21.9.10

Steel Band

  
All the Best of the 
West Indies Steel Band
1994

Tracks:

1. Carnival
2. Melodies
3. Bamboo Stick
4. Mambo Mama
5. Island Home
6. Limbo
7. Sounds of the Sun
8. Rhythm
9. Trinidad Home
10. Flag Woman
11. Wings of a Dove
12. Endless Vibrations
13. Yellow Bird
14. Eine Kleine Nacht Musik in Calypso Rhythm
15. Wedding March
16. Amazing Grace in Reggae Rhythm
17. Marianne/Mathilda in Medley [Medley]
18. Perdoname
19. Jamming

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Steelpans (also known as steel drums or pans, and sometimes, collectively with musicians, as a steel band) is a musical instrument originating from Trinidad and Tobago. Steel pan musicians are called pannists.

The pan is a chromatically pitched percussion instrument (although some toy or novelty steelpans are tuned diatonically), made from 55 gallon drums that usually store oil. In fact, drum refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steeldrum is correctly called a steel pan or pan as it falls into the idiophone family of instruments, and is not technically regarded as a drum or membranophone. The pan is struck by a pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber; the size and type of rubber tip is unique to the class of pan being played. Some musicians use four pansticks, holding two in each hand. This skill and performance has been conclusively shown to have grown out of Trinidad and Tobago's early 20th century Carnival percussion groups known as Tamboo Bamboo. Pan is the National Instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.

With the mass exodus of French Creoles from Martinique  to Trinidad, the steelpan evolved from a communication device to the musical instrument it is used as today. Drumming was used as a form of communication among the enslaved Africans and was subsequently outlawed by the British colonial government in 1783. African slaves also performed during Mardi Gras celebrations, joining the French that had brought the tradition to the island.  The two most important influences were the drumming traditions of both Africa and India. The instrument's invention was therefore a specific cultural response to the conditions present on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

The first instruments developed in the evolution of steelpan were Tamboo-Bamboos, tunable sticks made of bamboo wood. These were hit onto the ground and with other sticks in order to produce sound. Tamboo-Bamboo bands also included percussion of a (gin) bottle and spoon. By the mid-1930s, bits of metal percussion were being used in the tamboo bamboo bands, the first probably being either the automobile brake hub "iron" or the biscuit drum "boom". The former replaced the gin bottle-and-spoon, and the latter the "bass" bamboo that was pounded on the ground. By the late 1930s their occasional all-steel bands were seen at Carnival and by 1940 it had become the preferred Carnival accompaniment of young underprivileged men. The 55-gallon oil drum was used to make lead steelpans from around 1947. The Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO), formed to attend the Festival of Britain in 1951, was the first steelband whose instruments were all made from oil drums. Members of TASPO included Ellie Mannette and Winston "Spree" Simon. Hugh Borde also led the National Steel Band of Trinidad & Tobago at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in England, as well as the Esso Tripoli Steel Band, who played at the World’s Fair in Montreal, Canada, and later toured with Liberace and were also featured on an album with him.

 
Steelband Invaders wearing their instruments hung around their necks - « Pan around the neck », at the beginning of the 1950’s.
 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

welcome back Mi...