As 2024 closes and 2025 ramps up, and as I get ready for launching issue 2 in my comic series, Trombone Man, the Don Drummond Story, I thought I'd take time to reflect upon and share with you about my journey so far into the world of comics creation. As I write this, its the 2nd of January, 2025, exactly 60 years to the day that Drummond took the life of Anita 'Margarita' Mahfood,' so it seems somehow prescient to be thinking about this today of all days.
In February 2024, I picked up 750 comic books from the printers and embarked upon the epic task of fulfilling approximately 250 bespoke crowdfund backer bundles. The measure of a successful crowdfund campaign is not how much money you raised, but whether you delivered everything you promised to those who backed you. In this light, I can proudly declare that our first crowdfund was 100% successful. Although admittedly delivered later than promised, with our blood, sweat and tears, we did it. Back in November 2022, the Kickstarter campaign for issue 1 raised over £13,000 in comic pre-orders and related merch, which is still astounding to me. Making comics is an expensive business. We'll be needing to raise a similar amount to make issue 2 happen, hopefully this time it will be a little easier now that we've shown the world we can do this.
Five years ago I had a burst of inspiration, to create a graphic novel about Don Drummond, the Skatalites and the birth of ska. Never mind that I had no idea how to write a comics script, nor how to fund it, who would publish it, or who would draw it. I'm a firm believer in the punk rock DIY ethos, that 'a good idea attempted is better than a bad idea perfected'. We can all do things that we never thought we could, if only we'd just give it a try. Once I'd been given permission by Drummond biographer Heather Augustyn (with whom I had previously co-written Alpha Boys School: Cradle of Jamaican Music), to adapt her book, Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World's Greatest Trombonist, I knew there was no turning back. When somebody has entrusted you with their precious work, you can't simply walk away, just because its too far outside of your comfort zone, your current skills set or because of the overwhelming scale of the workload. I knew if I didn't rise to the challenge, I would regret it forever.
As any writer knows, when you commit to telling a story, whether fact or fiction, whether book, theatre, film or song, you are entering into a kind of relationship with the key characters and the setting. It lives inside of you. And living with the story of Don Drummond has not been especially easy for me. I mean, the guy descends into full-blown psychosis, murders his lover and dies in a mental asylum. Its grim. But I knew what I was getting into. Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death I shall fear no evil, etc, etc. In order to rise above the sadness and tragedy at the heart of this story, I needed some strong positive motivation. I needed a strong 'why'. The following is a little bit of what's kept me going these past few years.
First and foremost, I have been a fan of original 1960s Jamaican ska, especially the Skatalites, for around 35 years, so a deep love of this music has been my number one driving force. Don Drummond is arguably the most influential trombonist of all time, of any musical genre. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of ska and reggae trombonists all over the world who revere and emulate his sound, a full sixty years since his last recordings and half a century after his passing. How many other trombonists could claim that level of influence? I interviewed a handful of the world's foremost ska and reggae trombonists and they all said the same thing: Drummond is the master. And yet even the most die-hard fans of the music often know next to nothing about him. I wanted to put that right and a comic book seemed an easily accessible format. Plus, its a zeitgeist thing. Comics for grown-ups are having their day in the sun.
Diving a bit deeper, in her biography of Drummond, I was fascinated by Heather Augustyn's portrayal of Anita 'Margarita' Mahfood. As so often is the case, great women get side-lined or even written out of history altogether. Her contribution to the birth of ska deserves to be acknowledged. Brought up in a strict Lebanese family, she had three sisters, who all adored her. Her mother died tragically and her father, a fishing merchant, lived through some terrible betrayals and setbacks, including an arson attack on his business, possibly by a jealous cousin.
Home life became very unhappy so Anita left home as a teenager and transformed herself into Margarita, Jamaica's most popular rhumba dancer, much to the consternation of her strict Muslim father. Margarita then married a boxing champion and had two children with him, but the relationship was abusive and again she found the need to escape. By the time she got together with Drummond, she had lived through a huge amount. Drummond's mental health had been fragile for some time and Margarita took care of him, essentially managing his life while he was in the Skatalites. She was an important part of the ska scene and did a lot to help Don's band, including finding them their manager, future Jamaican prime minister PJ Patterson. I felt Margarita deserved to be placed centre stage in our story and given her full due. So although its largely billed as the Don Drummond story, Trombone Man is very much the Margarita Mahfood story too and I like to remind myself of that if ever I lose my sense of purpose.
There is another key female in the story in the form of Sister Mary Ignatius, the nun who ran the music department at Alpha Boys School. She recognised something special in Drummond and encouraged him to take up music. Ignatius was still a teenager when Drummond joined the school. She looked after the school band for the next 65 years. Despite everything that happened in his life, Ignatius never gave up on Don, frequently visiting him during his many stays in Bellevue mental asylum. She saw beyond the madness that had enveloped him. She stayed true to her Christian values, choosing kindness over condemnation after he had been incarcerated for murder. Sister Ignatius changed the lives of hundreds of boys, in whom she saw a spark of talent. She is the undisputed godmother of ska and reggae music. I could just as easily have written a graphic novel about the life of Sister Ignatius, she deserves her own movie or a stage musical... watch this space!
I also wanted to to use the story as a vehicle to encourage people to think more about mental illness. In the ten years leading up to Don's final incarceration, he was in and out of Bellevue mental asylum, spending up to six months at a time there, starting from the age of around 20. The system was modelled on the Victorian lunatic asylums of old, by all accounts a cruel place with many staff who were not trained as mental health professionals, but more like heavy-handed security guards. The fact that Drummond was black and from the slums would have had an impact on the treatment he received there. From his medical records it seems that despite numerous visits he never received a proper mental health diagnosis, which means that any course of treatment he received would have been at best haphazard. There's a lot to unpick and its a bit of a high-wire act to portray all of this sensitively in the pages of a comic book. Maybe if Don had been given the right treatment, the disaster that befell both him and Margarita might possibly have been averted. We'll never know. But nobody who knew Don believed he was actually an evil person, but they could see he was seriously ill and going further and further off-the-rails and that Anita was possibly in danger.
There is a personal element here pertaining to my own life. I myself received a mental health diagnosis for neurodiversity about eight years ago. I lived the first 47 years of my life knowing that I had some kind of a problem with my attention span but it never occurred to me that I had an actual, recognisable condition. Nowadays my ADD (attention deficit disorder) would be easily picked up on by teachers early on. Getting an official diagnosis was the missing piece of the puzzle and a huge turning point in my life. Don's lack of proper diagnosis and a correct course of treatment is something that I can strongly relate to. If we don't shine a light on life's shadowy corners, then these things remain just that: shadows. The more we can talk about mental health, the better.
Aside from all the above, my biggest motivation for creating Trombone Man is simply the joy of music making. I loved the story of a group of young men, who, through sheer talent and determination, gave birth to a sound and brought about a musical revolution. Where would we all be if it wasn't for ska and reggae? You don't need me to tell you that virtually all modern music is influenced, either directly or indirectly by ska, reggae, dub and dancehall. It has been said that Jamaica is a cultural superpower and its hard to argue with that. For me, Trombone Man is like the 'origin story,' where it all started. Yes, there's madness and there's murder, but there's also a whole lot of inspiration and positivity. And that's what fuels me to keep doing this.
Onward and upward...
Adam Reeves, 2nd January, 2025.
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