WestJet Up! Magazine
Steelpan odyssey
Global - “You might want to cover your ears. This is gonna be loud.”
I am standing beneath a rusted tin canopy in a modest backyard studio in Laventille, a labyrinthine community tucked deep within the hills of Port of Spain, Trinidad. It is here, in this gritty, working-class neighbourhood, that the steelpan—the Caribbean’s quintessential instrument—was born. All around me are discarded oil barrels, some on racks, some in stacks, each awaiting a second life far more lovely and melodic than its first.
As the noonday sun beats down, steelpan-maker Rolly Hart grabs a hammer and steadies the overturned oil barrel before him. He eyes the barrel’s flat surface, looking at the veiny lines he’s just drawn to mark out the drum’s soft spots. “Okay,” he cautions me again. “This’ll be loud.”
BAM.
I jump at the deafening clang, despite the double warning.
BAM BAM BAM.
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