Brief history of the steel pan

To understand the history of the steel pan, you have to go back to 1700s when African slaves were brought to the islands of Trinidad.  Many of the people from Africa used animal hide drums for different occasions—religious rituals, celebration, communication, and entertainment.

After slavery was abolished in 1838, the government banned drumming on animal hide drums in 1883 for many reasons including the fear of a rebellion started from communication over drumming and to distance the African people from their religious background so that they could convert them to Christianity.  But the official reason stated to the public was that they outlawed it to prevent any public disturbances.

This didn’t keep the people away from playing music.  They turned to different size of bamboo shoots, they called tamboo bamboo—tamboo is from the French word tambour which means drum.  They used the hollowed out bamboo reeds of varying sizes and struck them on the ground to get different notes, and they used metal objects for their percussion.   Some of the tamboo bamboo bands started to gain some notoriety, but then issues arose where some of the bands became very territorial over the area where they played.  Their actions were similar to gang rivalries and many times the bands got into quarrels in the streets.  They used the bamboo as weapons, which created some very violent and deadly fights.  The government was forced to outlaw these around 1937.

Nothing would deter this culture from playing drums.  They went to only using whatever metal objects they could find—trash cans, oil cans, and parts.  Around the 1920s, they realized that when the metal was bent in certain ways, it created different notes.  After the tamboo bamboo was banned, people began a frenzy of experiments to try and beat out other builders for the best instrument.  Over the next couple decades, some of the biggest improvements were the use of the 50 gallon steel shipping barrels and bend the metal into a convex shape.

It wasn’t until around the late 1940s that the design of most of the steel pans we know today was formed—though improvements are still being made today.  Soon, history started to repeat itself.  Some of the steel bands got into rivalries with each other, starting fights in the streets and using their instruments as weapons.  The government stepped in again, but instead of outlawing the pans, they found an opportunity in the 1951 Festival of Britain.  They thought the steel band would be a great representative for the island.  They created a band—Trinidad All Star Percussion Orchestra (TASPO)—from some of the best players and tuners from each bands.  This band eventually went on to tour worldwide.

In 1963 the Panorama competitions were create to continue to change the rivalries from violence into competitions on a public stage.  Thanks to this competition, many of people involved with the pan were motivated to push the instrument and music further as an art form.  Panorama is still going on today, hosting several bands of varying size from 35 players all the way to bands of 150 players.

Bibliography:

Gaye (n.d.). Steel Pan (Steel Drums) Information, Tips and Advice. Retrieved from

                http://www.steelpan-steeldrums-information.com/

Blake, F.I.R. (1995). The Trinidad and Tobago Steel Pan. Molins de Rei, Spain: Gràfiques 85.