A racial justice advocate and early member of the Progressive Group in the 1950s was an originator in Bermuda of steel pan, the classic Trinidadian music that helped drive the craze for calypso as tourism took off for the island.

Rudy Commissiong led the Esso Steel Band, a group from his native Trinidad that headquartered on the island for decades.

As Mr Commissiong recalled it: “I came for three months and I stayed for 35 years.”

He was born in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad & Tobago, where he learnt steel pan at age 17 and made a name for himself with colleagues.

The country was a hub in the 1950s for international flights.

The group increased its exposure by performing at an airport hotel, and word spread about the band to Bermuda — leading to the Esso Steel Band’s booking in 1955 at the Alibi Room in the New Windsor Hotel on Queen Street in Hamilton.

Although he was taken with Bermuda, Mr Commissiong soon discovered that the island was rigidly racially segregated — something he and his fellow musicians were unfamiliar with from Trinidad.

At their new venue, the only Black people they saw were waiters, and Mr Commissiong described an experience not long after the band’s arrival.

“One day during rehearsals, I took a break and walked through the terrace, which was part of the building at the back and side of the nightclub to a bar, which I thought was part of the hotel.

“It was called Casey’s Bar. There were about half a dozen White men drinking and talking. I ordered a beer. The bartender stood there rather frozen, then one of the men whom I assumed knew who I was told the bartender something about the band.

“The bartender then said: ‘OK, but you will have to take it with you. You can’t drink it here.’

“That was very degrading and something that lived with me for a long time.”

Mr Commissiong had previously got acquainted in Canada with Stanley Ratteray, who would become a founding member of the United Bermuda Party and a pioneer in Bermuda’s desegregation movement.

The two reconnected in 1958 for a meeting over lunch at The Spot Restaurant, one of the few Hamilton restaurants that served Black patrons.

“We were there for about an hour and, except for the first 15 minutes, our conversation was all about the racial discrimination and segregation that Black Bermudians had to endure,” Mr Commission recalled in a 2023 article in The Royal Gazette. “He was very angry and determined to do something about it.”

Dr Ratteray, who died in 2003, helped to organise secret meetings of what would become the Progressive Group — organisers of the peaceful Theatre Boycott of 1959 that triggered the collapse of segregation in cinemas, hotels, restaurants and bars.

Mr Commissiong wrote: “At one of the meetings, I proposed that as a first step to break down segregation and White supremacy in Bermuda, we start with a boycott of the theatres. The motion was adopted unanimously and the rest is history.”

Mr Commissiong and the others remained anonymous for decades, but in 1999 were awarded the Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour in recognition of the 40th anniversary of the landmark event.

He married a schoolteacher, Vera Commissiong, also of the Progressive Group, in 1956, and the two had three sons: Rolfe, who became an MP in the Progressive Labour Party; Dane and Troy. The couple separated in 1971.

Mr Commissiong’s music career flourished, and the Esso Steel Band produced eight albums.

James “Junior” Martinez, whom Mr Commissiong recruited for the band, called him “a terrific guy — a very, very effective leader”.

“He was a very intelligent man who did not suffer fools lightly,” Mr Martinez added. “Under his leadership, we were a tight-knit unit. It was serious business.

“We played a repertoire ranging from traditional calypso to classics such as Mozart. Rudy maintained strict discipline.

“He was an activist for change, and it has been a distinct pleasure to have known him. His life was a life well lived. I give my condolences to his family — may he rest in peace.”

The band was a driver for Bermudian talent as well, starting with the jazz pianist Lance Hayward, the band’s arranger for its jazz repertoire.

However, by the 1980s, a combination of factors, from disco to social unrest, had dampened Bermuda’s entertainment scene.

Industrial action and the General Strike of 1981 contributed further to tourism’s decline, but the island was also becoming expensive in comparison with increasingly popular island destinations to the south, and the industry began to wane as Bermuda’s mainstay.

Mr Commissiong’s second wife, Patricia, was American, and the two got married in Hawaii in 1987.

The couple moved briefly to Boston, but relocated to Maui in Hawaii in 1989.

Although he retired as a musician, it was not long before Mr Commissiong returned to performing.

Steel drums were an unfamiliar sound in Maui, and he broadened into other genres, including Latin music. In the meantime, he survived a brush with cancer in 1990.

The couple moved from Hawaii to Massachusetts, striking a balance between his wife’s wish to be nearer to her ageing parents and Mr Commissiong’s desire to live by the ocean.

They bought a home in Cape Cod, where Mr Commissiong finished out his days.

Rudolph Patrick Commissiong, a Trinidadian-born activist and musician prominent in Bermuda, was born on March 29, 1930. He died on January 15, 2025, aged 94