ABSTRACT
Pan, which are called steel drums in the US, can be found throughout the world. There are hundreds of collegiate steelbands in the US today, including at least one in Alaska, as well as numerous community bands and many individual professional pannists. Pan News, a Swiss steelband newsletter, lists over 125 full-time bands. The Nigerian army has a steelband, as do the Dutch police service and as did, until 1999, the US Navy. There are bands all over Europe, in Japan, Venezuela, Kuwait. And of course they are common in the Caribbean. To most people outside of Trinidad a steelband is a small group of kids, or perhaps a five- or six-man ensemble on a cruise ship or at a beachfront hotel, which plays pop tunes or "Yellow Bird" on pans. That, to a Trinidadian, is as anemic as the worst muzak. The real thing can be heard live only from the gigantic, pulsing orchestras known as conventional steelbands. What these are, how they evolved, their relationship to the society, are the subject of the following notes.
