The Evolution of Steel Pan Music

Pan music has evolved along with the instrument.  Below is an interview with Joe Perea about this evolution.  He is part of the music staff at North Lake College in Irving, TX, and he is the instructor of the their steel band.



Here is the transcript of the interview:

Michael S.: I’m sitting here with Joe Perea.  He is part of the music faculty at North Lake College, and he is also the instructor for the steel band that they have here.  And I’m going to ask him some questions about the music influence on the steel pan.

So, Joe, where were some of the early influences on the steel pan music?

Joe P: Early steel pan music has its roots is the African diaspora of Trinidad, the descendants of the former slaves.  The music that we find in this has its roots in African drumming.  First with African drumming traditions, one of the things that happens during the colonial times is that the British government puts an end to the use of skin drums out of the fear that they could communicate coded messages.  For carnival time, they would turn to other objects to produce the same sort of rhythmic ideas, and one of the things that developed around the late 1800s was something called tamboo bamboo.  Taking a lot of different large bamboo poles of different diameters, different lengths, and drumming on those to produce a really interesting syncopated orchestra of sticks.  The complication, though, is that there are stick fighting rituals that take place all over the Caribbean, South America, and even Africa, and the bamboo poles became integrated into the stick fighting rituals.  And the government has to intervene to quell the violence.  So again, they go to found objects—bottles and spoons, pots and pans and whatnot.  And it is some street kids in the slums of Port of Spain, Trinidad that figure out that they could put different size dents on the bottom of caustic soda barrels or biscuit tins to be able to produce different pitches.  So with the early steel bands, the music that we hear still has its rhythmic roots in the drumming traditions—that’s the original source of some of those syncopations.  But then over time and the added variable of pitch, we start to have melodic ideas form until eventually we have full blown melodies and harmonies with today’s model.  So, early melodies that we would hear on the steel drums would be simple tunes, perhaps a recognizable melody like Brahms’ Lullaby or something like that, and as the drums have more notes added to them then the melodies can become more complex.  We’ll hear melodies of popular calypso music of the time, as well as, popular foreign music, foreign to Trinidad so perhaps tunes from the American cinema or tunes from Britain.  And as time goes on, calypso music will continue to develop.  It gets more influence, and I would dare say corruption from America influences due to recording production taking place outside of Trinidad, so there is going to be more influence of Mo-Town and soul.  Eventually, we get to the point today where we actually reversed that, and we hear a lot of American pop, r&b, and hip hop that had influence of Trinidadian producers.

MS: In the time I’ve played steel pan with you, I’ve learned that in Trinidad a lot people don’t read music, they learn by rote, which means that one person learns the music and then they teach it to the next person, who teaches the next and on.

JP: Correct.

MS: Is there any growth in Trinidad for players to start reading music?

JP: There’s been a call for that for some time.  There’s been the mindset among some that reading music is more legitimate than learning by rote.  I think, again, it has its roots in the European mindset.  But the music that they play without even knowing how to read or write music on paper is incredibly complex, very highly syncopated.  I’ve watched arrangers just think of these entire pieces, and one part at a time call out each individual part out of their head and then the whole things comes together.  It’s miraculous writing when you think about it.  There has been a push for developing music literacy within the school s and utilizing the steel pan instrument.  Part of the complication for years is that it’s taken time for the steel pan to gain legitimacy, even in Trinidad.  It’s been considered for a long time to be kind of a folk instrument, and instrument of the people, rather than a legitimate instrument like the piano or a trumpet.  But I think we’re now to the point where a majority of people in Trinidad see the legitimacy, see the potential with the instrument.  There’s an organization in Trinidad called the Music Literacy Trust that has been pushing collaboration with the local governing body called  Pan Trinibago, and they’ve worked out a deal where the Music Literacy Trust will oversee the transcription of these intricate Panorama arrangements.  That way this music will be preserved for future generations, so that they can go back and play some of these earlier arrangements rather that have them being lost in history.  At least at this point we have recordings, but we don’t have arrangements.  For the last 50 years, we have very, very few that have actually be notated on paper.  So, this will give students in the future the opportunity to be able to play arrangements written by people from earlier generations.  I kind of predict it’ll give them a window into compositional style and to arranging techniques, and I think what we will see once they go that direction in Trinidad, I think we’ll see a huge growth in people writing, composing, and arranging for steel band because I think the language will be there right in front of them.  With the visual component, I think we’ll see a growth in the creativity of composition.

MS: Well, thank you very much for all the information.

JP: My pleasures