Panning for Silver
by John Otis
As requested by the deceased, Toby Harwell and his fellow musicians in Long Beach, California, steel drum band Socamotion, arrived at the wake sporting Hawaiian shirts.
Their attire was entirely appropriate—no one else present was wearing a mourning dress or suit and black tie. Tropical apparel was everywhere, and Socamotion had been asked to provide music to match.
“The goal was to liven up the wake,” 33-year-old Toby Harwell, a middle school music teacher, says. He explains that it isn’t unusual to be asked to play at a venue where you’d least expect to find steel drums. “It was how the deceased wanted to leave this earth,” says Harwell, adding that the melodic, ringing tones of the drums did what they were asked to do. “I don’t know if it’s actually possible to evoke sadness with the steel pan.”
Calypso Party
The steel drum, or steel pan, was invented in Trinidad and Tobago, a tiny island nation in the Caribbean. There, African slaves were already using hand drums to communicate, because their British slave masters of the 18th and early 19th century did not allow them to speak to each other and because the slaves spoke many different African dialects.
Drums also accompanied fighting and were often heard during gang brawls. In an effort to curb island violence, hand drums were outlawed by the colonial rulers in 1886, so Trinis began to use whatever they could find to make noise, including garbage cans and biscuit tins, which were “sunk,” shaped, and tuned to play different notes.
Thus, the earliest version of the steel pan was born. Pans soon were accompanying the annual carnival celebrations brought to the island by the French and appropriated by slaves for their own celebrations, which added African syncopated rhythm, called calypso.
The first organized steel drum bands were formed in the 1940s. These bands recycled a new product—oil drums, often discarded by US naval ships—to create the large pan that is now the preferred instrument. Today, steel bands are a fixture of the islands of the Caribbean and Bahamas, a chain that runs from the Venezuelan coast to just east of Florida. The bands still play calypso music, as well as more modern homegrown musical styles, such as soca and chutney, which are derived from calypso and mixed with other, mostly East Indian, influences.
Hopetown Memories
It was on a vacation to the Bahamas island of Abaco that Southern Californian Larry Mebust was first caught in the pans’ hypnotic spell. He was on his honeymoon, sipping rum drinks and soaking up sun on a dock with his wife, when the afternoon ferry came in from Marsh Harbor. The local steel band got off, started unloading their equipment, and set up for a performance.
Mebust—first exposed to music by his Norwegian parents, who insisted he play the accordion as an extension of their love for bandleader Lawrence Welk—heard such uniqueness in the melodic yet smooth sound of the tuned pans that it captivated his soul. (The sound of a steel pan has been compared to that of a harp, another instrument that has captivated its fair share of souls.)
“We talked to the band about the pans until they were tired!” laughs Mebust. “I think that right then, my wife and I were hooked. We stayed for every set they played and bought several copies of their CDs.”
Such was Mebust’s love for the instrument he eventually opened a shop selling steel drums. He named his shop Hopetown Music Inc. after the Abaco town where he was first touched by the instrument.
Huge Sound
Like Mebust, Joel Smales, the lead pan player in the Binghamton, New York, band Panigma was captivated the moment he heard the pans. “I remember hearing a whole band of steel drummers—bass, harmony, melody—and I was blown away by the huge sound and unique sound of the instrument,” he says. “The unique sound of the pan along with the happy feelings it conveys drew me to it the first time I heard it.”
Smales, band director at Binghamton High School, was a percussionist for 20 years before he was really exposed to percussion of the tropical variety, and it caused his interest in the pan to grow.
“When I heard the steel drums, I was drawn to it as a listener, and then drawn to perform it,” Smales says. “It has such a different sound, and has such warmth. You can easily play both melody and harmony on pans. Plus, learning to pan has helped my other percussion playing—it’s a win-win in my opinion.”
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Sink & Swing
The modern pan is a contemporary instrument. Even the synthesizer outdates it. Most pans are still constructed by pounding the top of the oil drum into a bowl-like shape, known as “sinking” the drum.
After this, the notes are laid out, shaped, and tuned with a variety of hammers and other tools. The pan is finished by either being painted or chromed. Though the instrument’s origins are traced back to street fighting and war ships, pans have a more peaceful role these days, with a prominent place reserved for them in the annual Caribbean carnivals, held on the islands.
“Carnival is big!” explains Rachel Terry, a 92-year-old steel drummer who lived in the Virgin Islands for more than 60 years before coming to the US. “On the whole island schools and stores shut down, everything shuts down, and there’s a parade and all these floats.”
Steel drumming, Terry says, isn’t just relevant to island culture, it plays an important role in society.
“Steel drumming is the main thing there,” Terry says of her native land. “They have a program where they recruit wayward youth and get them into steel drumming. They practice all year long for their carnival parade, and it turns their whole life around.”
Something Spiritual
Terry didn’t begin “panning” seriously until age 79. She explains that her duties as a mother and her job as an airport greeter kept her busy, although she did study pan in her youth. Back then, she entered a beauty pageant, and her talent was steel drumming. She had enough skill that, after playing her song on stage, the judges crowned her the winner.
Today, Terry performs once a week with the Salvation Army band, but drumming is only one of several creative obligations for this busy hobbyist. “I also sing and do drama and musical theater classes—but music is a big part of my life and I’m too busy to rest,” she says.
Despite her other obligations, the steel pan is always something that captures her attention. “Every time I go past the room with it, I stop and hit a few notes. It definitely adds to your life—it adds flavor.”
People are always interested when they hear pans, continues Terry, and she has made a lot of new friends by playing them. “People are drawn to the steel pan,” she explains. “Something spiritual exudes from it.”
Let Them Play
As Terry can attest, the steel drum is an ideal choice for someone looking to get back into music later in life—and talk about being the life and soul of the party! “Pans are always in tune,” Toby Harwell explains. “You can start playing them right away. You only need to learn the rhythm and beats and then you can tackle sophisticated music, and that’s exciting.”
“The steel drum is one of the most rewarding musical instruments ever invented,” Larry Mebust adds. “Hit the middle of a note with a stick and it makes a great sounding tone! Hit five notes in the proper order and you have a song. The payback with pan is immediate and musical success is arrived at very early in the experience.”
The thought of allowing and encouraging someone to “play with their music” instead of being forced to fit a mold of right or wrong was what was refreshing about panning for Mebust. “Years back, our music teachers were fuddy-duddies,” Mebust recalls. “Right or wrong were the only two choices, and cutting up to have a little fun with music was unheard of.” Bad notes, he says, were punished with hours of mindless scales. “Playing music was the same as doing algebraic equations!”
Already ambassadors of sorts for the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Mebust sees steel drums also as ambassadors for recreational music making. “The truth is everyone can make music,” he concludes. “We just have to show people how to enjoy it, and then let them play and have fun!”
