When you hear a steel band, listen for history.
Drummed out notes of rebellion and survival, ingenuity and freedom.
The humble steel pan, often incorrectly referred to as a steel drum, was born from an uprising in Trinidad in the late 1930s to become the nation’s instrument of choice and symbol of its culture.
Walla Walla Valley residents can hear chapters in the still-evolving story at 7 p.m. May 15 at Walla Walla University’s Steel Band concert, at Gesa Power House Theatre.
The university musicians, under the direction of Brandon Beck, will be joined by guest artist Liam Teague, a renowned steel pan player, arranger and composer of the music widely popular in the Caribbean.
In a recent interview, Teague said the steel pan long ago stole his heart.
Now 42, he was 11 when a fellow Boy Scout brought the instrument to a troop meeting his dad was leading in the family’s hometown of San Fernando, a city in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
It was in his native country where the steel pan answered the human hunger for music some 75 years ago.
“The early pioneers bled and died for this instrument,” Teague said, recounting the origin of the instrument, which produces ringing tones when struck with a rubber-tipped stick or mallet in various hand-forged dents on the concave metal surface.
Beck and Teague say the steel pan emerged in the late 1930s and early 1940s as a form of protest.
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