amenable to studio recording, and in fact was better out-of-doors, for at that time the drums rang with dissonant overtones whenever a single note was struck. In a street parade, those dissonances were cancelled out, and what came through was the desired note, ringing pure and powerful above the noisy mob. But even with the most refined drums of the day, there were none of the harmonics and octaves that Mannette builds into his gleaming steel pans today and that are responsible for its enchantingly liquid tonalities. At that time, he explains, all we could tune was just a basic note. We’d tune a scale,- all the half-tones, but it was just a plain, dull note. But as the years go by we developed our technique and we put octaves on the note. Later we went further and developed two octaves and a fifth on the same segment. It vibrates like crazy now. Indeed, steel bands in Trinidad today perform elaborate orchestral arrangements of original works and major classical pieces as well as the truly home-grown calypsos. Vibrating like crazy, the contemporary steel drum rings with powerful metallic resonance. As the lead pans play lines while the others provide harmonies, chords and bass patterns, the result is a unique combination of sweet soaring melodicism and tough percussive attacks that rise swimming together in an aural haze. The hands of steel drum makers like Ellie Mannette have coaxed lyrically elegant precision from a crude percussive tool, creating the perfect New World instrument. This is very sensitive hammercraft, you know, Mannette relates with obvious pride. / get absolutely sensitive in my hands with the impact, with the feel, with the sliding of the hammer, and my craftsmanship is a genius of work; I am very articulate at what I do...I have given it my whole skills. “A National Cultural Resource” l~ L ric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad until his death in 1981, was the consummate new West Indian. A doctor of philosophy in history and a lecturer in the U.S., he came home to Trinidad in the ‘50s to found the People’s National Movement, to which the British handed over power in 1962. Williams immediately attempted to draw the masses into redefining their culture in folk and popular, rather than European, terms. “Culture,” in fact, became a big word in the newly independent Trinidad, since it was the only basis on which nationalistic sentiment could be mustered in a society divided into exclusive racial, religious, “But as the years go by we developed our technique and we put octaves on the note. Later we went further and developed two octaves and a fifth on the same segment. It vibrates like crazy now.” and economic groups. Steel band records began to appear in the U.S., and folk singer/activist Pete Seeger wrote the first book about the instrument. Carnival had become a “national cultural resource”—it was almost respectable. STEEL DRUM T u n e d to the 12-note scale of the piano, the steel drum is made from a 55- gallon oil barrel with one end cut off and the other sunk into a concave “pan” with a sledge hammer. A patterri of notes is then laid over that basin and grooves are incised that separate each note from its neighbor. These sections are then “ponged up” from below after the sides of the barrel have been cut off to the correct length. The pan is then heated over an open fire and plunged into cold water to temper the steel. The most difficult and exacting process, tuning each section, is accomplished by tapping with a small hammer until the correct pitch is reached. Since the steel drum is one solid mass, unlike its cousin the marimba with its separately tuned pieces, all the notes on a steel drum must be tuned together in a process similar to tightening the spokes on a bicycle wheel. The steel drum is played with two light-weight sticks fitted with a small sponge-rubber ball or wrapped with rubber bands. By 1962, Ellie Mannette had been building and tuning steel drums for the U.S. Navy Steel Band for five years, and went to South Carolina to continue his work for them. Later, back on the island, a social worker from New York named Narell was looking for a drum maker to come to the States and start a steel band program among the ghetto youth in the housing projects of the city’s lower east side. Mannette agreed to go in 1966. But the steel drum’s new status as the symbol of national culture had a steep price for this individual craftsman, who had himself become something of a “national cultural resource” after developing seven of the nine pans currently in use. I told the government I wanted to come to the U.S. to teach a steel drum operation, he says, and they were very upset. They told me I shouldn't do it—selling my culture—because eventually the U.S. would take the talent away from me and then they will call it their own. So I said, ‘Well, it’s my talent; I've developed this art form from nothing into what it is. I’m going to go anyway. ’ The government then blaspheme me over the newspaper, saying that I was a Judas for selling my birthight for 30 pieces of silver. And as a result, I sent them a very ugly article back to the newspaper. And the government was very upset with me for what I said. So therefore I never did go home, not in 20 years. It was very unfair of them to say that to me in view of the fact I'm trying to project and to uplift the art form by spreading it. I am an ambassador for the art form.... We learn everything from the outside world; because Trinidadians are very good musicians, we learn the piano, the flute, the oboe, the ballad, whatever, it comes from outside, we never developed these things. And if for any reason the white man decide, ‘I'm not going to teach you my talent, ’ we would never know what a piano is today, So therefore- why is it that I can’t give the white man my talent and craft? Look, this is a very unique art. It will take any person—white, black or whatever—a tremendous amount of effort to reallyproduce one. Theperson must have the interest, not just the desire to go play out there, they must have that respect. And those people don’t come just like that; it’s only once in a while that you get someone with that kind of interest. In Trinidad, there are more of those people than anywhere else, and the steel drum flourishes. In a country of slightly more than a million people, there are as many as 70 bands with 100 players each, and other groups that field well over 50 players—the greatest steel orchestras in the world, although they are heard by few people outside the island. Pan Into The ‘80s A2 Andy Narell, one of the finest contemporary steel drummers with an album NO SPECI^-l- ORDERS-OTHER DlfKOUHTS EXPIRES U-l-85 ^00111 s T h l l S COUPON 7634- S.W C\P/roc LjKjHWAY I 246-0053 . 2924 E BURNSIDE • PORTLAND OREGON • 232-9022 LUNCH • DINNER • SUNDAY BRUNCH • AFTERNOON TEA ART MEDIA FALL SALE o%WIDE Art &Graph Materials 820 S.W. 10th Ave.. Portland. Oregon 97205 Across from Op Main Library Hours: 9-8 Mon.-Thurs. 9-5:30 Fri. & Sat. Park & Shop w h . 223-3724 % ^/# //////////////////////////////^ 20 Clinton St. Quarterly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz