THE STEELDRUM, steelpan, pan; is an instrument born out of a continual process of cultural revolution. It's place of origin, the West Indian island of Trinidad, just prior to 1940. There are two distinctions to be made here. The first is that around the mid 1930’s the steeldrum appeared as a non-melodic percussive component of a rhythmic ensemble. The second is that it was to be in the very late 1930’s to the early 1940’s, when melodic components began appearing on the pan. By carnival day 1946 Spree Simon demonstrated his 14 note ‘ping pong’ - reputedly with a convex note-face shape; the forerunner to the Trinidad Tenor, later to evolve into the Soprano Pan of international acceptance.

  ORIGINS

  Who made the first Pan? That is a question for the Pan historians. However the currently accepted paradigm is the realisation that the idea was stumbled across not by just one individual; but rather that it may have in fact been discovered by different individuals simultaneously. Not an uncommon event in the history of science or technology. There is still a little leeway for the lone discoverer theses however; but what is clear is that the discoverer or discoverers - using the accepted phraseology of the 21st Century - were from a background of those economically stressed and of African decent. Further to this is the realisation that the discovery, yet in its very early stages, was quickly dispersed among persons of similar social dispositions throughout the island of Trinidad; and later to Tobago. The pan was then seriously developed by its multitudinous adherents into the instruments we recognise in common use today. Along the way there were some individuals who are recognised as having made significant contributions to its structure, layout of notes, and some particular range of ‘voices’ of these instruments.

  By the mid 1970’s, because of the lack of significant useful documentation to the historical record - due mainly to the lack of focus, and absence of responsible cultural institutions, to record such matters from within the same stressed socio-economic classes; their attentions otherwise occupied on more pressing matters - there was still no clear answer to question of who invented the pan. This situation was playing havoc to those now emerging responsible to reporting on the cultural health and heritage of the Nation to its people. Pan Trinbago, the uneasy collective of Steelbandsmen who represent the steelbands in Trinidad and Tobago, were tasked with finding an answer. After some consultation they responded with the tentative suggestion that Winston Spree Simon was the most likely inventor of pan; and have since propounded and supported this idea; though still remaining a little sceptical to the lone inventor hypotheses. So by the early 1980’s, Spree was in the history books; and the steeldrum instrument declared the National Instrument of Trinidad and Tobago in 1992.

  THE MUSIC

  Duelled with the emergence of the new steeldrum instrument themselves, was the development of the musical forms that were to be played upon them. Rhythmic; through simple non chromatic melodies and chants; to the full polyphonic representations that are made, for example, at today’s Panoramas. The steelband Panoramas of Trinidad and Tobago represent the pinnacle in the development of the musical genre of the steelband vis calypso folk-art, so specific to these islands.

  It is clear that the true roots of this musical art-form stem from the cultural inheritance of those of our scattered African forefathers. Whereas in North America the Blues, Gospel and Jazz became the evolved voice of expression to a stressed and displaced African diaspora; as too is the Samba to its equivalent communities in South American Brazil; the Calypso, and later Regge, were the equivalent song-forms of the Caribbean. In Trinidad in particular, the earlier Calypso lent its voice to pan.

  THE CALYPSO

  The Calypso itself holds its own unique place in musical history. It is one of the few vocal art-forms that is accepted by the society it entertains, to be a major vehicle of social and political protest, to a National forum; the message woven in clever rhythmic verse. This musical tradition, some 300 years in the making, was forged in the cloud of slavery. The steelbands adopted calypso and adapted it as their own music-form.

  Although the emerging steelbands played other types of music - interpretations of popular songs of the day and also ventured into interpretations of classical music - they represented most of their renditions mainly in calypso tempo. The seasonal calypso songs of these islands became the standard material for main-stream musical interpretation and development of this steeldrum folk-art.

  ACCEPTANCE

  The adherents of the steelpan had a turbulent passage in bringing their interpretation of this rhythmic art-form, a new and dynamic shape in percussive musical expression, to the level of musical and social acceptance that it currently enjoys internationally today. There were three factors that would be working against them, and an extraordinary ‘rights of passage’ would need to be endured on the road to their ultimate success. This period saw steelpan adherents placed in goal, ostracised by societies main-stream and children forbade from association with steelpan activities.

  Over the past 80 years the Colonial regime of the day had acquired a collective paranoia against displays of drumming and had past laws since 1868 to ban such displays; it had as recently as 1937 banned the display and use of tamboo bamboo. Some historians point to this date as the driving force that began the transition from tamboo bamboo to the use of pan. Another idea is that the timing was coincidental, and that the time for pan had arrived, and that this was a spontaneous transition. The laws that were in force that were to dog the early panmen were centred around the prohibition of gatherings grater than 20 members. The onset of World War II set the authorities to further security measures that banned carnival in the streets from 1942; this held for the duration of the war; was lifted for the VE Day celebrations in Trinidad on 8th May 1945, again for the VJ celebrations on 14th August 1945 and allowed carnival to return to the streets in 1946. Curfew restrictions and check point zoning measures would favour any perversities of the authorities during this period. Finally the social prejudices inherent to the authorities of the day would place a seemingly unfair and targeted burden on steelpan adherents, just at the time when they were wishing to be expressive.

  It was not their music, but their socio-economic status that was derided by the authorities, who were themselves baggaged with racial and social prejudice. That some of the early adherents of pan were living on the fringe of behavioural acceptability, bordering on criminal, even within their own communities, did not help matters; but there were not really many of these. The final tar that inhibited acceptance, the reasons not clearly understood by many of that era, was the latent tribal and territorialism that the steelbandsmen exhibited up to the late 1960’s; when steelbands meeting at cross-roads or in narrow streets, would vent their frustrations on each other in brief and sometimes fatal clashes. And again, this was limited to only a few bands. Ironically, even the Calypsonians were now singing protests to the bands to behave. This violent period passed, and by that time, the steelbandsmen’s new musical art-form had arrived. Their musical efforts had resulted in the development of one of the most unique musical art-forms in the world today.

  An interesting foot-note to early pan history suggests that most played pan with only one stick (mallet); and that the transition to dual stick or two hand playing occurred in the early 1950’s. Also early players used sticks with no rubber at the end. ( Transition to rubber = *pre ~1947 ).

  DEVELOPMENT of the STEELDRUM INSTRUMENTS and STEELBANDS

  The development of the steeldrum instrument ran in parallel with the development of the steelbands, and everything had a cyclic connection. Musical requirements engendered the need for different instrument voices. This spurred the addition of more notes to the pan, and more pans to a voice. As the popularity of the art-form grew, the necessity for more pan makers spread. More pan players were needed, more arrangers for the new musical art-form had to be found; methods of organisation and discipline had to be set in place; and so an industry grew.

  Moving to join the carnival parades on the road and to present themselves at the various musical shows that emerged, triggered new developments of a different kind. Where initially ‘pan ’round the neck’ ensembles had for each player a single pan; as the bands evolved, ways had to be discovered to make mobile entire racks of multi-pan instruments to move on the road, as is seen today. Steelbandsmen had to become metal workers, welders and to a point structural engineers as well.

  In their unregulated hay-day of the mid to late 1970’s, a Trinidad & Tobago Panorama steelband could grow to a mobile canopy-covered ensemble of 175 members, playing on about 430 steelpan instruments; with about 20 of these members on assorted rhythm-only instruments. At the turn of this millennium, Panorama steelbands are capped to a maximum, all instrument, total of 100 members.

  THE STEELPAN CULTURE

  Those that make the pans, play in and or manage the bands, arrange and compose for the bands, transport the bands, push the bands down the road, supply for the bands, resource the bands, love the bands, work with or for the bands, organise and manage events for the bands, and the avid supporters and fans of the bands are collectively known in Trinidad and Tobago as members of the pan or steelband culture.

  In Trinidad and Tobago in particular, ardent members of the steelband culture have adopted pan as a way of life. They see the steelpan as a vehicle for social and economic advancement, and as a legacy of endeavour to be passed on for their children to inherit. They are clannish and tied mainly to their local steelband; although some remain itinerant and go from band to band plying their services as either players or active supporters. Whatever they do, relationships and work are secondary to the calling of pan; and at Panorama time, they are totally lost to the panyards for the duration.

  Members of this steelband culture have now moved out of these islands and taken their cultural inheritance with them. Visitors have listened, investigated, learnt and left, also taking the art of pan with them. Pan now lives in a larger world. Pan spreads carrying with it some established traditions and a sprinkle of folk law. There are folk heroes in some of the early pioneers. There are many, but of these, there are a few that glow brightly; *Winston Spree Simon (Pan Maker, Tuner, Bandleader - Pan Craft), Anthony Tony Williams (Pan Maker, Tuner, Arranger, Bandleader - 4th+5th Tenor & Spider pan), Bertie Marshall (Pan Maker - Double Tenor + The art of tuning the upper partials/harmonics of the note), Orman Patsy Haynes (Pan Player - Enthusiast), Carlton Barrow Zigilee Constantine (Tamboo Bamboo transition, Early Bandleader, Pan Player - Enthusiast), Rudolph Charles the man with the 'hammer' (Pan Maker, Tuner, Bandleader - Quadrophonic), and the daddy of them all, Elliott Ellie Mannett (Pan Maker, Tuner, Bandleader - Sinks pan to concave note-face, Pan groove, Tenor, Double Seconds - Adds 'car/bicycle(?)-inner-tube-rubber' to pan sticks).

  SCIENCE & THE STEELDRUMS

  From their somewhat crude emergence on the music scene, to their present day status as quality musical instruments, the development of the steelpan appears to have been remarkably progressive. It should be realised that the early pioneers developed their pan crafting starting from a near medieval understanding of metallurgy - they were uneducated in this field. By word of mouth, drawn from associations within the local industries, heat treatment processes like ‘tempering’ and ‘quenching’ were learnt. In going up the learning curve, the methodology of trial and error applied throughout. They faced enormous frustrations with the materials with which they were working, as there was no standard by which they could qualify the steel in the steel drums they were using; and indeed they had to discover for themselves which steel drums they could use in the first place. The eventual method of choosing a suitable steel drum, and one that remains in force even today, is to seek drums that have yielded a successful prototype by the specific product they contained. Although as simple as that choice may appear, it now goes way beyond ‘that oil drum’; to seeking those containing oil type ‘ABC’ from manufacturer ‘XYZ’ in USA - bass pans; or glucose type ‘ABC’ manufactured ‘XYZ’ in France - tenor pans.

  Nickel and chrome plating, a protective process, came to the pans late in the day and went into general use in the early 1970’s. It was around this time also that real science and technology began having a bearing on the steelpan. The aspect of science with pan has not yet been fitfully documented for the historical record. In general, research has been limited by availability of funding, focused on a ‘need to know’ bases to assist those who now attempt to manufacture pans on a large scale, and has moved largely off these shores to the US and Europe and to Switzerland in particular, although an active cadre remains at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, who now maintain a Steelpan Research website to document their activities.

  At a glance, it appears that serious scientific interest in the instrument began around the mid 1970’s. A more targeted approach to tuning and metallurgical questions were addressed in the 1980’s; and acoustic studies and mathematical modelling of the instrument, now understood to comprise ‘a loosely supported oscillating shell structure’, continued into the 1990’s, when many useful texts and papers began to appear.

  In 1992 the book Steel Pan Tuning by Kronman, Stockholm, Sweden, followed on from his visits to Trinidad in the late 1980’s. West Virginia University, Morgantown West Virginia USA, began working with Ellie Mannett in 1994 on the ‘University Tuning Project’ to pass on the art of pan tuning, among other researches. This group has also been working in close collaboration with members of the University of Texas, El Paso Texas USA, researching ‘materials science and metallurgy’ -

A footnote by the departmental director Murr, directed towards Mannett, states that ‘…The techniques Mannette and his contemporaries developed were "serendipitously correct, but now we know they’re correct,"…’

  In 2000, as a result of much practical and theoretical work in areas of ‘case hardening by nitriding’ and applications through a better understanding of the behaviour in the ‘geometry of dome structures’ by a group from PANArt Ltd, Bern Switzerland, a completely new type of steelpan instruments were invented; the Ping pans and Pang rawform. This Swiss group has also developed a nomenclature and methodology for tuning standard steelpans that is exceedingly practical and of universal appeal. They expound here that students to this approach to ‘tuning’, in moments of uncertainty, may even ‘phone home’ to a ‘master tuner’ to be quickly guided into correcting an ‘un-tuned pan’ with precisely targeted blows of the hammer, as coded in the training ‘nomenclature’.

  ROCKET SCIENCE

  That the secrets of those ‘sweet pan tones’ have now moved from ‘beneath the breadfruit tree’ to become the puzzle of the mathematical heads of ‘rocket science’ to describe, should be of no surprise and amuse greatly many a calypsonian and pan fan alike. This is no unjust claim, as in order to play the calypso of ‘symbols’ on the theoretical acoustic ‘shells’ of pan; a thorough understanding is required of the differential calculus of Newton and Leibnitz; the functions of Fourier and Bessel, the vibrational properties of ‘plates’ by Chladni, Ms Germain, and more lately Leissa ( NASA ); and through to the works of the new masters of ‘vibration’ Fletcher and Rossing, Ms Schärer and Rohner; and in between very many others.

  TURNING THE MILLENNIUM

  The old millennium yielded one last and unusual gift to pan before moving to the pages of history. Unveiled on the 21st May at the preliminaries of the World Steelband Music Festival 2000 in Parc de la Villette Paris, France; and arriving in Trinidad in October to amaze fans and to confound the local critics that ever such a thing could happen, the steelband PANch 2000 of Switzerland demonstrated a new class of Cello pan, the Pyramid pan. The new pan, made from 6 small chromed drums, spans 3 octaves - C3 to G5 - and are arranged in an upright pyramid, cleverly acoustically de-coupled from their mounting stand. The Pyramid pan is the result of a collaborative effort between two pan makers and tuners across two countries; Esa Tervala of Cosmo Pan in Switzerland and Dudley Dickson (a migrant Trinidadian) of Happy Drums in England.

  In summary, it is clear that pan is alive, spreading rapidly as a culture and it well out of danger elsewhere on the planet.

  A final glance into the workings of Trinidad and Tobago will reveal that there are roughly 50 traditional (Single Pan) and 50 conventional (The big ones) steelbands that function seasonally for each carnival. This represents about 7,000 players. With an estimated gearing of associated interests and indirect but concerned support of 3 to 1, this translates to a minimum culture base of around 20,000 pan people; or 1.5% of the Islands population. *Moving this to a comparative analogy with the home of the Big Apple; could anyone imagine over 3 Million Americans involved with pan? No, perhaps not, or not yet anyway; but to Trinidad and Tobago, that is the 2001 reality.