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Music Manufacturers Ignore Steelband Music Super Bowl

Drum and Percussion organizations say: We don't see you, and we don't need you...

Where is the Love?? In less than two weeks the greatest event and gathering of percussion musicians, performers and fans in the world will be gathering for the annual Steelband music panorama competition in the Mecca of the steelpan instrument Trinidad and Tobago. Panorama, the most passionate and fierce music competition on earth, is now in its 45th year. Yet to date no major music, percussion or drum manufacturer has provided any significant backing or endorsement to any of the major steel orchestras world wide. No banner with the name of a major music manufacturer has ever crossed the stage. This fact is nauseating and repugnant. Imagine that - ignoring the single most popular tuned percussion event on the planet.

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unless there was a serious protest yu steel pan ppls are gonna fall on def ears... they shud get d black stars to get involved .. then u might have ah case??? i dunno...

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Well if Trinidad's government aint even making an effort to bring steelpan to the forefront, how could we expect the outsiders to understand and appreciate it? I've been saying this forever, unless the government of T&T decides to come up with a way to market the steelpan, it will remain right where it is.

Not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing...it might be a percussion instrument but the drum makers are in the business of selling drums. How many drums can they sell from marketing to steelpan enthusiasts?

I also dont embrace this conflating the nature of the instrument by calling it, or encouraging it to be called a drum. It never has and never will be a drum...drums don't have musical notes. Xylophones aren't called drums and neither is a piano. Just because you strike it to make music don't make it a drum. Ellie Mannette should be shame that he adding to that nonsense with he class at WVU.



Great website btw WST

They are called drums because they were initially formed from OIL DRUMS. they weren't made in factories - old players formed their instruments from the drums, has nothing to do with what you would consider a drum. What they are beating is actually a drum or a derivative of an oil drum.

West Indians call those things "oil drums", not Americans. Americans call them 'barrels'...just as many other WI as well.

Americans are the ones calling pan "steel drums"...has nothing to do with what the instrument was made from...and even if that were the case the nomenclature still wouldn't be appropriate, anymore than it would be appropriate to call a regular drum a "goat skin percussion instrument" or a Triangle a "steel thing-a-majig"

its a steel pan IMO

i have seen pan players on here call it steel drum and just raised my eyebrows

I HATE the term.

When ppl going to d panyard dey goin an "beat pan" not beat d drum

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(too funny) :

You need to have a conversation with an old pan builder.

ACTUAL DEFINITION

"The steel pan evolved out of earlier musical practices of Trinidad's enslaved Africans and Afro-descendants. Drumming was used as a form of communication among the enslaved Africans and was subsequently outlawed. Through their innovativeness and determination, they went through a series of musical alternatives from slavery to emancipation, using whatever materials they could find to construct musical instruments. It was therefore a specific cultural response to the specific demographic conditions present on the islands. Eventually, someone picked up a biscuit tin and realised its potential. From then, it developed further, moving on to an oil drum. In its contemporary form, it first arose in the 1930s". I grew up watching "Hells Gate" build pans, in case no one knows who Hells Gate is, they are the oldest continuous Steel Pan Orchestra in the world.

Oh...I get it, in Antigua allyuh does beat Steel Drums...nice




'bout I need to have a conversation with ah old pan builder....lol



gwaan fadda, go build allyuh pan den drum on dem.

There is always Soulja Boy.....

YYYYUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I would have to disagree just by looking that the function of the steel pan vs drums anywhere else in the world.

From what I've seen, whether Indian, African, even Native drumming, drums are used to make the rhythm or beat of a song.

If steelpan was a drum, steelbands wouldn't need a rhythm section.