- You know how it is when
you've been to a museum.
Think of when you went as tourists,
to visit somewhere like Paris
and you went to the Louvre.
And you went around from room to room,
concentrating on beautiful
pictures and objects of art.
And all these colors
and people pressing against you
crowds of people and walking.
Sometimes two hours and you
feel as though you're gonna die.
Your feet ache, visually
you're extremely exhausted.
You taking in a lot of information.
Trinidad exhausts you
like that in Carnival.
And it's worse, it's 10 times worse.
The rhythm of those steel bands,
the drums even after everything stopped,
you can hear it.
Your heart is beating like this.
(steel dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The steel drum
is the latest innovation
in Trinidad's rich musical history.
It is the pulse of the
islands annual Carnival,
and a distinctive voice of the
large West Indian community,
that has grown up in New York City.
Here, some of the finest makers
and players of steel drums
have worked to develop the instrument
while absorbing the city's
many musical influences.
The great skill of these drum makers
and the unique qualities of the instrument
have been recognized by The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Which recently included the steel drum
in its musical instrument collection.
(steel dramatic music)
(crowd claps)
- [Narrator] Carnival in Trinidad,
reflects the rich culture
and varied national origins
of its people.
Claimed for Spain by
Christopher Columbus in 1498,
Trinidad became a favorite
stop for explorers
in the Caribbean.
- When Sir Walter
Raleigh came to Trinidad,
he stopped to caulk his ships.
His ships had made a
long journey all the way,
from the old world down to Trinidad.
And they were in need of repair,
and the Indians knew how to do it.
They had their boats.
They were traveling on the sea
on rough water in the Atlantic
and in the Caribbean.
And they said, well,
you want your boat fix,
come I'll show you.
And they took him down to the pitch lake,
and you can caulk ships with asphalt
and compounds of stones,
and things like you put on the road.
Now, a lot of the asphalt on your roads
is from my country.
And it's still being used,
it's still dug up.
And the oil,
is a cousin of the asphalt
it's all in the same area,
in the south port of Trinidad.
- [Narrator] Early French immigrants
brought Carnival.
A series of festivities
between Christmas and Lent.
The French influence
is evident in the older
calypso songs.
(sings in French)
- [Narrator] African slaves
brought by the French
and East Indian indentured servants
imported by the British,
celebrated Carnival season
with their own traditions
which included skin drums
and other rhythm instruments.
With the British emancipation in 1838,
freed slaves took to the
streets in wild celebration
and Carnival as we know it today,
a street parade was born.
- From the calypso
depending on the lyrics,
whether the people like it,
whether it gets very popular,
we get what we call a road march.
Because a road march is basically
a popular calypso that they used to dance
in the streets too.
Because the lyrics are nice
and the tune, especially,
is very, very good.
(instrumental music)
Because when you're
dancing in the streets,
you're dancing for hours.
The sun is hot.
It's 85, 90 degrees beating down on you.
You're drinking rum straight from bottles,
just passing the boxes around.
And you actually dancing for miles.
A masquerade band is sometimes made up of
1000 people strong,
pressing on each other,
because you have to keep
playing after the music.
And it's the rhythm that
you have to keep up with.
Once you slacken the rhythm,
it's like,
you know how prisoner
break stones to song.
You need that song to keep on dancing
You're dancing for miles, miles.
You're as drunk as a lord
the sun is as hot as hell.
You're in a costume
sometimes the costume is 50 pounds.
You're carrying it.
- [Narrator] The
instruments used to maintain
the carnival tempo have
changed over the years.
When the British outlawed
skin drums in 1883,
fearing the use in voodoo,
the tamboo bamboo band was formed,
using different sizes
and lengths of bamboo.
These bands were also outlawed
when rival gangs used
the sticks as weapons.
Carnival players picked
up whatever was on hand,
including brake drums.
Some inventive players
found the potential for
melody in bent metal strips.
Then had notes and cans and buckets.
- [Narrator 2] Experiments
by Ellie Mannette,
a young machinist at the time,
led to a musical instrument
unique in sound and design.
Today, Ellie lives and
works in Queens, New York.
(steel drum rhythm)
- This small drum I have here
is really a picture of what
is original (mumbles) today
is came from.
This came--
- [Narrator] Starting with the bucket drum
Ellie found a way to isolate
and tune individual notes,
giving it the potential for melody
and the form it has today.
- Different song.
(drum beats)
- When I came in the
drums are all up in the convex.
I looked at it,
I said to myself no way would I tune this
any way like this.
So some instinct I had,
I tap my drum down as it was just now.
- [Narrator] Sinking the pan,
- The stick I demonstrated...
- [Narrator] Putting the
groove around each section,
and raising each section by
punging it up from below.
These three steps are now basic
to all steel drum construction.
- One of the guys in the islands
by the name of Winston
"Spree" Simon,
he managed to get
true melody coming from
one of these drums.
And he played a little melody,
like a nursery rhyme.
I felt okay if this guy can get a melody
I can do the same.
So, we try tune in melody and more stuff
came corresponding to each other.
I came to the awareness that
no way in the world
I can get the quality of song I want
on this size instruments.
So, I got a little larger size.
From this size,
we went to the 35-gallon size.
On that 35-gallon size
which in the year of 1941
we managed to get about nine notes.
- [Narrator] During World War Two,
the U.S. Navy brought many
55-gallon drums to Trinidad.
In 1946 Ellie introduced
the first full-size pan
at a major steel drum competition.
- So, I played it,
and then the whole
audience was very surprised
and amazed to hear the
drum for the first time.
And to see it made.
So, for that matter...
- [Narrator] Other pan makers
including Anthony Williams
and Neville Jules,
joined Ellie in developing
the full range of
steel drums.
Five and a half octaves.
Precise tuning of a pan,
requires great skill with a hammer
and many years of trial and error.
Ellie is widely known for
his fine-tuning abilities.
- On a note like this, for instance
(clinking sound)
you'll listen to F sharp.
And above that F sharp,
you get another F sharp
(clinking sound)
Pretty plain up here.
And above that one you have
to have another F sharp
which is a
(pitch sound).
When we have finished tuning
we have to correspond with
related harmonic on the side
and related to the other
side of the other note.
And this has to be precisely
tuned in between here.
And only then you can get the quality
you hear on this instrument.
(steel drum beat sound)
For instance each of,
those two notes are
carrying 10 vibrations.
Because your each note carries five.
When I say five, there are three octaves
and two fifths on each note.
So, every time you play two notes like
(pitch sound)
you get 10 notes coming together.
So, it appears to have an amplified sound.
(pitch sound)
But the steel drum carries
tremendous amount of
vibrations all over the metal
and also the ring.
When you play one note like a E...
(drum beat)
You will get this entire bowl going,
to the extent that if
you start to hold it here
(drum beat)
You will eliminate half
of the sound because
the vibration is not as free.
- Well, on the tenors
was four tenors playing
five, which is Andrew, Simon "Spree"
Ellie Mannette was playing leads
and myself and Theodore
Stevens here was playing alto,
whereas these two was playing--
- [Narrator] Francis
Haynes and Ellie Mannette
were both members of TASPO,
the government-sponsored
Trinidad all-steel
percussion orchestra.
- That was the first band
- To leave Trinidad as an organized band
from the whole country.
The force of the steel
drum players in the days
was stronger than the force of the
whole actually the middle
class and the tops.
The only thing they really could have done
was to kill us out.
And they didn't want that.
That action was too harsh.
So they compromised and
a let us go to England
and from there, more or less,
well, if you played steel
drums in the early days,
which we had a lot of gentlemen
and the steel drum bands
that went to college,
you deemed no good.
Because you playin' the steel drum,
the steel drum player.
But right now you represent
the country. (laughs)
- [Narrator] It was a
steel band that brought
Francis to New York in the 1950s.
Here he sets up pans on a rolling frame
that the Harlem All Stars will use in the
Brooklyn Labor Day Parade.
(scrubbing sound)
(instrument playing)
- Well, you don't have to
want to learn to play as a kid
in Trinidad.
When you want to play
you get up in the morning
and go in the yard and start to play.
So when the kids want to play,
we don't stop them.
You come in the yard and
you start to play from a kid
you keep on playing.
And we pick out the best ones
and put them in the group.
(instrumental music)
- As I think you know, music
is different vibrations.
You have tunes, and if you play tunes,
you could cause war.
Which we play tunes and
when we play certain tunes
we have to stop them.
Because people with the rhythm,
people gets into such a frenzy
that they keep on getting
ready and they all...
They jump so much that
they're ready to fight.
Whereas the classic holds them down.
Because if you're playing (humming)
everybody is like this.
But if you play (humming)
they go like this.
And when you're going like this,
the least thing any...
anything could happen.
It goes like that.
In a flash and everything explodes.
A classical rhythm,
will not give you as much vibrations
to throw out that amount of energy.
You'll be more receiving
and listening and relaxed.
Whereas the rural cannibal spirit
is go and get everything all for you.
When carnival finish you must
be able to just to fall out.
- [Narrator] In the 1950s,
Trinidad captured the
attention of many Americans
when the calypso became popular.
Musician Pete Seeger took a
special interest in the music.
- 28 years ago, I heard that,
solo dancer Geoffrey Holder,
with three magical men
accompanying him on steel pans.
I'd never seen them before.
I fell in love with the instrument.
So, a few years later,
1955 to be precise, 56, I guess,
I took a small 60-millimeter
camera down to Trinidad,
and wandered down the
street looking for somebody
who could show me pan being made.
(drum and steel beats)
There in the backyard
were a group of teenagers.
They called themselves the
Highlanders Steel Band.
And they were rehearsing
for the Carnival parade,
just one month away.
(drum and steel beats)
In other corners of the yard,
were men hammering on drums,
making them.
The leader's name is Kim Loy Wong.
His father is Chinese, his mother Negro,
his wife East Indian.
That's kind of an
all-Trinidad combination.
He was noncommittal with me.
After all he just met me.
Some tall white man wanting
to take a moving picture
of a steel pan.
But finally we got to
know each other better.
And he agreed to make me some pans.
The reason I like them,
I confess it's hard to put in words.
How can you say, why does a
person like musical instrument?
It's exciting, it's
interesting, it's thrilling.
But I think I could say
that I was also intrigued by
where they came from,
how they were invented,
and the whole symbolism of it
really hit home to me.
Here was a piece of tin that was destined
for the garbage dump perhaps.
Tin of the garbage can
and later on the oil drum,
and brake drums, all these things
and make what I think
is one of the world's
greatest musical instrument.
We're making six pans for me to take back
to the United States.
What I wanted to do is this,
I want to not just to thank you,
because thanks is not enough
for all the things that Trinidad has given
to the United States and the world.
But I'd like to give you my pledge that
wherever I go with these pans,
I'll tell the true story of Trinidad
as true as I can tell it.
And as you know, I can only
be here about one day more,
but your pans will be playing,
I hope all through the United States.
- I wish instead of taking up the pan,
you take me up instead of the pan.
Put me in the box, instead of the pan
then you collect the box
in the United States.
You see?
- Someday we'll work towards it okay?
- [Narrator] With the help of Pete Seeger
and Folkways Records,
Kim Loy came to the United States
to teach in schools, camps,
and settlement houses.
His workshop at University Settlement
on New York's Lower East Side,
has been a center for makers
and players of steel drums.
- I've been using here as
my work shop for years.
I don't know what I would
do this in my house.
This is where I make all my noise.
- Coming in?
- Yeah, right in here.
(door creaks)
- [Man] Kim Loy makes
drums for a camp run by
some of the New York City fireman.
They in turn, keep him supplied with
empty oil drums.
- What is it they call?
(mumbles)
- Practice it anymore
are you ready?
(steel drums beats)
I would love to see steel...
in all kinds of music.
And especially classical music because
it sounds so beautiful
(steel drum beats)
- I wanna hear the ending
of the song let's go
one, two, three, four, and C...
That's a C there you know.
Well you've started from A.
- Nice.
- One, two, three, four, and C, D, G...
You play that for me a minute.
C, A no. Play C, A, G, E, C.
- C, A, G?
- All right but you just
leave that like that.
Okay for you.
All right let's go now.
You coming back with it.
Go ahead, go on.
That's good.
All right.
- Are you in pain?
- Okay, that's it.
♪ Oh when the saints ♪
♪ are matching in, when
the saints go marching in ♪
♪ oh Lord I want to be in that number ♪
♪ When the saints go marching in. ♪
Okay, that is it, that's good.
(drum and steel beats)
♪ When the saints are marching in ♪
(drum and steel beats)
♪ Oh when the saints, ♪
♪ Go marching in ♪
♪ (Steel drum beats) ♪
[Students]
- Okay, take care.
See you Wednesday.
- Wednesday?
- Sure, Wednesday.
- The people who has done the work,
as I mentioned from 46 to this time,
are more or less on their way out.
When I say out they are,
over a certain age, and they
are not 15 years anymore.
And the young guys who are coming up
if they haven't the basic
training into this field,
I don't think they will ever be able to
improve the quality of
instrument after we are gone.
- [Narrator] There are a
number of young pan makers
who are responding to Ellie's concern.
Vincent Taylor is one of the finest.
- Now when you're more casting--
(mumbles)
- [Narrator] In 1974, Lawrence Libin
head of the musical
instrument collection of The
Metropolitan Museum of
Art was pleased to acquire
a set of his double tenor drums.
- Mr. Taylor, did bring them and set up
and show them to me.
From the point of view of design
and of tone quality,
a beauty of sound I was
very impressed indeed.
And very happy to add
them to the collection
for that reason.
- I learned by watching on so much of the
other makers.
(steel drum beats)
(hammering)
and the trial and error I,
turn over 100 drum track in one.
Halfway decent.
I made a hundred barrels I went through.
I'm still learning,
I don't think about the other.
The instrument and the form
are one.
- These are the only
instruments now in the
collection that are made by a living
maker.
In every other case that I can think of
and we have about 4,000 instruments.
Every single object is
made by someone who's
unfortunately long deceased.
(steel drum beats)
Many of the instruments are antiques of
quite great age.
A lot of them come from
the nineteenth century or the
turn of the twentieth century.
But this are our only instruments
by modern living maker.
And they have a certain
importance for that
reason also.
Partly because we have a
unique opportunity here
to learn from the maker how he made them?
Why he made them?
The whole constellation of social events
and technical processes
that go into the making of a
musical instrument.
(steel drum beats)
- Are they made in different sizes though
for use in a band.
How many do you ordinarily have,
in an ensemble of these?
- Let's see.
I would say around seven or eight pieces.
- Seven or eight?
- Yeah
- Pairs?
Or seven or eight individual ones
- Seven or eight players but not in pairs,
they come like...
Matter of fact, six whole drums,
that's the bass player.
So, you have six bars.
- Because he only has a
couple of notes on each one.
- Yeah he has like three
or four on each one,
and then we have cellos
which comes with three bars.
Then you have....
These are double-times which
are formally called piano,
piano bands, and they have single leads,
which comes with one surface.
Which has like--
- [Narrator] The full range
of steel drums as demonstrated
by Michael Scanterbury.
He starts with a single lead pan,
- Plays you melody, at all times.
It sounds like this.
(steal drum beats)
Next we have double tenors
that plays a counter melody.
sometimes it plays a melody.
It sounds like this,
(steel drum beats sound)
Next in line we have the double seconds.
Plays the cords,
sometimes it plays counter melody, melody.
It's the third between,
the double tenor and guitars.
Sounds like this.
(pitch sound)
that's it.
Next you have the guitars.
It's called a sweet pan.
(pitch sound).
Next we have the cellos,
which is somewhat like the guitar.
It's just cut deeper
hence the different sound.
There you go this is how it sounds.
(cello beats)
That's is it.
- [Man] That's when they stick
- Now we have the tele bass next,
which is somewhat like the bass
but it's cut short
as a finer tone down the actual six bass.
(drum beat)
That's the tenor bass.
And we get to the big one,
the big daddy of them all.
It's what you call the deep bass.
Six of them. That one's like this.
(drum beats)
And that makes up a steel lab.
- [Narrator] Michael arranges for the
nebulized steel band
rehearsing in Brooklyn
for an appearance in Philadelphia.
You understand?
(drum beats)
We start again from the bass.
One (mumbles)
I was talking (mumbles)
one, two, three...
(drum and steel beats music)
I'm into this so much
I might as well have a band of my own.
That has been my life-long dream.
To have a band of my own.
I'm the arranger and I
have two of my brothers
plus my sister.
Then we have Tina,
plus her sister who plays the bass.
And we have Wendell, Warren, Harry,
Norbert.
They're not related I mean family-wise
but the way they get together
it's like a family.
And this is something that's beautiful
in this band.
Which you won't find in a lot of bands.
And I think together we gonna go places.
- And you were there
when your children were--
- [Narrator] Marion Scanterbury,
Michaels mother,
reminisces about her family
and the early days of
steel drums and Trinidad.
- Well we were probably lucky there was a
tent right next door to
where we were living.
And the boys used to go there.
They were small then but they used to
try their hands at the pan.
Well, they practice every night.
- On the pans?
- There is where they bring in the calypso
and thens compose a tune.
The boys get together,
the band get together,
and they work on it.
Well you know they try to beat that tune
that was composed and it goes on
until the end of the Carnival.
Monday and Tuesday they
call it Mardi Gras.
It's great when they get with the pan.
I am telling you
that the experience I had
because when they just started,
it was nothing.
And I think everybody was against the boys
because they were saying
it's only a boy who
really wasn't interested in life
or think about going down to that.
But the way the regional...
I think it could compete
with any other thing.
Yeah, Trinidad with this steel band
has come a long, long way.
I am glad.
- [Woman] So you've really seen--
- That's called you make
something out of nothing.
So, I would tell them the steel band
because those drums
were lying around there,
nobody had any use for them.
And they actually making
them talk (laughs).
That's as far as I could see.
Yeah, at first time that
I really take for Carnival
into consideration I thought it was crazy.
I say it's crazy, but it's sweet.
It's crazy, crazy and sweet, sweet.
I didn't know what else,
how to describe it.
- [Narrator] The spirit of
Carnival is felt in New York
at the annual West Indian
American Day Celebration
held in Brooklyn on Labor Day weekend.
Over a million and a half
people attend the festival
complete with competitions,
parades, and concerts.
Charlene Victor of the Brooklyn Arts
and Cultural Association,
describes the event.
- The West Indian
American Day Association,
and they used to have their
parades in various places.
And then as they progressed,
they came to the Brooklyn Museum because
they wanted to use a large place because
it's....
See the West Indian Day Parade
is not a one-day affair.
They wanted to pattern it
after Trinidad exactly.
Because you know, Brooklyn has the largest
Western Indian population
outside of the island.
And it was only natural that
it'd be held in Brooklyn.
The nights before and Friday night,
they start with the
steel drum competition.
And they come from all over.
They come from Canada,
they come from Detroit,
they come from the islands
and they have the steel drum competition.
That night with entertainment.
Some of the greatest
entertainers in the world
Lord Kitchener.
The Mighty Sparrow and
the Singing Francine
and it is jump-up time.
As far as your eye can see,
25 blocks long,
there is the...
You see a bobbing mass
of wall to wall people.
- [Narrator] For the rest of the year,
fans of the steel band music
can go the many record stores
specializing in the Caribbean sound.
Or listen to the radio
stations which broadcast
calypso music.
(upbeat rhythm)
- And tune to WVNX New York.
(upbeat rhythm)
- The steel band is from
Trinidad and Tobago.
(upbeat music)
The steel band is from
Trinidad and Tobago.
- [Man] As the steel drum
works its way into the
American culture, we're
finding pop, jazz, Latin,
and rock musicians
experimenting the sound.
WNEW disc jockey Vin
Scelsa discusses the use of
steel drums in popular music.
But that's not what I wanted
cause I was into listening to rock n roll.
And there are a couple of rock n rollers
who are using the steel drum
in a very interesting way.
Taj Mahal I guess is the
most well known of the
kind of rock n roll music.
Musicologist is what Taj Mahal really is.
He started out as a blues
rock n roller back in the 60s
and could have been,
I guess one of the big
superstars if he had wanted to,
but instead of doing that,
he decided to go back to roots.
In his music.
And his roots were both in African music
and the music that came out of slavery,
and the music that came out
of the transplanted Africans
in America and also other
Black forms of music.
So, one of the things
that he began touching on,
a few years ago was the steel drum.
Going down to Trinidad
and checking out what that was all about,
and hiring local musicians
to play on his records.
And while his music that he was doing
was basically still steel drum music,
he was also implementing it with
Western electric rock n roll instruments.
With the electric bass and
electric guitar and drums,
so that he was combining these two forms.
And introducing in a sense,
the instrument to a lot
of people who had never heard it before.
So that now what you have,
are people like Phoebe Snow
and Billy Joel, and a lot of different
pop groups are taking the
instrument and utilizing it
generally in the same fashion
as traditional steel drum music.
In other words, it's still a kind of a
rhythm instrument.
And it's still being used for that sound,
that sound of the islands that it,
conjures up whenever we hear it.
I mean, you're walking down Fifth Avenue,
and there's a guy, two
blocks away from St. Pat's
and he's in some beautiful
little hallway somewhere
and he's playing his drum.
It conjures up this
incredible sound for you.
That means going to the islands.
But what Phoebe Snow and Billy Joel
and people like that
are doing is taking it
and using it in a bit
more subtle way than that.
So that while the sound,
we still associate that
sound with the islands,
we're beginning to realize,
I think the musicians
are beginning to realize
that you can use it as
a rhythm instrument,
as a harmonic instrument,
as a background instrument.
In a very North American rock n roll
Western sort of way
as opposed to simply that Caribbean island
sort of play.
And I think that's
the direction that the
instrument is going in now.
- [Narrator] Due to the interest
and perseverance of individual high school
and college band leaders,
steel band music is growing
and spreading in some of
the most unlikely places.
Northern Illinois University
steel band recently
recorded an album in New York.
(instrumental rhythm)
- It's so unusual in the midwest,
and even in a lot of other places
I find out that it's just
mushrooming like crazy.
School children especially
really have a good time with it.
So, we've been performing
all over the place.
And it's just out there,
it's sort of an extra alternative
to the percussion students.
The people that are in the group
are all my percussion students,
and I like to see that
they have an opportunity
to find and play and hear
as many different kinds of
musical styles as possible.
That's why it's there.
(instrumental music)
- [Man] Horace Greeley High School band
uses pans specially designed
by Ellie Mannette and the
director Jim Leighton.
(instrumental rhythm)
- There are problems with steel drums
and right now they're all handmade.
There's been some attempt I understand
in England to stamp out this basic shape.
But it doesn't work because
the metal doesn't respond
unless it's hammered,
stroke at a time.
So, when somebody gets to that point
where they develop a jig,
which will take out that hard labor,
and you get down to just the
shaping and tuning for the human to do,
I think, then you're
going to get somewhere.
The next problem is,
that people like Ellie
and those who make drums
and there are three or
four good drum makers
in this country, I understand.
If they would get together
and train some people,
and it's very difficult because
it just isn't that easy.
For kids they're starting out with a
traditional background.
They wanna know that this
distance to that distance to that,
it should make sense musically.
So, we redesigned the pan,
so that we could get this kind of...
I will say order.
They had their own order,
but this works for us.
So, that all scales have the same shape.
So, we played through Romania.
This summer we're going
to Poland, and to Russia.
And for a week or 10 days in each country.
And I don't know where we'll be playing.
We're going with other musical groups
and there's sort of a tour,
a circuit that these various groups make.
And you play concerts
in whatever they have,
churches or concert halls,
or the beer stoops, or the open streets.
The open streets are kind of fun because
especially with steel drums,
the sound travels very well outside.
And it's an open-air instrument,
it's just marvelous.
And the people come and they...
their eyes are really wide open
because it really is such
an exciting instrument
and the music is quite unfamiliar
to them on this kind of instrument.
- [Man] Many New Yorkers
only hear steel drums
on the street.
Vincent Taylor often
plays for them outside
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(steel drum beats)
(whistles)
(claps)
Inside the Museum in the
musical instruments storeroom,
Lawrence Libin talks about steel drums
and their relation to other instruments.
- [Lawrence] Steel
drums belong to a family
of musical instruments
known as idiophones.
Which means self-sounding instruments.
People discovered a very long time ago
that natural materials of various sorts,
even some kinds of rock,
and crystal can be just picked up
and made to ring just by hitting them.
Here's a slab of gneiss,
which is a kind of volcanic rock
which just occurs in nature
in several parts of the world.
And it has a curious property of ringing
if it's struck in the right
place in the right way.
(chiming sound)
It's not very loud,
but it's a very pretty sound.
Now, the trouble with making instruments
out of this sort of rock,
is that you can't always count on finding
the right piece at the right time.
You can't plan ahead in other words.
If you want to make an instrument
it much depends on luck.
Now, with the beginning of the bronze age
and bronze culture, seems to have begun in
Southeast Asia long before it did
in the Western world, people took the idea
of sonorous materials.
And instead of using
naturally occurring things,
they began to use metal.
Or glass, or porcelain, something manmade.
That could be made to a particular size.
The gong, which as a family originates
probably in Southeast Asia,
is an outgrowth of this
kind of instrument here.
(gong sound)
Except that it has a different tone,
(gong sound)
which is a result partly of its shape
and thickness and size.
And people discovered that
since these gongs can be tuned
to a particular pitch,
it was possible to take several gongs
of different pitches,
and put them together in a set,
and then play melodies on the set.
Because obviously this
kind of instrument here
only plays one note, not so useful.
But if you take a bunch of these
or a bunch of these and
put them all in a group
around a player or give one
to each of several players,
it's possible to play real music on it.
Not just rhythmic effects.
Now, the principle of individual objects,
each giving off a different pitch,
combined as a set, was
evidently first developed
in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
Where today people still
play that sort of instrument
in the gamelans and
other sorts of ensembles.
This is an example of such an instrument
used in a Burmese orchestra.
This is called a saron,
and it's an instrument used in the gamelan
which is an ensemble of instruments.
Many of which are made of
individual slabs of metal
bronze, in this case.
And just as in the stone instrument,
that I just showed you,
each slab of bronze here
is tuned to produce a separate pitch.
(chiming sound)
Very lovely sound indeed.
Now, instruments of this sort
comprised of separate individual slabs,
whether of metal or wood
or some other material
were brought to Africa evidently,
over the Indian Ocean very many years ago
by people on boats
who evidently followed the ocean current
and drifted towards East Africa.
The principle then was
taken up by Africans
who made the slabs of wood and
came up with the xylophone.
Which it seems to be a
development or an outgrowth
of these Indonesian instruments
and Southeast Asian instruments.
Now, the xylophone in turn
spread all over Africa, gradually,
by a process of osmosis.
Being brought over to the other side
to West Africa, and from West
Africa in fairly recent times,
within the last 200, 300 years.
Blacks coming over to our hemisphere,
brought this principle with them.
And it seemed to have
taken roots in Trinidad,
in the islands around that area.
And this forms then the
basis of the steel drum.
Whereas instruments of this type
are made of separate slabs,
in a steel drum,
for the first and only time in one body,
one object, many different
pitches can be produced.
Because the object
itself can be segmented,
and each little segment
tuned to its own pitch.
And this is an innovation
which I think we must owe
to the master builders of Trinidad
and the other areas in the islands
where the steel drums developed.
It's a novel concept
and I don't believe it's been spread
to any other instruments, so far.
But it's a very elegant
solution to a problem.
- [Man] As the steel drum
makers continue to refine
their instruments,
pan players expand their musical abilities
and the popular appeal of their music.
The steel band Bamboo
hopes to reach a wide audience
with its contemporary Latin jazz sound.
(upbeat music)
(dog barks)
[crowd Claps]
(instrumental music)
