
Trombonist Don Drummond - FILE
WHEN PROFESSOR Frederick Hickling finished the 2006 edition of the annual Bob Marley lecture at the social sciences lecture theatre, UWI, Mona, on Friday, there were no questions at first.
Students of the School of Music, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, along with head of the popular music studies unit there, Ibo Cooper, went mento with Long Time Gal, before the subject of trombonist Don Drummond came up.
KILLING HIS LOVER
Drummond died in the Bellevue Hospital in 1969, where he was incarcerated after he was convicted of killing his lover Anita 'Margarita' Mahfood in 1965.
"I don't think he wanted to kill her; he wanted to indicate his displeasure," Hickling said.
He said that Margarita had not been wounded very deeply - a blood vessel had been cut and if she had been taken to hospital in time she would probably have lived.
Herbie Miller, who had featured heavily in the audio-visual support for the lecture, said "Don and Margarita played that game many times, stabbing each other".
"He related the story of a man who, after one such stabbing session, took Margarita to the drug store to get her wounds dressed. When they went back to where Don Drummond was, the two embraced and said that was foreplay.
"I think we are a strange people. There are many paradoxes in our lives," Hickling said.
MUSICIAN'S DREAM
Cooper illustrated Drummond's genius by playing a complicated passage with both hands, then a popular Drummond composition which required only one finger for two notes.
"Don Drummond achieved a musician's dream," Cooper said.
- M. C.