100 Years Old and the Alpha Boys Band Plays On…
Victorians would have called it a brave sight, thirty-odd boys of the Alpha band, seated under a spreading almond tree, possibly as old as the band itself-tooting clarinets, trumpets, and trombones and saxophones in the gentle morning breeze.
Some are barely in their teens, mostly boys from what is politely called difficult social circumstances—petty crime, runaways from home, and school. Often abandoned, they arrive at Alpha seeking care and protection and are taught useful trades of printing and bookbinding, cabinet-making, and in times past, shoemaking, tilemaking, block making, and pottery. It’s music, however, that’s been the trick of the trades, and its subsequent skill has made the Alpha Boys School and band an unparalleled Jamaican and Caribbean experience.
A visionary Jamaican, Jesse Ripoll, in 1880 purchased 48 acres upon which the venerable institution stands, and four years later the Alpha Boys School was started, to be followed by the band, eight years later. Ever since, Alpha has benefitted from the progressive leadership of Roman Catholic nuns, an old order called the Sisters of Mercy. In May 1892 six sisters from Bermondsey came to Jamaica, and among those pioneers, was a Sister De Shantel who started a Drum and Fife Corps, conscripting tutors from the military to instruct the boys. Today, the Alpha Boys Band is an inexhaustible source of the best Jamaican musicianship.
No matter how disadvantaged any of the boys might have been initially, once they were given love and the security of a home, it is as if they channeled their frustrations into music, consequently their honour roll, is not only impressive but seemingly endless: Leslie Thompson, Bertie King, Dizzy Reece, Joe Harriott, Harold McNair, Wilton Gaynair, Tommy McCook, Don Drummond, Rico Rodriquez, Eddy Thornton, Jo Jo Bennett, Jackie Willacy, Cedric Brooks, Tony Gregory, and Leroy Smart, and a fresh crop of talent from the 80s – Ian Hurd, Maurice Gray to mention two, who are keepers of the flame, the school’s motto “Upward and Onward.”
Another venerable tradition is its bandmasters, past graduates—legends like Rueben Delgado, Vincent Tulloch, and Lennie Hibbert. They ensured that the standards were maintained and a code of discipline adhered to. The tradition is perpetuated by the current bandmaster, Sparrow Martin, a graduate, and noted drummer. Under his direction, the band, a mix of saxes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, euphoniums, and percussion, start off “Two O’Clock Jump” tentatively, the tempo slightly off. Martin reins the in, sets it right, and the boys take it from the top again. The trumpets and the saxes signature the classic big band tune to life. They ease into Glem Miller, reading their charts, and playing accordingly.
The repertoire is flexible, 2,000 songs in demand of its busy schedule, and the anthems of the diplomatic missions in Jamaica, who engage the band on a regular basis for functions requiring them to ease from idiom to idiom effortlessly, as it does with pop and jazz, some tight classics, but is understandably at home with mento and reggae, for it’s in the blood.
Fifteen-year-old Alfred Poyster plays four instruments and is a long-standing member of eleven years. He knows no other home but Alpha and the Band. “I like the standard of music we play,” he says, “some of the music I like. I don’t like some of the classics, like Beethoven and Mozart.” Why? “Because it feels strange to me.” Alfred sees a career in music. “I want to go as far as I can go, one more thing, I think the band needs more competition with other bands.
Conrad Heywood specializes in the trumpet as his main instrument but doubles on guitar when necessary. He likes being in the band, and it has taught him a lot. He too likes some of the music the band plays, “jazz and reggae, they are my two main music.” What about classics and international pop? “I like them but I don’t listen to them all the time.”
Tassie Mohammed from the Turks and Caicos Islands came to school in Jamaica, heard of the band, and asked to become a member. “I think they are up to a good standard right now,” says the fifteen-year-old. “I play the drums, but if I had to pick another instrument… the bass, the keyboard, and the saxophone.”
“Really, I say to myself, I’m a reggae and soca drummer. I’m more of the pop kind. I don’t really like the classics, I play some jazz, but I’m not really into the classics. To me, it’s kind of dead. It doesn’t have enough rhythm.”
The Alpha Band, surprisingly, in spite of its long history has made only two overseas engagements, Miami in 1968, and Atlanta in June this year, but it has the most extraordinary outreach to past students and well-wishers, who are intensely loyal, especially if it was the only home they knew. Through them, a lifeline of hard to get musical supplies are always coming in– reeds, oils, instruments. A recent well-wisher who learned of the band from a friend has marshalled thousands of dollars worth of instruments from Germany. And when the link is broken, as in the case of Leslie Thompson, a brilliant graduate who died recently, had his trumpet bequeathed to the band. A graduate also never fails to pay homage to another institution within the institution, Sister Ignatius, who joined Alpha in 1939. She is the mother of the band, with a remarkable memory of its history and leading lights. She remembers the times when the boys had to use soap to mend instruments and string to tie up broken keys. What was the special quality that made Alpha so musically influential? “I think, first of all, it was at one time, the only school that taught music as brass bands go, because I think that accounts for why it’s been so popular and so well used, because the Military Band drafted from here, the Regiment Band drafted from here, plus all the leading orchestras during that time and still up to now.”
Does Sister see a difference between the present and the past? “The difference now is really with the instruments, because in the thirties and forties we didn’t have these amplifiers, keyboards, etc. Each individual stood on his own and I think that was a good thing because it developed their tone and self-confidence, so that you found in the forties you had Little G McNair and Tommy McCook. I think the boys took their music very seriously and were very innovative, they didn’t just stick to one thing, they tried different things.”
Under the almond tree, Bandmaster Martin is putting the boys through a special programme to be played days later at the awards ceremony for the Musgrave Medalists (at which the band was awarded a Silver Medal). Listening to them glide from music to music, one gets the feeling that the next 100 years, would in effect be no greater a challenge than a long rehearsal.
Originally Published
January 1993
