Lead Tenor Pan

This pan usually plays the melody

The Steel Drum or Pan, is an unique instrument, one of the most recently invented and native of the island of Trinidad and Tobago. It is a skilfully hammered 55-gallon oil drum, which has been carefully tuned to produce tones. The Steel Drum carries the full chromatic range of notes and can produce just about any type of music one can imagine.

During British Colonial rule of Trinidad in the 1800's, hand drums were used as a call for neighbourhood gangs to collect and 'mash up' with the other gangs. Hoping to stop the violence, the government outlawed hand drums in 1886.

With no drums, the Trinidadians turned to the 'Tamboo Bamboo', where each member of the group would carry a length of bamboo and pound it on the ground as the group walked through the streets, giving distinctive rhythmic signatures, which identified each gang.

When two gangs met on a march, they would pull out the machetes they had hidden inside the long bamboo poles. Soon the government also outlawed the Tamboo Bamboo. Deprived of all traditional rhythmic instruments, the Trinis took any objects they could find, including garbage can lids, old car parts, and empty oil barrels (from the Navy bases on the island). They used these instruments to form the Iron Bands, which marched down the streets playing the same distinctive rhythms. These parades of men were called Iron Band.

One day in the late 1930's, during a particularly rough iron band session, somebody discovered that a dented section of barrelhead produced a tone. Winston "Spree" Simon is credited with being the first person to put a note on a steel drum.

Originally the pans were convex, like a dome rather than a dish. Ellie Manette, a pan-maker still active in the US today, was the first to dish out a pan and give the steel drum its mature form. Many tuners began experimenting with and producing tuned 'pans', eventually forming large groups of the neighbourhood pan men into orchestrated bands. The musical competitions, which began to take place each year at Carnival, quickly replaced the street fights. There are two competitions, one for the popular songs of the year, and a separate contest which showcases both the technical ability of each band and the versatility of the steel drum by presenting highly orchestrated classical pieces. Fifty years after the first such contest, the rivalries between steel bands still exist, but manifest themselves in an excellent quality of musicianship.