Steel band

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A steel band or steel orchestra is a group of musicians who mainly play on steel pans (also: steel drums).

history

1,884 were in the then British colony of Trinidad , the drum bands forbidden percussion groups afrikanischstämmiger Trinidadier, inserting the drums; the government feared that the drums were a secret communication medium for criminal gangs. As a result, the so-called tamboo bamboo bands , percussion groups, were formed that played rhythms on bamboo sticks of different lengths and performed primarily at carnival time. The first tamboo-bamboo band to use oil drums as rhythm instruments was the Alexander's Ragtime Band, which performed with the new instruments on Carnival Monday 1937 in Port of Spain .

After the Second World War, the development of the steel pan and steel bands accelerated. In 1951, an orchestra of leading figures from various steel bands was put together to represent the Trinidad colony at the Festival of Britain , the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO). The group was the first steel band to play exclusively on instruments made from oil drums.

Some members of the TASPO then stayed in the UK ( Sterling Betancourt ) while others settled in the US ( Elliot Mannette ). Steelbands gradually emerged mainly in metropolitan areas with a large proportion of the population of West Indian immigrants such as London , New York , Montreal . In the 1980s and 1990s, numerous music formations emerged on the European mainland, the entire North American continent and Japan.

Competitions

In 1949 "The Steelband Association of Trinidad and Tobago" was established in Trinidad, which from 1963 carried out the Panorama steel band competition as part of the carnival . In 1972 the organization was renamed "Pan Trinbago". At the annual panorama, steelbands can compete in a musical competition according to their size in categories (up to 100 people). A common calypso has to be expanded into a ten-minute arrangement with rhythm changes and variations. A judges committee decides on the winners of the competition by awarding points.

A steel band festival is held every two years, at which the bands have to play a classic piece in addition to a calypso. This festival is also evaluated and decided by judges. Larger steel band competitions outside of Trinidad are the Panorama in New York and London.

literature

  • Felix IR Blake: The Trinidad and Tobago Steel Pan. History and Evolution . o. O. 1995. ISBN 0-9525528-0-9 .
  • Gideon Maxime, Merle Albino-DeCoteau, Marcia Faustin: History of Steelband Panorama 1963-1990 of Trinidad and Tobago . o. O., o. J.
  • Gideon Maxime: Steelband Music Festivals 1952–1989 . Port of Spain 1990.
  • Myrna Nurse: Unheard Voices. The Rise of Steelband and Calypso in the Caribbean and North America . iUniverse. New York 2007. ISBN 978-0-595-40153-6 .
  • Guillermo Antonio Prospect: Treatise on the steel band of Trinidad and Tobago . Port of Spain 1970.
  • Stephen Stuempfle: The Steelband Movement. The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995.
  • Janine Tiffe: The Arrival of Steel Pan in the United States . In: Percussive Notes, the journal of the Percussive Arts Society , vol. 45, issue 3 (June 2007), pp. 10-16.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Mendes: Côté ci Côté là . Legacy ed. Caribbean Print Technologies, Port of Spain 2014, ISBN 978-976-8194-06-0 , p. 143 .
  2. ↑ Michael Anthony: Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago, p. 544. Scarecrow Press 1997.
  3. ↑ Pinecone.org: Sensory Expressions featuring steel drums
  4. ↑ PanOnTheNet.com: The History of steelpan Timeline