How it began
The steelpan grew out of Carnival percussion in Trinidad. By the 1930s the island's tamboo bamboo bands were gradually replacing their bamboo instruments with scrap metal, utensils and household objects. Through constant experiment, players learned that raised metal surfaces sound different from flat ones. Winston "Spree" Simon then hammered a piece of metal until it gave eight distinct pitches, making the first pan that could carry a whole melody. Many other Trinidadian musicians shaped the instrument, and no single person can be called its inventor.
Before it existed
A law passed in Trinidad in 1877 forbade the playing of drums in Carnival music. In response, Trinidadians brought bamboo sticks, known as tamboo bamboo, and stamped them on the ground. The sticks were tuned by shortening and dampening them so that each player covered a different register, and the groups called themselves tamboo bamboo bands. Bottle players, who struck gin bottles with spoons, were the first step toward metal percussion.
How it works
A pan is a steel surface hammered into separate areas, each of which sounds a different pitch when struck. Ellie Mannette was the first to sink the playing surface into a concave shape, which made room for more notes, and the first to wrap his sticks in rubber for a smoother sound. Anthony Williams was the first to build a pan from an empty 55-gallon oil drum, now the standard practice. He also designed the spider web pan, tuned in fourths and fifths, a layout now used on almost all tenor pans.
How it spread
Simon's ideas led to the Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra, known as TASPO, in which every performer played a steel pan. Bertie Marshall invented the double pan, two separately tuned tenor pans for one player, which increased the number of notes available. In 1971 he built the Bertphone, an amplifier that could adjust the tone and volume of each note. The instrument is now heard well beyond Trinidad, including in American pop music.
Where it stands today
Recycling oil drums remains the standard way to make a pan, which is why the instrument is also called the steel drum. Concave pans played with rubber-tipped sticks are now the norm. Britannica records that steel drums were invented in Trinidad and Tobago during the 20th century, and steel pan orchestras such as Trinidad All Stars continue the tradition.
