Winston L. Zammit:Il-Banda tar-Rabat. Ġrajjiet Is-Soċjetà San Pawl. Banda Konti Ruġġieru. AD 1869
Soċjetà San Pawl Banda Konti Ruġġieru
396 pp., €25

Band clubs have played a very significant role in the Maltese islands ever since they started being set up in the second half of the 19th century. Besides their obvious contribution in making the people more musically aware, they functioned as social centres where the local menfolk (women started to make their way into them only late in the last century) gradually came face to face with and mastered the realities of administration, as well as sampling the world of politics.

Eventually led by some local wealthy philanthropist or professional person and often taking a discreet political affiliation, they also provided a lay centre of focus other than the local church, although all were somehow close­ly linked with religious celebrations and manifestations.

Band clubs did not just provide the organisation of the external religious celebrations but in many towns and villages they organised theatrical companies and football teams and, in later years, branched out to several other activities from billiards and snooker to chess to basketball to shooting and many other sports.

Almost in all cases band clubs set up their own fireworks factories. They became the beating hearts of the locality and their role has not diminished much in the contemporary world.

Indeed, going by the ever-growing grandeur of the external feasts (now generally extended for a whole week) which they are now organising, as well as by the embellishments carried out in their premises, they seem to be going from strength to strength. Certainly the element of rivalry with band clubs is a useful spur, although in some cases decent limits are surpassed.

The history of Rabat’s Soċjetà San Pawl and Count Roger Band was destined to be Winston L. Zammit’s final work, and one which this most gentle person was unfortunately fated not to see published. Meticulously researched as was his wont, it will stand as one of his best publications. It is a fitting tribute to mark the 150th anniversary of the society’s foundation.

Indeed, the society owes its origins to a meeting held on July 25, 1869, in the Mdina house of Mgr Ludovico Mifsud Tommasi. Cospicua-born Mifsud Tommasi was an enlightened educationalist who had founded a school for the teaching of Maltese in Valletta and was also an important author of religious verse in the vernacular. At the age of 33, he had re­fused the Governor’s offer of the post of coadjutor with the right of succession to the bishopric.

In that meeting, a contract was signed in the presence of a notary when a score of mostly Rabat tradesmen, ranging from whitewashers to gilders to pruners to a lamplighter, agreed with Epifanio Agius to be given regular music lessons twice a week. For their services the new bandsmen agreed to pay 3s.4d. every month in advance. One of its first initiatives was to provide free music tuition, which eventually led to a fully-fledged philharmonic band that became much in demand, even on a national scale.

The notarial contract signed on that day was a notable first – the society became the first one in the islands to have it origins officially sanctioned.

Rabat’s population then just exceeded 6,000 if one took into consideration its many rural hamlets. The town already hosted another band named after Grand Master L’Isle Adam, which seems to have been founded a few years previously and was linked with the celebration of the feast of St Joseph in the church of the Franciscan Minors. Whether this club then had an organised band is a moot point. It seems to have tended to draw in the professional classes of Mdina and Rabat, while, as can be seen from the trades of the founding members, the new band club had a more working-class bias.

Soon the society’s band started calling itself after Count Roger, a fine portrait of whom was commissioned to Giuseppe Calì in 1885 and remains one of the society’s prized possessions. A papier-mâché statue commissioned then is still proudly taken out on the feast days. It also started playing in several other villages and came to be popularly referred to as Il-Banda tar-Rabat.

In the 1880s it moved its pre­mi­ses to 67, Main Street, which has remained its seat. The caretaker of the każin ta’ fuq was even given 6s. in 1890 for the cat who was employed as the resident mouser.

A significant achievement at the time when there were no social services was the setting of the Mutuo Soccorso society in 1917 when the islands were experiencing severe dearth and exploding prices

The new society’s civic sense is evident in the aborted offer in 1893 to the central government to organise a committee to look after the embellishment of the sixth electoral district. This was 100 years before the introduction of local councils in the islands. Another of its failed attempts was another petition to have September 28 declared a national holiday to celebrate the coming of Count Roger.

The first meeting between Count Roger Band’s legendary maestro Vincenzo Ciappara, and the much loved Mro Joe Vella, on Easter Sunday 1975.

The society soon became closely linked with the feasts or­ganised by the church of St Paul outside the walls, where the main feast was that of Corpus Christi, which is still grandly celebrated with two processions, one on Sunday morning and one in the evening. In 1880, the band was playing at the feast; eight years later it also started playing at the feast of their patron, St Paul.

On March 18,1902, after years of effort, the parish of Rabat was hived off from Mdina. This event caused quite a lot of friction that even culminated in a violent epi­sode on the third day of carnival 1903, when the band was stoned as it passed through the ‘territory’ of the rival club and which led to the death of Paolo Portelli.

One of the society’s early presi­dents was the splendidly be­whiskered Baron Max von Tucker, the German consul in Malta, whose majestic Villa Lugis­land is one of the most outstanding buildings in Boschetto Road (now renamed after Giorgio Borg Oliver). Unfortunately he had to leave the island when war broke out in 1914.

He was succeeded by the criminal lawyer Alfredo Caruana, also a naturalist of note and who, as the society’s representative, play­ed an important role in the National Assembly and the bloody events of the Sette Giugno.

A significant achievement at the time when there were no social services was the setting up of the Mutuo Soccorso society in 1917 when the islands were experiencing severe dearth and exploding prices. The society proudly survives to this day. For a small monthly sum, members can claim benefits in case of illness and death. It pays for the doctor’s visit and any prescribed medicines, as well as the funeral costs of members.

That same year a theatrical company was set up which also continued to provide wholesome entertainment even in a number of other towns and villages; as the Golden Rose it won several prizes in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of Malta’s best known Thespians strode the boards of its rather basic theatre, including Nosi Ghirlando, Vitorin Galea, Charles Clews, Johnny Catania and Armando Urso, who all used to play to packed, eager audiences.

The fine portrait of Count Roger, painted by Giuseppe Calì in 1885, is one of the Soċjetà San Pawl’s prized possessions. The society once petitioned the government to have September 28 declared a national holiday to celebrate the coming of Count Roger to Malta.

Another development was the buying of a snooker table in 1927. Eventually the club would have a formidable snooker and billiards teams in the ’50s and ’60s, which included national champions Al­fred Borg il-Pataw and Pullu Grech.

Still, the jewel in the crown was the musical band, which went from strength to strength. It had several outstanding directors, but maestro Vincenzo Ciappara, best known for the hundreds of popular marches he wrote, was the le­gen­dary one. He served as director for 50 years; when he retired in 1978, his place was taken by the much-loved Prof. Joe Vella, one of the island’s leading composers.

The society cherished close links with the parish church and its members played leading roles in the feasts of Corpus Christi and St Paul by organising the external festivities. Eventually even a fully-licensed fireworks factory was set up.

One cherished feature inside the club was the chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel, which for many years was cared for by Majsi Tonna.

The club and the band served as a culture hub for simple and  unedu­cated people, and some of these illiterate men turned out to be excellent actors, musicians, players and even administrators.

One of the most interesting features of this impressive publication is the great number of rare photographs, including quite a number of the Rabat countryside and streets over the years, as well as obviously individuals linked with the history of the society.

The publication was made possible by the generosity of its Rabat-born but Detroit-based honorary president Paul Borg, who had even originally offered to have the book printed in his state-of-the-art printing press in the United States.