Steel Drums

Trinidad, a tiny speck in the emerald-green Caribbean, said to be the most cosmopolitan of the islands, was responsible for adding the fourth dimension of steel to the conventional orchestration of strings, woodwind and brass. What the people finally made they called ‘pans’.

During the days of slavery, the two major groups of people that made up the Trinidadians were the slaves from Africa and the East Indian immigrants. The slaves brought with them the Shango drums from the Yoruba and Mandingo tribes in Africa. The East Indians brought a percussion instrument rather like a bottle and spoon.

Nearly from the beginning, the Trinidad authorities confiscated the drums and banned their use under penalty of death. It was believed that the drums were responsible for the spontaneous rioting which occurred at dance festivals and that they encouraged rebellion among the blacks and even provided the means of their secret communications.

The inevitable happened in the early 1920’s, long after the days of slavery had passed, drummers then focused on devising instruments from iron bars and metal tubes. The drummers, whose drums had been prohibited by law, were inspired with and intuitive skill that still amazes musicologists. They began to contrive new instruments out of all kinds of junk: gas tanks, pots, frying pans, biscuit tins, garbage-pail lids and anything else they could lay their hands on to beat out their soul music. These instruments were the forerunners of the modern steel drum.

The modern steeldrum as seen today probably came into existence during World War II, when Trinidad was exporting oil. There were lots of empty oil drums around and drummers started devising tuned instruments from these empty oil barrels.

It wasn’t too long before the resonance of these fifty-five gallon drums was being controlled. The end of the drum was cut off at various heights and the flat surface of this portion was then stretched with an eight-pound hammer into a concave surface. The drum makers found that when they hit the drumhead, the sounds varied from low tones at the thickest part of the metal near the outer rim to very high tones on the thinnest segment of the metal in the centre.