Across the UK’s steelband community, the drilling has been getting louder, and it is not the DIY kind. For pannists – steelpan players, to the uninitiated – drilling means “focused, intense rehearsals” ahead of a big competition.
The stakes are even higher for today’s Panorama 2021 event after the UK’s national steelband competition was called off last year because of Covid. It is “the height of excellence when it comes to steelbands”, according Matthew Phillip, the chief executive of Notting Hill Carnival Ltd, which organises the championship.
“It’s not an easy thing as a musician to do. You’ve got to learn 10 minutes of music by memory – there is no sheet music involved, and everybody has to play very tightly together,” he says. Some bands have 120 members, “so it takes a lot of practice – what the steelbands call ‘drilling’, which is really focused, intense rehearsals, repeating phrases over and over again until you get them perfect”
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Ebony steel band play in preparation for the upcoming Notting Hill Carnival in 2019 (Photo: Mike Kemp/Getty)
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