STEEL PAN

Steel Pan is the national musical instrument of Trinidad and Tobago developed in the late 1930's. It is a hammered oil drum, which is tuned to produce exact tones, and played with rubber-tipped sticks. Each Pan carries the full chromatic range of notes. The three basic types of Pan are tenor Pans for melody, rhythm Pans for harmony, and bass Pans.

There are varying opinions as to when the first sound from metal Pans was actually heard, but in the Trinidad Carnival during the mid 1930's, bass cans were starting to be used. Word spread and people began creating Pans from various metal containers, which would become the art of 'tuning'. By the 40's bands with only Steel Pans began to form, with Trinidad's, 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' and 'Hellyard'. Steel Pan history was made again, when Elliott 'Ellie' Mannette of Port of Spain devised the inward playing surface of the Pan, fine tuning the sound once again.

The steel drum in fact is the only acoustic musical instrument invented this century! Steel Pan began to make an appearance on the street in celebrations since the war, both in the Caribbean and the UK, and have since become a familiar sound at events ever since. Steel Pan is now a widely accepted art-form and is internationally popular, the Panorama event, at Notting Hill Carnival each year being one of its major UK platforms.

TAMBOO BAMBOO

Steel Pan Band is a development of the Tamboo Bamboo Band. During the mid to late 1800's, Carnival included the playing of skin drums, up until 1884, when a ban on all drum-beating was imposed. Carnival participants turned to bamboo as an alternative. They dried bamboo of various widths, cut them to different lengths, to produce musical sounds, when struck with wooden sticks.

These bands became known as Tamboo Bamboo Bands, taking part in Carnival for the first time in 1891. Soon Tamboo Bamboo Bands became an integral part of Carnival and were hugely popular until the 1930's. By 1938, Victor "Toti" Wilson of the Calvary Tamboo Bamboo Band, played a metal Pan with four notes tuned, soon metal cans, and other containers were starting to be included in the Carnival bands, evolving into the Steel Pan sound we know today.