By Hartley Neita, ContributorTHIS WEEK I heard a caller to one of the radio talk show hosts bemoaning the fact that although Hurricane Ivan passed two weeks before, he was still without piped water, electricity, and believe it or not, television. Not for him was there any concern for those who did not have water or electricity even before the hurricane. To him it was unbelievable that he should be deprived of these pleasures for so long. And of course, he blamed poor P.J. Patterson.
I remember Hurricane Gilbert very well. I was away from home when the hurricane struck, and it was three days before the trees and other debris were cleared to enable me to get there. The telephone was not working. There was no water and no electricity and no ice. I sponged-bathed for three months. I wore my shirts, crumpled, until I found a friend who had a coal pot and pressing irons. I splashed Johnson's Baby Powder on my briefs and wore them for two and three days.
'OLD-TIME STORIES'
One of my never-to-be-forgotten moments was coming home one night to see my neighbours sitting on their lawn with other friends, with drinking water they had collected from a spring in the hills, eating peanuts and bully beef sandwiches, and in the good Jamaican tradition, telling 'old-time stories'. I joined.
Radio stations resumed broadcasting shortly after the hurricane passed and because of transistor radios we were able to listen to music. There was more music then than talk shows so there was not as much grumbling then as there is today. The recent grumbler on radio about no water and no television, should have lived the years of my youth.
ELECTRICITY
Although electricity and telephones were introduced to Jamaica from the last decade of the 19th century, most of Jamaica did not have these services. Many persons did not have radios as these required electricity; those who had did not have Jamaican stations to listen to. Music in homes was provided by gramophones, a phonetic instrument which played music from recordings on turntables which were powered by a coil spring. Some homes had pianos or organs which mainly provided background music for sing-a-longs. Some pianos also had a unit in which musical rolls with coded holes played tunes when the pedals were pumped.
There were little mento bands with a bamboo saxophone, fiddle and a marimba box in every rural village in Jamaica. There were also wandering troubadours like Slim and Sam who travelled from village to village singing songs they composed about contemporary events, and selling the words on tract sheets. Every child played tunes on combs, placing paper between their lips and the teeth of these combs and breathing the tunes through the paper.
By the 1940s and 1950s, cinemas were in every major town. Cowboy films were the favourite fare for men. Shirley Temple movies were for families. In due course, the cinemas included comedy acts with comedians such as Bim and Bam, and orchestra music with Milton McPherson and other orchestra leaders on their stages before the film shows. Highlights of these stage shows were rhumba dancing acts by Madame Sugar Hips, Madame Wasp and Madame Temptation. For years, too, promoter Vere Johns presented a series of programmes, 'Opportunity Knocks', on these stages in which amateur artistes competed with others for prizes. Many of these amateurs became professionals subsequently.
NIGHTCLUBS
There were nightclubs all over Kingston and St. Andrew, all with live dance bands. The clubs were Bournemouth, Springfield, Wickie Wackie, Colony, Sugar Hill, Midway, Silver Slipper and Cloud 9, with musicians Bertie King, Sonny Bradshaw, Eric Deans, Joe Harriott, Ossie DaCosta, and Carlos Malcolm. And there were also the annual Christmas and Easter Monday Morning Concerts presented by promoters Eric Coverley and Vere Johns. These shows lasted for up to four hours and featured the best artists of the time in Jamaica. And guess what, admission was only two shillings!
