I could have sworn I didn’t know the taut-bodied man from Adam. I was waiting at the entrance to the Oval, Saturday last, on my ticket to ’Pan, Pork and Parang’’ (I am not sure I have the ’P’’ procession right but, to my ear, such was the music of the line and, to besides, this way had ’parang’’ last which is as I would have it-indeed, I had contrived to reach the concert when they were done with that bit, my ears mercifully spared from a seta si, si si stupidness.

I can’t now remember what was the nature of the exchange between the red man and the gate-keeper but I remember being laughingly drawn into it at which the point the man asked:

’Do you know me?’’

’No I answered,’’ in what I thought to be truthfully.

’David Waddel,’’ he said to which I exclaimed:

’SPLAV!’’

He smiled at which I explained:

’But when I knew you were a fat man!’’

At which he said before making his way inside:

’So now I am an ex-fatman!’’

I was grateful that he was courteous enough not to tell me that in the fullness of time our roles had become reversed-he now thin and I now fat (morbidly so, if I am to believe these swine flu warnings-and more than that, that he had not hurled in my face:

’Buh how you get so fat!?’’, the response from me:

’Buh how you get so thin!?’’ bound to fall flat, thin being in you see, if I am to believe all those keep-fit promotions.

But his restraint was in keeping with the ’Splav’’ I knew when I was leaning my reporter was around pan which was when he was the leader of ’Third World’’, one of the bands that had been, well, birthed by Invaders, ’Splav’’ this night, then, returning home in a sense.

I had been a ’Third World’’ in the sense of being one of the thousands who had been moved by the band’s recorded renditions of ’Gold’’, Maestro’s melodic celebration of Crawfie’s crowning run, and Meacham’s ’American Patrol’’ back then when steelband music were regular on the charts, radio audiences waiting for their favourite parts and saying to whoever happened to be around:

’Yuh hear that! Yuh hear that!’’, as if there was need to open people’s ears to music already on the lips of thousands:

’Gold! Gold! The fastest human in the whole wide world!’’

’Splav’’ having disappeared into the distance, I was left to ruminate on the steelband heft that Invaders still has, this venerable band from whose fertile womb (strange to be using feminine terminology for something as masculinely robust as pan-well, that was how it used to be back then) was to spring not only Third World but Starlift and Phase 11 and, boy, when ah tell yuh that ah tell yuh all.

Steelband history is, of course, dotted (one might even say littered) with splits and new formations and formulations. The first one I saw up close was when West Side Symphony came out of Pan Am North Stars, back then, 40 years or so ago, when Tony Williams’s front-runners had already raised the Queen’s Hall roof with ’Poet and Peasant’’, the question arising when I saw the new national symphony being applauded at the new academy being whether the players and the audience knew they were acknowledging not one but three concert cliches but more of that anon.

The last steelband split that I saw up close was when Solo Harmonites divided into Solo Pan Knights and just Harmonites, the pan fraternity in Laventille and Morvant applauding in their hearts at the recent reconstitution (a steelband rarity), people protesting:

’They shoulda done that long time now!’’ Or:

’Ah don’t know what they ever break up for?’’, the marish and the parish recognising the absurdity of the big band that was ’Solo’’ splitting into two smaller bands, the one just around the corner from the other, ’Solo’s’’ famous Kitchener Panorama winner ’The Wrecker’’ given new and more hurtful meaning.

Listen, if the good wishes coming from all corners that surround the ’Solo’’ reunion were to be counted as competition points, none ah them other bands beating ’Solo’’ in the next four years which would mean four more added to the first four, Kitch’s ’Play Mas’’, ’St Thomas Gal’’ and ’Jericho’’ being the other three. Man, Hilanders though I’ll always be, already yuh boy feel to bongo-and they shoulda win with that too!