’m not jumping up behind no steelband” I was taken aback, even mortified by the vehemence with which she spoke.

Then this week on Radio 4 Kwame Kwei-Armah was explaining in his history of London Carnival how the sound systems arrived in order to include the watching but not participating Jamaicans and other islanders in Carnival.

Thus an uneasy tension ever since between steelbands and sound systems. What’s to do about it?

Well for a start, don’t blame the riots, and for a second, don’t put a spokesperson on Radio Five Live saying it’s not usual to have a steelband in the Leeds parade. If this was the case, which it isn’t, for the second biggest UK West Indian Carnival this isn’t something you would want to broadcast.

Four years ago the organisers of newly reformed Manchester Carnival made a massive effort to gets steelbands back in parade. They got five of us including Foxwood/Doves/SteelRising and new World from Leeds, and North Stars from Huddersfield. And four years later, they are still getting them in. You don’t have to be older generation to love steelbands. And you don’t have to be West Indian, or just Trinidadian. Along with reggae music, steelbands must be one of the most popular imports from the West Indies to UK, and indeed Europe. There’s room for us both.

Here's two pictures of Lizzie on floats at Manchester and Huddersfield.

This year Manchester experienced big city centre riots; on Wednesday the police cancelled the parade; on Thursday the troupes persuaded them to reinstate the parade; by which time all but four of the the lorries and their drivers had other jobs. I managed to get to recover all but three of my players and we played in the arena, nestling between sound systems. Better than not playing at all, and actually, it was ace.

Dear Debs, I'm sending you a letter

Let me explain. In August, my dear friend, Debs tore herself away from her newly-made academy of a school, South Leeds Academy, South Leeds Community High School as was, Merlyn Rees High and Matthew Murray High as were

- it was only four or five years ago that you, Debs, were battling to induct an endless succession of new Science teachers into the newly merged riot of a school, and you succeeded. Against all the odds, you, as Head of Science, and all of the rest of you who saw it through, you at the newly-merged school, you finally convinced Ofsted that you could win,

- and from largely white Belle Isle, you all also fell in love with the enrichment of culture that the large Asian population from Matthew Murray School brought into the mix.

Well, “the last thing” that the Ofsted inspectors told your school as it fought its way back to sanity and a stable work-force, “The last thing you need now is to be made into an academy” But it was the first thing that Education Leeds, our uncaring private education firm [and wrongly-named on both counts], and Education Secretary, Ed Balls, had on their minds.

So, jumping forward in time, it is hardly surprising that the love of a lovely West Indian man weighed against the contempt in which our education leaders held the above-average working teacher was, as they now say, a no-brainer. And somewhere on a West Indian island the children now will get the benefits of Debs’ learning, hard work and experience.

But Debs, you were/are also a key member of my Foxwood Steel Bandits, and, unusually for us, would practise between gigs, whereas, on the whole, most Foxwood players regard every other gig as a practice.

So, that’s it. Debs is 3,000 miles away, somewhere hot, and we’ve just played Leeds West Indian Carnival, and it was still quite hot, even in the UK. And accidentally I included Debs in the email circulation list telling all the players what time to be on stage and all that. When she replied hoping that it had gone well, I in turn replied, how insensitive of me [bonkers] to leave her on the list. And you, Debs said no, keep me on it. Let me stay in touch, gig by gig. And that’s when I decided to write my letter to Carriacou.