Steelpan

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=__**The Steel Pan - The History**__= The beating of animal skin drums was an integral part of the Africans' religious observance and helped them to survive the rigors of a life of hardship, oppression and toil and to celebrate important social occasions. During Trinidad's Spanish colonization from 1498 to 1797, French planters settled and introduced slavery, bringing the African people to Trinidad. When slavery ended, East Indians came as indentured labor. Drumming was confined to these two major groups in the 19th Century. When Trinidad became a British colony in 1797, the British feared the drums would activate revolt by transmitting coded messages from one plantation to another. The Catholic Church wanted to convert everyone to Catholicism and dissolve the African religion and culture. So drums were banned, and the slaves were forbidden to practice their religion or to speak their own language. Many drum players, deprived of their drums, abandoned drumming altogether, favoring more European, melodic forms of music. However, rhythm being the most important element of African-based music, many drummers simply replaced their drums with sticks, especially with bamboo sticks which could be tuned. These sticks were called Tamboo Bamboo1. In this form, the British repression helped develop the use of drumming sticks in the islands of the Caribbean. Tamboo Bamboo was used as an instrument that when pounded against the ground produced a distinctive rhythm. Each group developed its own distinctive rhythmic pattern, which served as group identification. Tamboo Bamboo was declared illegal eventually because the Britsh Colonial rule considered it violent. Drumming was ingrained in African cultures, however, and the people of Trinidad continued to develop instruments to replace the banned ones, including tin cans and woodbarrels. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that drums and tamboo bamboos were again allowed, with restrictions, during Carnival time. The elaborate processions of Carnival required elaborate rhythms, and drummers started perfecting their instruments to produce a more varied tonal range. During the 1930's biscuit tins were included as rhythm instruments in the Tamboo Bamboo bands. In 1934 Tamboo Bamboo bands were again forbidden due to street clashes among rival groups. At the same time a gradual change to street instruments in street bands began to take place. The year of 1938 is considered as the birth of the steel drum when Tamboo Bamboo bands were finally switching over to steel. The first true steelpan used by musicians was an empty biscuit container. The next development was the discovery that when you hammered a paint pan out from the inside, different notes could be played on the pan. Soon the bent peace of steel gave way to the steeldrum that could produce simple melodies. The early steelpans made of paint tins or biscuit tins had only a handful of notes. They were one foot in diameter and two feet long. They were tuned to the highest upper pitch note the steelpan could produce. Soon drummers discovered that bulges of different sizes in the botton of a tin could produce sounds of various pitches. In 1939, a drummer named Winston "Spree" Simon began playing melodies on the first tuned tins. He is considered to be the inventor of the tuned tins. Spree later produced the first convex (dome- shaped) steelpan. Originally, steelpans were convex; however, the pursuit of a wider range of notes produced the development of a concave instrument. In a steelband, the melodies are played on a tenor pan, which can play a complete low pitch scale. The bands also have double tenor pans, a pair of lower pitch drums in which a lower pitch scale is divided between the two drums. Treble and harmonic drums are also featured. Pan music developed rapidly during the late 1930s, and by 1941 many steelbands playing in Trinidad became popular among U.S. soldiers based on the naval bases on the island. Although Carnival was banned for the entire duration of the Second World War, steelbands playing in lower class neighborhoods flourished in this period. First, the banning of playing during the war years gave people more time for acoustic experimentation with the emerging steel drum. Second, the oil industry and the US naval base made oil drums abundant in the island. These oil drums were cut and used as dustbins. The dustbins eventually replaced the biscuit tins as the raw material for pan making. However, the constant clashes between bands and the frequent inter-band rivalry, which occasionally resulted in violence, causing a negative association with steelbands. Therefore. raw materials to make steeldrums were scarce, and panmen generally had to steal materials from oil refineries and naval yards, all of which helped to seal the bad reputation of these drummers. After the war, Carnival was reinstated, and with it the famous competitions between steelbands. In 1946, the first steel drum in its concave form was made from a steel 55 gallon oil drum, which was created by Ellie Manette.

=__The Steel pan - Characteristics__= The steel pan (or steel drum) is composed of from one to nine 55-gallon steel barrel drums, suspended with stands. The bottom end of the barrel is open, with its skirt (or sides) cut from 6 inches to full length for bass instruments. The top end of the barrel is sunk into a concave shape with notes raised upward by a process of firing, cooling and hammering to generate the base pitch and its overtones. The lower the instrument, the shallower the pan is sunk. Notes are delineated by grooving of various shapes, either circular, "U" or squared. While there is some standardization of note arrangement (for example, the tenor steel pan is arranged in a circle of fifths) there is still much variety, dependent upon the individual maker. On each side of the drum, a hole is drilled to suspend it on metal stands with either nylon/ leather straps or aluminum hooks. Earlier steel pans were suspended around the performer's neck with a strap, one drum at a time, so that each performer may play only part of an instrument. Today, this form is considered a subgroup style called "pan round the neck". The steel pan's primary accompaniment is the "engine room" composed of car brake iron, shaker ("shak-shak"), scraper (guiro), congas, and drum set.

=__**The Steel Pan - Tuning**__= Instrument ranges and tuning generally mimic those of the Western string orchestra, from tenor (one drum) to bass (six to nine drums) and each instrument usually covers two and a half chromatic octaves. While there is some standardization of note arrangement (for example, the tenor steel pan is arranged in a circle of fifths) there is still much variety, dependent upon the individual maker. The drums are traditionally shaped by hand, though recent research and technology has devised a mechanical sinking of the drums (called spin sinking) which allows for greater accuracy and consistency in the bowl's shape. Other innovations include an expansion of instrument range and electronic amplification.

=__**The Steel Pan - Technique**__= The steel pan is played with wood or aluminum mallets wrapped with rubber which allows the instrument to resonate. The thickness of the mallet increases with the number of drums and range of instrument. The bass instrument mallets are made with soft rubber sponge balls. Mallet strokes on the pan must quickly move away from the instrument to allow the drum to resonate. In typical play, the higher (or smaller) notes require more force for an equal volume with the lower (and larger) notes. Due to the relatively short length of resonance, sustained pitches are produced by rapid rolls, or alternation of mallets. The brake iron, the steel pan's main accompaniment, is held in one hand and struck with a metal rod. Together, several brake iron players perform in a "hocketing" fashion to form a steady metronomic accompaniment for the steel pans.

=__The Steel Pan - Where is it Now?__= The steel pan is primarily performed in Carnival festivals throughout the West Indies and the Caribbean diaspora (New York, Toronto, and Notting Hill, England being the most prominent). Of these, Trinidad's Panorama Steel Band Competition is the largest and most significant. Expansions of the styles of performance and institutionalization of the bands have allowed other festivals to form, such as Trinidad's World Steelband Festival for the performance of European orchestral music and the Pan Ramajay festival for jazz. Other contexts derive from the steel pan's earlier technique of suspending the pan around the performer's neck with a strap, one drum at a time, so that each performer may play only part of an instrument. Today, this form is considered a subgroup style called "pan round the neck" which generates its own competitions and audience during Carnival.

=__Reference:__=

Wesleyan University. “Virtual Instrument Museum” Worl Music Collection – Wesleyan University. Online. 2003. http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/cgi-bin/instrument.cgi?id=61. Acquired on Nov. 24th’ 2006.

Berre, Maxens. “Steel Pans: A Brief History” Latin American Folk Institute. Online. Date Unknown. http://www.lafi.org/magazine/articles/steel.html. Acquired on Nov. 27th’2006.

Robinson, N. Scott. “Gallery – Steel Pan” World Music and Percussion. Online. 1999. http://www.nscottrobinson.com/gallery/steelpan.php. Acquired on Nov. 26th’2006.

Steel Island. “Steel Island – History” Steel Island. 2000. Online. http://www.steelisland.com/history.asp. Acquired on Nov. 27th’2006.

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