Straight Outta Laventille

From The Trinidad Guardian

Despers and Sanch Electronix produce first in a series: The Legacy of Clive Bradley

A double CD entitled Straight Outta Laventille—The Legacy of Clive Bradley produced by Desperadoes Steel Orchestra (Despers) and Sanch Electronix will be available at the end of January.

Sales of this CD, and other efforts, are part of a plan to help relocate Despers to their original home on top of the Laventille Hill.

A release from Sanch Electronix states that “infrastructural work is required to accommodate the band’s return and provide adequate space for the youth development programme. Despers is seeking to raise TT$4,800,000 over the course of the next two years to finance those works.”

Despers came into being in the early 1940s, and over the years, brought tremendous pride to the Hill. The formidable repertoire of Desperadoes music is being spearheaded by the work of Clive Bradley (November 4, 1936—November 26, 2005), described as “an idiosyncratic, enigmatic, erratic but pragmatic musician and arranger.”

The CD Straight Outta Laventille—The Legacy of Clive Bradley is the first of a series of artifacts that the band will produce in quest of its goal to relocate the band on the Hill.

Says Simeon Sandiford of Sanch Electronix: “Bradley never played pan, his instrument was the piano; yet he meticulously developed a synergistic relationship with the hypnotic, charismatic Desperadoes at the summit of Laventille that spawned a bitter-sweet saga spanning four decades.