A Very Brief History of steel pans:
where they originated, why are they here in the United Kingdom, in its education system and in the community, and what they part they play in Carnival.

Steel pans were originally called steel drums and in fact they are not one instrument, but consist of a whole family of tuned percussion instruments, originating in Trinidad and Tobago in and around the 1930s. They worked their way across the Atlantic to post-war Britain with the Windrush generation, in particular with TASPO [Trinidad All Stars Percussion Orchestra]. This was a steel band from Trinidad and Tobago who came to London, England to perform for the Festival of Britain at Crystal Palace in 1951. One of the players, Sonny Rollins predicted that after they had played every Englishman [ though he meant of course every English person] would own their own steelpan. [Sadly, on the day Sonny himself was too ill to play].
Over the next few decades more pans and pan tuners arrived from the Caribbean not just from Trinidad and Tobago, but also from Nevis, Saint Kitts, Carriacou and other islands mostly from the Lesser Antilles. [Steel pans also made their way to Europe, to Switzerland, France, Germany, Finland, Holland and . . . . . Well that’s another story.]
Steel pans entered the school system in the 1970s and 80s with Section 11 money from a 1965 Race Relations Act – whereby the government would fund any project designed to combat racism and promote multi-culturalism. Schools, mostly in England in cities where there were thriving Caribbean communities bought steelpans . . . with varying degrees of
success. In London, with Gerald Forsyth steel pans thrived. StClair Morris was our man for Leeds, and he inspired many a teacher and student [including myself].

Steelpans in Carnivals
The Catholic European slaveowners and traders brought Carnival to the Caribbean [and to South America] from Italy, France, Portugal and Spain. Trinidad at one time “belonged to” Spain; hence the name of its capital city. And over the years Carnival became the occasion when rich and poor, masters and workers walked together as one in equal celebration of the last day before Lent. [Carnival literally meaning goodbye to meat: carne vale].
In European carnivals we saw the poor dressing up and making enormous puppets as caricatures in order to mock the rich and powerful. They still do. For example in Viareggio in Italy, and in other cities in Europe the puppets now are 3 storeys high and pulled along the
streets by huge lorries in the Carnival parade. In Port of Spain they took these elements and added in musical beats from Africa – all those complex rhythms. At first the marchers cut down bamboo poles and took to the streets, a hundred or so at time. Thumping on the grounds in rhythms and counter-rhythms. Eventually the authorities banned tamboo bamboo from Carnival because it sounded threatening. Lol. I rather think that that was the point!
At this time in the 1930s the oil industry was taking off in Trinidad, and empty oil barrels were there for the taking. After losing tamboo bamboo from Carnival and from the music scene, musicians were experimenting with metal: with biscuit tins, with dustbins, but the perfect sound seemed to rest with those old oil drums. And with all this metal came pitch.
Melody was born. Using the tones and semitones and the harmonies from Europe and North America.
In fact with steelpans/drums two strands of pan-playing developed. One, in combination with the African polyrhythms, evolved into calypso/soca, and the other was a retelling of Western European classical music pieces, such as Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus or Brahms’ Cradle Song.
So when Carnival started to appear in the 1960s and 70s in the United Kingdom in London, Leeds, Leicester, Luton and other towns not beginning with L, we saw in UK the steel bands marching or on floats in the Carnival parade.
Over the last 20 years or so there has been a decline in the number of steelbands in our schools and communities, alongside a decline in the status and music and the arts in schools. Hence the reason for this charity.

[Leeds and London vie with each other about whose town had the first UK Carnival, but for me, who was first or biggest is not always appropriate. In all these UK towns with Caribbean populations, everyone was looking at the musically bland western landscape and dreaming of
home and festivals and . . . Newly arrived black immigrants had enough on their hands fighting off the generation of landlords with No Black No Irish no Animals signs in their windows without needing to compete with other. ]