Thursday! Joining our community steel drum band had to wait until I retired. Lessons (beginner band) were available until I was ready to join the "varsity" band and begin to play concerts in public during the summer. Now I can tell people I play in the band!
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Now that I'm retired, I have time to pursue music again, and I jumped into my Community Steel Drum band with both feet! This is a video of the band from just before I joined. The second part is an interview with the Director.
Playing the steel drums is unlike anything else. They emerged from the colonial islands of Trinidad and Tobago when the colonial powers forbade participation in tradititional forms of African music during carnivale. Islanders would play bamboo and metal cracker boxes, anything to bring music back into dreary plantation-based living.
When Americans arrived during WW II, bringing scads of 50 gallon oil drums for the war equipment, the enterprising locals began in earnest to make music with steel drums.
The drum was cut from the barrel, and the top pounded with hammers to make a concave "pan", then further hammered to make individual notes within the pan. The shorter the "skirt" around the pan, the higher the note. The big bass drums use the entire barrel, and only have three notes each, so a set of bases includes at least six drums, while the soprano drums have 30 notes, arranged in rings within the pan. The sticks are tipped with rubber, to bounce off the steel. Creating and tuning pans is work for highly skilled individuals, and after a while, pans need to be re-tuned.
Because so many different individuals produced steel drums, they are not always consistent from set to set, and the notes inside are not sequential like they are in a piano or bell lyre. The steel band can play any notes, but generally our band plays tunes that are traditional to the islands or popular songs that work well with a calypso or reggae rhythm.
You do not need to read music to play the steel drums, and our band has had folks in their eighties and in their teens playing together with enthusiasm and joy. Like any community band, we spend hours of practice to give a few concerts during the season. Steel drum music is summer music, and most of our gigs are at outdoor festivals and in park gazebos.
We play under a tent, because too much sun on the steel will cause it to heat up and go out of tune. The best concerts for me are when the little ones jump to the front of the audience to spontaneously dance and spin in front of the band, because they feel the joy in the music!
I had the band come to play at my birthday party on Saturday; it made the party fabulous; there were lots of happy people because this music puts everyone in a good mood.
So I ask you, are you musical? What moment in music sticks in your memory?