In the preface the author declares that a few years ago she started to take lessons in playing the steel pan and ‘caught a bad case of pan fever’. She decided to write ‘a book that would recognise the pioneers of this extraordinary movement, a book to honor panmen and panwomen everywhere’. Her book is divided into two main parts. The first gives an overview of the general history of Trinidad, the background to and the emergence and development of steel pan and steelbands in Trinidad up to the 1980s. The second part deals mainly with the history of steel pan and steelbands in the United States. At the end of the book there are six short appendices which summarise the parts dealing with pan pioneers, pan innovators, chapter timelines and also some internet sites, questions and topics for group discussions and a selected discography. There is also a bibliography and an index.
The point of view of the book is a US one. Its main purpose is obvious – to give the thousands of steel pan players in the US, many of whom, according to the author, are ‘flying blind’, an opportunity to obtain knowledge about the historical background to and context of what they are doing. The instrument is called ‘steel drum’ in the title of the book. The US is the only country where the instrument has been called the steel drum and not the steel pan. But there is no ‘steel drumming’ or ‘steel drummers’, etc. In the book the Trinidadian name steel pan is used most of the time and the players are panmen and panwomen (the newer term ‘panist’ is not used). Other US researchers such as Stephen Stuempfle and Shannon Dudley, who have written on this subject in recent years, have not used the name steel drum. It is a therefore a bit unfortunate that the name ‘steel drum’ is revived in the title of this book.
The text mainly focuses on stories of people and bands as told to the author in personal interviews and electronic correspondence by actors within the steelband movement, especially those active in the US. The account of the early history of steel pan and steelbands in Trinidad is by and large correct. There is a lot about cases of conflict between bands and players, with some redundancy. Of course, the clashes are a thrilling part of steelband history, but they are often exaggerated in the steelband lore. There is not much in the book on the instrument as such and the genuine music of steelbands in carnival or in the Panorama competitions. There is no systematic description of the instruments of the steel pan family of today apart from one page towards the end of the book which is based on the personal opinion of one pan tuner. It seems that the author is not familiar with the writings of Trinidadian scholars such as J.D. Elder, Hollis Liverpool and Kim Johnson. The latter's thesis about the steelband Renegades is in the bibliography, but not his in-depth study From Tin Pan to TASPO – Genesis of the Steelband Movement in Trinidad 1939–1951 (Johnson Reference Johnson2011), which sorts out a lot of the contradictions and misconceptions in earlier accounts. Regarding the acoustic properties and manufacturing of the instrument, a reference to Ulf Kronman's (Reference Kronman1991) book Steel Pan Tuning, available for free on the internet, would have helped the reader. There is no previously unknown information in the part of the book that deals with developments in Trinidad.
The part about the steel pan and steelbands in the US is better structured with sections on the roles and achievements of a number of prominent actors. The US scene has to my knowledge not been mapped out in this manner before. The interaction between Trinidad and the US, the development of university programmes in pan, the use of pan in community development and other features of the US scene are described. However, the roles of the actors are not critically reviewed. For instance, Ellie Manette's immense contribution to the growth of pan in the US is duly described, but there is no mention of the fact that Manette at one point became a conservative force, refusing to adapt to new ways of making pans developed in Trinidad and thus hindering the progress of pan in the US. There are short accounts of issues such as the increased participation of women in steel pan activities in both Trinidad and the US, the experiments with electronic pans, and patents regarding steel pan manufacturing processes registered in the US that have caused the Trinidad government to react on a diplomatic level. But I missed a description of commercial enterprises such as Panyard Inc. in Akron, which was manufacturing pans and selling them all over the world. Steelband activities in Continental Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, South Africa and Canada are mentioned in a few lines, mostly indirectly through the account of the activities of US player Andy Narell, but nothing on the large steelband movement in the UK.
Overall this book can serve the purpose of informing the pan enthusiasts in the US about the history of pan and steelband, while some parts of the account of developments in the US can also be of interest to popular music scholars.
