Steel Life

Featuring Steel Drum . Steel Pan . Tenor Pan . St Thomas All Star Steel Band . Limbofied . Boney M. . The Original Trinidad Steel Band . Don Mellow . Caribbean Regals Steel band . Tracy Steel Drum Red Wine . The Renegades steelband . suite pour orchestre n°3 en ré majeur . J.S. Bach . Pan Coalition . Atlantic Clarion Steel Band . Sion Hill Steel Band . Steel Band de Cuba . Hotel California .

Toucans : The Steel Drum, or Pan, is a unique instrument, and one of the most recently invented. It is a skillfully hammered 55-gallon oil drum which has been carefully tuned to produce tones.

The Pan Page : The history of the steel pan is a story of prohibitions and compulsion. Its invention was in fact induced by the ruling colonialists trying to suppress the strong rhythmic heritage of the black Africans. Here are some milestones in the history of the pan:

Liam Teague : Hailed as the “Paganini of the Steelpan”, Liam Teague currently serves as the Head of Steelpan Studies and is an Assistant Professor of Music at Northern Illinois University (NIU).

Lionel Belasco on MySpace : Lionel “Lanky” Belasco was born in Barbados in 1881 and raised in Trinidad. His mother played classical piano, while his father sang baritone and played the organ and violin.

Exodus : Amin Mohammed, the bank executive who founded the Exodus Steel Orchestra, was also responsible for several innovations in the pan world and the major 1987 reform of Carnival administration. Mohammed, who migrated to Grand Cayman in 1993, then left the band in care of his younger brother Ainsworth, who is still manager of the orchestra.

Boomkat : The Modern Sound Quintet were formed in Stockholm by Trinidadian steel drum master Rudy Smith. On Otinku, Smith wails out on his set of ‘pans’ (as I believe the vernacular goes) in an improbably slick bebop mode, accompanied by a rhythm section capable of keeping it free and swinging one moment, and then within an instant locking down a groove

Answers.com : Chances are that unless you’re an old movie buff, you’ve never heard of Sir Lancelot. Beginning in 1940, however, and for the next 16 years until Harry Belafonte came along, he was the most popular calypso singer in the world and a singing star in the United States.

Cultural and Sports History of Trinidad & Tobago : The 1950s began with all pans supported around the necks of players. The primary focus of the steelband was to perform on the streets during Carnival and all panmen supported their instruments while parading. Panmen would convene approximately two months before Carnival to learn and rehearse their parts; this was referred to as practice. Each band had a leader/arranger who may or may not have had any formal musical education. For the most part, panmen had none and depended on their hearing for memorizing the music.