Since French colonists introduced Carnival to Trinidad around 1785, partygoers played found instruments, meaning anything they could use to make a rhythmic sound, such as a simple drum or even a spoon pounded on an empty bottle. About a hundred years later, a law called the Peace Preservation Ordinance prevented the public playing of loud musical instruments during Carnival.
Sometimes social repression can have surprising outcomes. This is the story of how Trinidadians moved from pounding out rhythms using anything they could find to creating sophisticated pitched percussion ensembles that have captivated the world for over 60 years.
Despite the ban on loud music, the drumming never died. Its rhythms were simply passed on to another instrument that appeared to be more socially acceptable. Performers began to experiment with bamboo, cutting it into different lengths and pounding the pieces on the ground or against each other. Then they played in bamboo ensembles called tamboo bamboo. (Tamboo comes from tambour, the French word for drum.) There was no shortage of bamboo, which grows like crazy almost anywhere it's planted.
Rhythms Become Melodies
Bamboo may be prolific, but it's not strong. Pounding it for hours makes it wear out way before the party's over. By the early twentieth century, people were looking for more options, and thus began one of the earliest and most innovative approaches to recycling in the history of the world. Trinidad's big cities were littered with empty metal containers of all sizes, from empty cookie containers to 55-gallon oil drums.
Following their tradition of using found instruments, people starting pounding on the empty cans. They discovered that each produced a different tone. Then they discovered that they could make more than one tone on bent or dented cans. In very short order, they discovered that they could "tune" their drums themselves. In short, unpitched drums could be made into instruments that could be used to play songs.
Melodies Inspire Ensembles
The evolution did not stop there. Six major innovations were gradually introduced during the 1940s and 50s:
- In many cultures, drumsticks are traditionally made of wood or other substances that produce short and sharp or long, booming sounds. In the 1940s, Trinidadian players began wrapping their drumsticks with leaves and other soft materials to minimize the contact sound. Softening the sound of produces a tone that lasts longer the sound of the impact itself. Once you have a tone, you can start playing around with it. How loud do you want the sound to be? How long do you want it to last?
- Then players began to realize the sonic limitations of small containers like cookie tins. Elliot (Ellie) Mannette, (1926- ) perhaps the most prominent of the legendary steel drum innovators, is considered to be the first to use 55-gallon drums as a way of maximizing the number of notes possible.
- Once it became possible to string notes together into tunes, however, two hands were needed to create the best effect. Previously, players simply held a drum in one hand and used the other hand to hold a drumstick for striking it while walking or dancing in Carnival. In the 1940s, players added straps to the barrels, and pan 'round de neck was born.
- Shortly afterward, players started performing all year round in places like parties and nightclubs, so they mounted their drums on stands. This is the most popular way of playing today.
- As soon as Trinidadian musicians realized that they could arrange popular tunes and their own creations for steel band, they also realized that instruments with partial tonal ranges limited musicality. As a result, the pan builders began making drums with complete scales that were tonally compatible with each other.
- At the beginning, Carnival goers had rhythm. Then they had melody. The next musical step was harmony. During the 1940s and 50s, players brought chords and bass to melody in steel band music, and the ensemble was born.
Trinidad Contributes to World Music
What began as a ragtag community celebration of joy has evolved into a remarkable achievement.
As Chris Tanner, director of the Miami (Ohio) University Steel Band, puts it in his book, The Steel Band Game Plan (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), "It is important to remember that the pan players and creators in Trinidad were not professional inventors, scientists, or college professors. They were, by and large, poor young men from some of the roughest neighborhoods of Trinidad's large cities, such as Port-of-Spain and San Fernando. As such, the fact that they have been able to provide a gift to the world in the form of these wonderful instruments is nothing short of amazing."
