Leeds Pan Central open up Rhythms Carnival Village Leeds Bank Holiday Monday.

 Sophie Bex
 

Well we would never had fitted onto the stage anyway, but overnight it had flooded, so while Marcus and Connor sweep away the wet, we put up the gazebo and cunningly attach a nice piece of waterproof sheeting. Attaching it from the gazebo to Marcus's van. Put Ash to stand under where when it dipped. Joking! Actually looking at the photo below, perhaps not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning we play to revellers returning from J'ouvert, to cooks and djs setting up their stalls along Chapeltown Road, to individual troupe members as they walked up from the West Indian centre to the Potternewton Park. It was bit rainy but the sound carried, amplified by concrete and gazebo. And maybe that pans can be loud.

 

 

Joyce and Adele braved us two days running. Pippa, back from her holiday made it over. The rest of us were me, Bex, Vicky, Yi Bai, Wanda, Sophie and Ash. We were ace. We have a repertoire of well over twenty songs that we are common to all three bands, and, give or take a couple that at least one band was sight-reading, we played from these.

Pippa Sophie
 

After four years of being excluded from Leeds Carnival Proper, it was great that Hilary, George and Mexican gave us this opportunity, and I was pleased to be able to include all our players in this event.



Enjoy the pics.

 

 

 

 

 

Yi Bai

 

Lynn

 

 

Anne Joyce Adele

 

Marcus Connor

 

Foxwood Steel, Sparrows, Steel Rising do Sunday at Rhythms Carnival Village

 

Most of Foxwood was on holiday and Sparrows at work. So these two bands together nearly numbered less than East Steel on its own. Yo. Thankfully by the time we are on, the stage has been floored, and the sound installed, and the eight/nine/ten of us are miked up.

 

 

 After us a few acts including amazing Gospel choir, just back from not performing in the Park. 

 

  

 

For the afternoon set we were me [Victoria], Bex, Vicky, Yi Bai, Claudia, Gig, Charlotte [guest from Nostalgia], Wanda [Steel Rising], and just as we were starting to play up comes Ash. And then, the entire Keir family hoves into view.

 

 

 

Tamanna makes it onto stage for the rest of the set. After six years. That is brave. [But she did say, "Is Heat, I don't know that". I said, "You played it at the Albert Hall!" LOL]

 

  

 

 

The last set as the day darkens, is me, Bex, Vicky, Yi Bai, Ash, Milly, Charlotte, Wanda and now Sophie. Also featuring Andrew the Photographer on tambourine. Does that make a percussion section? Well, I like to think so.

 

Marcus and Connor are still on the sound; Ifty is making some cool vegan burgers. Grafton has now appeared. He has been tuning pans in London for Panorama bands and just driven up to Leeds. Partner, Charlotte is playing the single guitar pan that Grafton made for one our players a few years back.

 

 

Because Charlotte is used to playing with marching band, Nostalgia, she is happy with a single guitar pan.  In Leeds, because we don't march very often the single pan is often seen as either inferior because players think, as it has only nine notes, it must be in some way easy! Or they can't handle the fact that for some chords the root note is not an option, and sometimes neither is the third. Easy! Not at all!

 

I would like to thank Hilary, George and Mexican for this opportunity to play Carnival. It means an awful lot to us. I have been playing pans for over thirty years; Bex, Georgia, Wanda for over twenty years;  the others today for over a decade.  Between us, we have played some prestigious venues from Leeds Arena, Leeds Town Hall, Leeds Civic Hall, London Southbank Festival Hall, London Royal Albert Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Leeds Carnival mainstage and float, Manchester, Huddersfield this, that and the other. But, of all of them, playing your hometown Carnival is just the best. And, it has to be said, we were ace.

 

 I know.

East Steel Open up Leeds Carnival at Rhythms Canival Village

Leeds Carnival Sunday at Rhythms Carnival Village.



 

Leeds Carnival mainstage 2009ish

It was summer 2011, and after 11 years of being the band leader for what was sometimes the only steelband in Leeds Carnival, Foxwood Steel with Leeds Steel Sparrows and Steel Rising were finally given the push. The excuse was that recent riots meant that there was a chance that a live band on a float might incite a riot.

 

 

Foxwood on float at Leeds Carnival with Archway 2004 [?]

 

 

Foxwood float at Lds Carnival with Friends of Potternewton Park

 

Well the Yorkshire Evening Post, Look North, and bless 'em, even Radio Five Live didn't think this was likely and we got more coverage on tele, radio and in the paper for not playing Carnival than we ever got for playing it. Hoping that I would be invited back into the fold the following year, I didn't make waves, but it is fair to say that we were gutted.

 

 

I, personally, went down to London and played Notting Hill Sunday with Nostalgia marching band, and then all of Foxwood played the Malt Shovel in Armley, Leeds. Grateful to Joanne and Del for giving us this outlet, but sadly no possibility for Steel Rising and Sparrows, who had also booked their Bank Holiday weekend around their local Carnival.

 

in float at Leeds Carnival 2002 [?]

 

Lionel Victoria 2013 Nostalgia Notting Hill

 

Rhiannon Anne-Marie Victoria Garvin 2013 Nostalgia 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Malt Shovel Leeds March 2013

 

Notting Hill 2012[ ?]

 

Nostalgia Notting Hill 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foxwood at Savile Park 2013 Leeds Carnival

Victoria and Annette

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following year, despite there being no riots in Leeds or anywhere saw us still uninvited to the party, so it was me and Sophie who hit Notting Hill and marched pan de neck with Nostalgia. Then 2013 Annette invited/made us play Savile Park, and I will never be able to thank her enough. She gave us the reason to fight for our right, and we did. And it was nice and sunny. Next year it poured; we ventured onto the bandstand and put up our wonderful and expensive gazebo, and even got filmed as officially part of Carnival.

 

Savile Park 2014

 



2014 Savile Park

 

This year I told Ashley to find us a café on the route at the time as Hilary was telling Ashley to find us. And we did rather better than a café. We got Rhythms Carnival Village. More anon.

 

And this is how we were able to invite East Steel and Sparrows again. I remember how Joyce once said, in a comment to the class about when East Steel could play Carnival i.e. when community bands were properly welcome. She said, Bloomin' 'Eck! I'll be in my zimmer frame before that happens. And I had just found out the very same that she would now be available to play again [for saddish reasons]. Adele too was back with us after a trying couple of years. Besides them we were me [Victoria], Bex, Vicky, Yi Bai, Lynn, Anne, Charlotte [from Nostalgia], Trish, Wanda and [guest Sparrow] Milly. The floor wasn't in place on the stage so we played on the ground, which really was better. Less status but more audience interaction possibility.

sorry about smudge on lens
 

 

 

The obvious audience, apparently was Wendy's friends [although in the end Wendy couldn't make it] and the next act, but all around the Carnival Village and the neighbouring streets, people were opening up and setting up and walking up Chapeltown Road and generally getting ready for Carnival to the sound of steel pans. It was good to be back.

Foxwood Steel and Steel Rising at Rosebank Millennium Green

 

Just down the road is Rosebank Millennium Green and on Sunday 23 August they are having a street party, which we join in with.

 

 

 

We were me [Victoria], Bex, Yi Bai, Fehmina, Wanda, Georgia, Charlotte, Kirsty, and until the massive outburst of rain at the end, we were having a ball. Maya danced; Bex did headstands. We provided shaky and rattly for the kids to join with at the last couple of songs.

 

It was a relaxed low-key local event organised by Hyde Park Source; the Real Junk Food provided nourishment; it combined tall inner-city Victoria terraces with inner-city woodland. And just down the road - well from me, Gig and Fehmina anyway. Loved it.

 

 

 

 

The email read that we "really made a great contribution to the event. I'd forgotten what a lovely full sound a steel band has, and I never thought I'd hear some of those tunes played on steel pans! .  .   .  .  I heard some great feedback about your performance and I know the children loved joining in at the end".

 

 

 

Anyway rain certainly did stop play; I did a Gandalf impression in the Foxwood banner, and we all went back home to dry off.  

 

Wanda and Kirsty abandoned dryness altogether, and hit the end of back belle Vue Road, carrying the regulation gigging bucket.

 

Gandalf

And next up, dear reader, we will all be playing Leeds Carnival at Rhythms Carnival Village. All of us - East Steel, Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows and Foxwood Steel. That has got to be better than Foxwood nervously popping up at Savile Park!

Steel Rising with regulation bucket

Leeds Pan Central/East Steel at Tennants Hall Middleton

Again it's summer, they're all on holiday, put out the call, get a good crop. Mostly East Steel. We were me [|Victoria], Bex [at last not cruising with sharks, in the Moldives], Georgia [it's a Tuesday], Pippa, Anne, Sophie, Lynn, Daisy. We have no Yi Bai so return to UK for Bex is some baptism of fire as she finds she is now the drummer. But I find I am a main soprano-player! And at least Yi Bai got the job!

 

 

Salt in wound - Natalie [drummer] and Charlotte [tune-player] both ask later What gig!

Aargh!

 

 

 

 

Well, it was pouring. We played under this wonderful canopy. The bowling green nearly flooded. Tom never stopped face-painting.

Our Foxcubs with painted faces sat alongside us on their ipads. Who knows where that pic is!

 

I mean, who knows where that pic is?