May 20, 2012-Steel Pan Bands

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Steel Pan Band

The people of Trinidad & Tobago have been making music with whatever they could get their hands on for a couple hundred years, maybe longer. They used bamboo poles, gin bottles, brake drums, and anything else which would make a sound. By the 40’s they had developed the oil drum as a musical instrument. They sunk the tops into a pan shape, figured out how to make a chromatic scale, and began seriously beating on them.

Bands formed and their rivalry led to street fighting as well as music.

The street fighting passed, we think, but the music competition just got more intense and the music better and better.

By 2012 Trinidad & Tobago’s Steel Pan Bands have long since become world famous.

We had to see and hear them for ourselves and on Saturday night we went to a concert.

It still had a bit of a gang flavor; the neighborhood was a bad one, but inside the concert venue it was all fun and music, wonderful music.

Our driver suggested we leave early to avoid the traffic jam. He said, “This was not a place to be stuck in traffic”, so we missed the last two bands but we saw seven of them and they were great.

I think we’ll go back.

Click here for more photos of Trinidad & Tobago's Steel Pan Bands

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Trinidad.