DESCRIPTION:
Pantempters Junior Belize Steel Orchestra
25th Anniversary @ San Ignacio, Jul 1st, 2017
#Verobelize #verobelizephotos #belize #steelband #steelorchestra #pantempters

#Steelpans (also known as steel drums or pans, and sometimes, collectively with other musicians, as a steel band or orchestra) is a musical instrument originating from #Trinidad and #Tobago. #Steelpan musicians are called #pannists.

The modern pan is a chromatically pitched percussion instrument made from 55 gallon industrial drums that formerly contained chemicals.

#Drum refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steel drum is more correctly called a steel pan or pan as it falls into the #idiophone family of instruments, and so is not a drum (which is a membranophone). Steel pans are the only instruments made to play in the #Pythagorian musical cycle of fourths and fifths.

The pan is struck using a pair of straight sticks tipped with rubber; the size and type of rubber tip varies according to the class of pan being played. Some musicians use four pansticks, holding two in each hand. This skill and performance have been conclusively shown to have grown out of Trinidad and Tobago's early 20th-century #Carnival percussion groups known as Tamboo bamboo. The pan is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.

#French planters and their slaves emigrated to Trinidad during the #FrenchRevolution (1789) from #Martinique, including a number of #WestAfricans, and French creoles from #SaintVincent, #Grenada, #SaintLucia and #Dominica, establishing a local community before Trinidad and Tobago were taken from #Spain by the #British. The celebration of carnivale had arrived with the French. Slaves, who could not take part in carnival, formed their own, parallel celebration called #canboulay.

Stick-fighting and African percussion music were banned in 1880, in response to the Canboulay Riots. They were replaced by bamboo sticks beaten together, which were themselves banned in turn. In 1937 they reappeared in #Laventille, transformed as an orchestra of frying pans, dustbin lids, and oil drums. These steelpans are now a major part of the #Trinidadian music scene and are a popular section of the Canboulay music contests. In 1941, the United States Navy arrived on Trinidad. The pannists, who were associated with lawlessness and violence, helped to popularize steelpan music among the soldiers, which began its international popularization.

The first instruments developed in the evolution of steelpan were Tamboo-Bamboos, tunable sticks made of bamboo wood. These were hit onto the ground and with other sticks in order to produce sound. Tamboo-Bamboo bands included percussion of a (gin) bottle and spoon. By the mid-1930s, bits of metal percussion were being used in the tamboo bamboo bands, the first probably being either the automobile brake hub "iron" or the biscuit drum "boom". The former replaced the gin bottle-and-spoon, and the latter the "bass" bamboo that was pounded on the ground. By the late 1930s their occasional all-steel bands were seen at carnival, and by 1940 it had become the preferred carnival accompaniment of young underprivileged men. The 55-gallon oil drum was used to make steelpans from around 1947. The Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (#TASPO), formed to attend the Festival of Britain in 1951, was the first steelband whose instruments were all made from oil drums. Members of TASPO included #EllieMannette and Winston "Spree" Simon. Hugh Borde led the National Steel Band of Trinidad & Tobago at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in England, as well as the Esso Tripoli Steel Band, which played at the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada, and later toured with #Liberace. They were featured on an album with him.