Amid the electronica of 20th Century music one new instrument stands out for its simplicity. The steel pan, possibly the only instrument made out of industrial waste, has become an icon of Trinidadian culture.
Hammered into the shiny metal surface is a series of dents. Each one creates a different note, subtly different from the ones around it, according to their position and size.
The steel pan, often referred to incorrectly as a steel drum, emerged in the 1930s. Metal objects including car parts, paint pots, dustbins, oil drums and biscuit tins, were originally used as percussion instruments, but at some point they began to be tuned.
“It was a slow process, everyone got together and invented the steel pan by using pots and pans and testing them out,” says Sterling Betancourt, a Trinidadian panman who now lives in London.
“The sound and the notes came, but it wasn’t like we thought about it.”
Betancourt, 82, grew up in Laventille, a poor suburb just outside Port of Spain, said by many to be the birthplace of the steel pan.
“It was exciting, we knew we had something but we were just playing, it took time,” he says.
The history of Trinidadian street music goes back centuries.
When French planters arrived in Trinidad in the late 1700s they brought with them a carnival tradition – and their slaves formed their own festival, fuelled by drum music.
After emancipation in 1834 the celebrations became noisier and more colourful, though after disturbances in 1881 the British government tried to ban the performers’ sticks and drums.
What followed was the tamboo-bamboo – bamboo sticks cut for striking together and hammering against the ground.
But in 1934 the tamboo-bamboo was banned too.
This is when the steel pan came into its own.