An ensemble of tuned idiophones called ‘pans’ (also ‘steel pans’ or ‘steel drums’) that originated in the late 1930s on the island of Trinidad as accompaniment to carnival masquerade. The modern steel band consists of a variety of chromatically tuned instruments made from 55-gallon oildrums and played with rubber-tipped mallets, as well as an ‘engine room’ comprising drum kit, congas, irons (motor vehicle brake drums) and other percussion. Although steel bands are stylistically versatile, the most common steel band conventions of melodic phrasing and rhythmic structure are related toCalypso music.
To make a pan, the bottom of an oildrum is first pounded into a bowl, then shaped and tuned with hammers to form distinct resonating surfaces. Pans vary from the high-pitched ‘tenor’ with a range of approximately two-and-a-half octaves (beginning at c' or d') to the low basses, more than two octaves below the tenor. The tenor is made from a single drum, while other pans are designed in sets of two to 12 separate drums, depending on register (lower notes need more surface area). Although certain standard patterns of note placement have gained wide use, many bands in Trinidad and Tobago still use idiosyncratic patterns that date from the 1950s and 60s when intense rivalry discouraged the sharing of tuners (pan makers) between bands.
The steel band developed directly out of bamboo stamping tube ensembles (tamboo bamboo) which provided carnival music for lower class blacks in Port of Spain after an 1884 British colonial law restricted the use of drums with heads of skin. The first steel bands, which substituted various metal containers for bamboo instruments, provided percussive accompaniment to call-and-response singing. Around 1940, practitioners developed techniques of hammering the surface of a paint can or other metal container to produce different pitches and by 1950, steel bands in Trinidad performed an eclectic repertory that included calypsos, mambos and other Latin American dance music, film songs and European art music.
Chromatic tuning and the sustained bell-like timbre of modern pans were developed to facilitate this repertory and during the 1940s and 50s the tuner was often the most important individual in a steel band. One figure of particular symbolic importance in Trinidad is the late Winston ‘Spree’ Simon of the John John steel band (now known as Destination Tokyo), popularly credited with making the first pan. A more well-documented accomplishment was his band’s 1946 performance of popular tunes such as Ave Maria and God Save the King for an audience that included the British governor. Other legendary tuner-bandleaders of the early years include Neville Jules of the All Stars, Ellie Mannette of the Invaders and Anthony Williams of the North Stars.
In the late 1960s steel bands faced significant competition from amplified brass bands and recorded music during the carnival season and devoted more and more time to the ‘Panorama’ competition, with profound consequences for repertory, style and musical training. Today in Trinidad and Tobago each steel band focuses most of its efforts during the carnival season on one highly complex arrangement of a calypso, learned by rote for Panorama by the 100 or so players. As a consequence, the arranger has become the most important individual in most steel bands. Anthony Williams, for example, whose North Stars won the first two Panoramas in 1963 and 1964, set a precedent by his use of theme and variation arrangements with multiple key areas. Clive Bradley, hired by the Desperadoes in the mid-1960s, infused steel band arrangements with techniques he had learned in dance and jazz bands. Ray Holman (Starlift) and Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe (Phase II Pan Groove) pioneered the arrangement of original compositions (‘own tunes’) for Panorama, instead of popular calypsos. Jit Samaroo led the Renegades to victory in almost half the Panorama competitions during the 1980s and 90s. In contrast to the exclusive loyalties of early steel band musicians, arrangers in Trinidad and Tobago today often work for several steel bands simultaneously, as do virtually all tuners and even some players.
The steel band’s musical development has been affected by its role as Trinidad and Tobago’s national instrument. This designation was made official in 1992, but the notion dates from the 1940s and 50s, when the steel band’s musical transformation was driven not only by fierce competition between neighbourhood bands, but also by the efforts of progressive middle-class individuals to promote what they saw as an indigenous art form unjustly maligned by colonial cultural standards. With their help, the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO) was formed to represent the island at the Festival of Britain in 1951. In the following year a steel band category was created in Trinidad and Tobago’s biennial music festival, providing an important venue for the performance of symphonic music by steel bands; this continues as a separate steel band event (‘Pan is Beautiful’). At the first carnival following Trinidad and Tobago’s 1962 independence from Britain, the Panorama competition was instituted as a government-sponsored showcase for steel bands.
Although Trinidad and Tobago continues to be the centre of steel band activity, the art form has taken hold in other Caribbean islands as well: Antigua’s vibrant steel band tradition, for example, began in the late 1940s. Steel bands are plentiful in Caribbean diaspora communities (such as those in London, New York and Toronto) and have also become popular in non-Caribbean communities all over the world: Sweden and Switzerland, for example, are hubs of steel band activity in Europe and bands are also gaining popularity in East Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan. Steel bands have also been incorporated into school and university music programmes in Britain and the USA.
See also Trinidad and tobago.
E. Hill: The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre (Austin, TX, 1972)
W. Aho: ‘Steelband Music in Trinidad and Tobago’, LAMR, viii (1987), 26–58
G. Goddard: Forty Years in the Steelbands: 1939–1979 (London, 1991) [with introduction by R.D. Thomas]
J. Thomas: Forty Years of Steel: an Annotated Discography of Steel Band and Pan Recordings, 1951–1991 (Westport, CT, 1992)
F.I.R. Blake: The Trinidad and Tobago Steel Pan: History and Evolution (Port of Spain, 1995)
S. Stuempfle: The Steelband Movement: the Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago (Philadelphia, 1995)
S. Dudley: Making Music for the Nation: Competing Identities and Esthetics in Trinidad and Tobago’s Panorama Steelband Competition (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1997)
SHANNON DUDLEY