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Looking Inside a Great School - Alpha
The following description of life at Alpha Boys’ Catholic School is taken from one of my favorite books on Jamaican music and culture, Jah Music: The Evolution of the Popular Jamaican Song, by Trinidad-born, British journalist Sebastian Clarke.
(I have placed credits at the bottom of this extract.)
“It can be said that 99 per cent of the horn men who came from Jamaica and became famous overseas or at home, served their apprenticeship at Alpha.
“Most of these musicians went to Alpha quite young. Rico Rodriquez, for example, went to Alpha before he was 10 years old. Before learning an instrument the boys had chores to perform around the school yard, like watering the garden, cleaning the toilets, scrubbing the floors, etc. There were two sections to the school band: one junior, the other senior. But before picking up an instrument, the students learnt theory.
“ ‘The first thing you learnt at Alpha,’ states Rico Rodriquez, ‘was the rudiments of music, lines and spaces and scales. Theory was a must. You were asked questions on a blackboard and you gave your answers verbally. You didn’t start to play like that, you had to know what you were doing.’
“The penalty for not paying attention was a beating, a clout round the head, or a slap on the back. The strictness continued even after one became a member of the senior band.
“Students were taught European classics and were discouraged from playing tunes they might have heard on the radio. Compositions like ‘Happy Wanderer’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Colonel Bogie’, ‘Life on the Ocean’, were also taught to young students. There were prefects or monitors in addition to teachers who supervised what you learnt and how you conducted yourself. Members of the senior band, for example Don Drummond, would be persuaded to stay at school in order to teach the younger students.
“As Rico Rodriquez says: ‘Drummond was a quiet person, but a very strict teacher. We were friends, but when it came to teaching, it was very serious. If Drummond didn’t teach me so well, and the bandmaster came along to check on you, and you were not that good, that reflected on the teacher. So the standard had to be there at all times.’
“Members of the senior band played at garden parties and other functions, and the money they raised was ploughed back into the school. Some members of the senior band were also keenly involved with the challenge of playing jazz. Musicians like Joe Harriot (who later emigrated to England where he became one of the most outstanding jazz musicians in the country, and also significantly increased real interest in the music here by pioneering the Indo-Jazz fusions sessions with John Mayer), Little Jesus, Roy Harper, Don Drummond, and Wilton ‘Bogey’ Gaynair were some of the outstanding jazz musicians in the early 1950s in Jamaica. The primary influences were people like Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton, the big band models.
“At that time, also, Radio Jamaica had a one-hour jazz show called Jazz Hour which featured the leading Afro-American musicians of the time: Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Art Blakey, max Roach, etc. These people provided the stimulus for the young Jamaicans.”
(Sebastian Clarke, Jah Music: The Evolution of the Popular Jamaican Song; Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1981; pages 64-66)
(I have placed credits at the bottom of this extract.)
“It can be said that 99 per cent of the horn men who came from Jamaica and became famous overseas or at home, served their apprenticeship at Alpha.
“Most of these musicians went to Alpha quite young. Rico Rodriquez, for example, went to Alpha before he was 10 years old. Before learning an instrument the boys had chores to perform around the school yard, like watering the garden, cleaning the toilets, scrubbing the floors, etc. There were two sections to the school band: one junior, the other senior. But before picking up an instrument, the students learnt theory.
“ ‘The first thing you learnt at Alpha,’ states Rico Rodriquez, ‘was the rudiments of music, lines and spaces and scales. Theory was a must. You were asked questions on a blackboard and you gave your answers verbally. You didn’t start to play like that, you had to know what you were doing.’
“The penalty for not paying attention was a beating, a clout round the head, or a slap on the back. The strictness continued even after one became a member of the senior band.
“Students were taught European classics and were discouraged from playing tunes they might have heard on the radio. Compositions like ‘Happy Wanderer’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Colonel Bogie’, ‘Life on the Ocean’, were also taught to young students. There were prefects or monitors in addition to teachers who supervised what you learnt and how you conducted yourself. Members of the senior band, for example Don Drummond, would be persuaded to stay at school in order to teach the younger students.
“As Rico Rodriquez says: ‘Drummond was a quiet person, but a very strict teacher. We were friends, but when it came to teaching, it was very serious. If Drummond didn’t teach me so well, and the bandmaster came along to check on you, and you were not that good, that reflected on the teacher. So the standard had to be there at all times.’
“Members of the senior band played at garden parties and other functions, and the money they raised was ploughed back into the school. Some members of the senior band were also keenly involved with the challenge of playing jazz. Musicians like Joe Harriot (who later emigrated to England where he became one of the most outstanding jazz musicians in the country, and also significantly increased real interest in the music here by pioneering the Indo-Jazz fusions sessions with John Mayer), Little Jesus, Roy Harper, Don Drummond, and Wilton ‘Bogey’ Gaynair were some of the outstanding jazz musicians in the early 1950s in Jamaica. The primary influences were people like Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton, the big band models.
“At that time, also, Radio Jamaica had a one-hour jazz show called Jazz Hour which featured the leading Afro-American musicians of the time: Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Art Blakey, max Roach, etc. These people provided the stimulus for the young Jamaicans.”
(Sebastian Clarke, Jah Music: The Evolution of the Popular Jamaican Song; Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1981; pages 64-66)
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