Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 7 No. 3 | Fall 1985 (Seattle) /// Issue 13 of 24 /// Master# 61 of 73

(Slow Motion on Windham Hill) at the top of jazz radio charts, began playing steel drum at eight years of age, when his father started the steel band program in New York. When Narell was 13, his father brought Ellie Mannette to the States and, as Narell puts it, “he basically straightened us out. Mostly I studied tuning from him; he’s taught me everything I know about how to keep a pan in tune.... Very few people have the knowledge to do that,” he adds, “which is one of the reasons Ellie is teaching people. He’s trying to spawn a generation of tuners in America, which is yet to happen.” Building and tuning the pans must be passed on from craftsman to apprentice—it was only after experimenting with thousands of pans that Mannette developed his extraordinary hand-ear coordination. Maybe somewhere down the road, he says, the art form will come to a point where the engineers come into it, and they start mass-producing it into a form of perfection. But at the present time, it’s struggle, trials and errors, frustration. The steel drum is in its infancy. It’s 38 years old. This is a primitive art right here. Ellie Mannette is a hurried, anxious talker—there is so much to explain—and while he talks his hands move over the drums, caressing, tapping, demonstrating, in touch always with that sensitive steel surface he has hammered into perfection. I am 58 years old, he says, and I have been banging since I was eleven. I don’t want to keep doing so much extensive heavy work at this stage. I need a work force. I’ll teach them how, and also teach them the tuning, bring them along. But if I cannot get anybody to do that, I have to just hang in until such time that I can’t do anymore. Mannette, who builds and tunes drums for about 200 groups in the U.S. and abroad, may soon leave his East Coast home to settle permanently on the West Coast, where he has found more interest in actually building the drums. While the street bands of his native island can get away with drums that are not tuned with the precision of symphonic instruments, the virtuoso performing pans like Andy Narell uses are sensitive and must be tuned periodically by a master craftsman. To ensure the continued high-level performance of this instrument in our electronically regulated popular music, Mannette must pass on to a new generation the accumulated experience of his hands and ears. At Portland State University’s Haystack Summer Program in the Arts at Cannon Beach, Oregon, Mannette has just completed his second year of steel drum workshops, where students—public school teachers who wish to introduce “Maybe somewhere down the road, the art form will come to a point where the engineers come into it, and they start mass- producing it into a form of perfection. But at the present time, it’s struggle, trials and errors, frustration. The steel drum is in its infancy.” or maintain steel bands as well as independent performers—learn to build and tune the instruments in addition to playing and arranging for them. Organizers of the program hope to turn it into a permanent West Coast center for the study of the steel drum. It is programs such as this that Mannette believes will sustain the steel drum outside Trinidad. Its future is growing out of two movements. In the public schools, steel drum has proven an effective and visual way to teach music to children. Its most visible and exciting contemporary use in this country, however, is as a performing instrument in the hands of virtuoso players such as Andy Narell and Robert Greenage. Using the pans as a vehicle for jazz improvisation, Narell has taken the standard fusion arrangements into a brighter, more exotic dimension, whether he is adding its Caribbean sunlight to the Darol Anger-Barbara Higbie Quintet, the soundtrack of the movie 48 Hours, or to Apple Computer’s TV commercials. Greenage, who can be heard with Grover Washington, Earth, Wind and Fire, Taj Mahal and Jimmy Buffett, will also perform with Narell and the Los Angeles Symphony this fall. Despite its expanding role, however, there have been problems with st^el drum’s wider acceptance in the U.S. “Anytime you’re trying to pioneer something,” Narell explains, “it takes a while. The very novelty of the steel pan that captures people’s attention is at the some time the obstacle I have to get over—to get people to see that what I’m doing is not a novelty.” At 31 years of age, Narell can afford to be patient. A highly trained musician and composer who also performs on keyboards, he has chosen to make his reputation on steel drum. Andy has love for it, Ellie Mannette observes. He is an accomplished musician on many instruments, but he lives by the steel drum. New World H b iie Mannette has devoted nearly 50 years to making music out of steel barrels, from the dented garbage cans he first picked up 1935 to the gleaming chromed pans he builds today. But he has a consuming interest in younger players like Andy Narell, for the men like Mannette who developed the steel drum—backyard inventors and tinkers— were primarily craftsmen who used it to play music originally designed for other instruments. Today the challenge is to devise a music specifically for an inspired by steel drum. Ellie Mannette cannot hear the steel drum’s future music, but he has a stake in it, for his life has been devoted not to personal reputation, but to the art form itself. I can’t really visualize anything further right now, he says. Every man has his capacity to think, and I have developed this art form, and now I think the youngsters will take my ideas and will probably see things that I never did. So Ijust lay the groundwork, just try to get it into their hands and heads, and they’re going to take it on from there. Born in response to repression, the steel drum today is ready for an unfettered journey among the world’s music. It will take with it the shape imparted by Ellie Mannette’s hands, the imprint of a life lived for steel drum and the turbulent New World society that produced it. Lynn Darroch writes frequently for CSQ on music, culture and politics. Stephen Leflar is an artist living in Portland. "BOOKED Fabric designs. Mary-Margaret Opalka SOUITa.k.a. books 5241 U.Way N.E. 522-8864 Left Bank Books 92-Pike 622-0195 Own Your Housing! The Apex Belltown Co-op is a 21-unit non-profit co-op located at 1st and Bell. Members pay a $1250 refundable downpayment to own individual units whose total monthly costs range from $166 to $336. Members share spacious kitchens, baths, dining/lounge areas, laundries and outdoor deck areas with exceptional views of Puget Sound and the Olympics. If interested, please call the membership committee at 622-8280. FutonX Open 11-6 seven days 4137 University Way NE 547-4170 Affordable futons and fram es in a variety of styles Our newest model— The "Prop Bed " APEX BELLTOWN CO-OP 2225 First Avenue Seattle, WA 98121 dinner dessert icecream espresso 524 15thave.e open every day weekend brunch 323 1888 Clinton St. Quarterly 19

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz