Eric Rollnick leads me to a room filled with tools for making and fixing steel drums.
"This is the kind of hammers I use to sync the drums, right. So these hook up to an air compressor. I just had the boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, you know, hit it all the way down."
Rollnick have been playing the instrument since he heard a steel band play at a festival in the 80s. But a steel drum that sounds just right can be hard to find in the U.S. So he found a book on how to build them. How to take 55 gallon barrels and turn them into instruments.
"I was building these drums and they weren't sounding like I wanted them to sound, so my wife Janet said, 'Well, we should go to Trinidad, where they came from--they originated there--and check them out.'"..
....The members of the Mango Groove are all white. Some Trinidadian panists see the instrument spread around the globe as an extension of colonialism, a form of cultural appropriation when a dominant culture adopts parts of a minority culture.
Rollnick says he's thought about that...
Replies
A response from Jeff Klein
interesting article.....the comparison of steel pan to violin or trumpet is not really apples to apples....pan was born out of oppression, enslavement, ...colonists denying african drums, bamboo, etc...until the Trinidadian people had enough and revolted, but there were years where the police beat up pan players, destroying their instruments,etc...and panmen were thought of as the low rung in TT society....Im sure Eric is very respectful, and its good you teach about the history of the culture...I attended the International Pan conference in 2016 in POS, and lived in TT from 2016-2017....at the conference the white Europeans were trying to tell Trinidadian pan men to change the name of the different pans to correspond to classical instruments, ie: violin, etc.....just an example of continued attempts at white supremacy.....however I never found people in Trinidad or Tobago resentful of me playing pan when I was there, and as you know its the mecca for people of all races, colors, etc. to come and learn, Americans, Japanese,etc....it was the opposite, TT pan musicians, band leaders,etc, were always, encouraging, welcoming, etc....
Jeff, you are absolutely right. What you must realize is that I was interviewed for nearly 2 hours for a 5 minute radio spot. I had no say in what they cherry picked as my answer to this question about cultural appropriation. I explained a lot of what you mentioned and asked them if they would ask that question to a white blues singer, jazz musician, reggae artist. I explained how my 13 years traveling to Trinidad and Tobago and meeting pan crafters ,players and playing in a band were the most encouraging and enjoyable times of my life. And how I respect all I was taught and honor the people of Trinidad and Tobago for giving this gift to the world.
It is quite alarming that NHPR would shut down the comment section to this article after Mr, Klein's post. I mean really NHPR what was so disturbing to you. Mr. Klein merely stated the facts and shared his experiences. NHPR you clearly have an agenda and moreover are not interested in the truth and civil discourse.
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