">

Home  ENLIGHTENMENT  Steel Pan  The Songs We All Like...  Contact ENLIGHTENMENT

STEEL PAN Steel Pan (also known as Pan or Steel Drum, and sometimes collectively with the musicians as a Steelband) is a musical instrument and a form of music originating in Trinidad in the West Indies. The pan is a pitched percussion instrument, tuned chromatically, made from a 55 gallon drum of the type that stores oil, and is one of the most recently invented musical instruments. 'Drum' refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the instrument is correctly called a 'Pan' (and pans aren't - typically - regarded as 'drums'). THE ORIGIN OF THE PAN Initially, 'Tamboo Bamboo Bands' were used by Africans to celebrate social events because the colonial authority in Trinidad outlawed traditional African Drums and when the cutting of bamboo (from which the tamboo bamboo instruments were made) was also outlawed, this lead to the developement of the Steel Pan. CALYPSO is a style of Afro Caribbean Music originating in the colonial islands of the Caribbean at the start of the 20th Century. Yet, the roots of the genre lay in the arrivial of African slaves, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song. The first Calypso recordings came in 1914, and inaugrated the 'Golden Age of Calypso'. The most well known Calypso, however, is the "Banana Boat Song," a traditional Jamican folk song, whose best-known rendition was done by Harry Belafonte on his 1956 album "Calypso". SOCA is a dance music which is a mix of Trinidad's Calypso and Indian music and rhythms, especially Chutney music. It is not, as is often said, a fusion of Soul and Calypso. It combines the melodic lilting sound of Calypso with an insistent percussion. "Hot! Hot! Hot!" which became a hit, is one of the popular Soca songs by Arrow. REGGAE is a music genre developed in Jamaica. Reggae may be used in a broad sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, including Ska, Rocksteady, Dub, Dancehall and Ragga. Reggae's origins can be found in traditional African Caribbean music as well as U.S. R&B, Ska and Rock Steady are 1960s precursors of Reggae. Bob Marley popularized Reggae worldwide. It is thought that the word "Reggae" was first used by the Ska group "Toots and The Maytals", who coined the phrase in the title of their hit "Do the Reggae" in the early sixties.