Trouble finds MIKEY OKORO almost as soon as he lands on the Port of Spain docks in 1946 Trinidad. He’s swept up in an impromptu workers’ rights protest, and when he fights off an unwarranted beating from CONSTABLE COLLYMORE, an immigrant Barbadian policeman with a vicious streak, he lands in a jail on trumped-up charges. The British Police Commissioner releases Mikey after confirming his honourable discharge, BUT gives him a stern lecture about knowing his place. 

 

Mikey returns to his home in the low-income Laventille Hills, angry and humiliated. That night he hears the strains of music and after searching for the sound, discovers some of his neighbours playing on some roughly made steelpans they’d stolen from another group. Mikey’s entranced. His innate musical talent and wartime technical and managerial skills soon get him elected the band’s leader, and the side quickly become famous throughout the rough barrack-yards.

 

When Mikey and Collymoore become rivals for the Chinese shopkeeper’s daughter LYDIA LEE MING, Collymore finds every excuse to raid the panyard and destroy Mikey’s handiwork. And after he spots Mikey sneaking out of Lydia's bedroom early one morning, everything comes to a head. 

 

Lydia overhears Collymore threaten to kill Mikey and pleads with Mikey to elope, suggesting they migrate to America, but he refuses to live in another white man’s country ever again. But after narrowly escaping a violent steelband clash at the 1950 Carnival celebrations, he encounters Collymore and the two of them face off, with Mikey knowing that if he wins he will forever be a wanted man, and if he loses, he’ll be a dead one.

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