Spend the day of love relaxing to the sounds of sweet pan music at the fundraising Ivory and Steel Concert at Belair Community Centre this Sunday, February 14, from 4:00pm to 6:00pm.
The hot line up at the concert includes world renowned gospel pianist Huntley Brown, local steel pan virtuoso Neville York and the Learning Unlimited (LU) Preparatory School’s Steel Orchestra, performing numbers of Johan Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Andre Bocelli and much more.
Dress code is Caribbean casual. Entrance is US $15 per person. Proceeds from the concert will go towards the design and fabrication of a steel pan float that can accommodate more than 60 steel pan players to mark the 60th anniversary of Chester York’s dedication and involvement in Steel Pan in St. Maarten in 2017.
The event is being organised by Professional in Intangible and Tangible Cultural Heritage supported by Information and Technology ( PITCH – IT) Foundation .
The pan
The steel pan and pan music are very significant musical instrument and musical art form in the Caribbean region and St. Maarten. According to www.steelpan-steeldrums-information.com, steel pans (steel drums) were created on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in the 1930s, but steel pan history can be traced back to the enslaved Africans who were brought to the islands during the 1700s. They carried with them elements of their African culture, including the playing of hand drums. These drums became the main percussion instruments in the annual Trinidadian carnival festivities.
In 1877, the ruling British government banned the playing of drums in an effort to suppress aspects of Carnival which were considered offensive. Bamboo stamping tubes were used to replace the hand drums, as they produced sounds comparable to the hand drum when they were pounded on the ground.
Non-traditional instruments like scrap metal, metal containers, graters and dustbins were also used in tamboo bamboo bands. However, by the 1930’s these metal instruments dominated the tamboo bamboo bands. The bamboo tubes were eventually abandoned and replaced by the metal instruments.
These early metal pan bands were a rustic combination of a wide variety of metallic containers and kitchen utensils, which were struck with open hands, fists or sticks.
The metal pan players discovered that the raised areas of the metal containers made a different sound from those areas that were flat. Through experimentation, coincidence, trial and error, and ingenuity on the part of numerous innovators, the metal pan bands evolved into the steel pan family of instruments.
As the pan makers knowledge and technique improved, so did the sound of the instrument. The steel pan is now widely played throughout the region and is one of the national musical instruments in Trinidad and Tobago.
