In 1498 the island of Trinidad was claimed by Spain; and a substantial enslaved African population was brought to the Caribbean to work in the agricultural estates from the 16^th to the 19^th century.  When slavery was abolished, the government brought Indian indentured labourers to work on the estates.  While Africans remained the largest group, this new group contributed to shape the cultural panorama.

The slaves, after their emancipation in 1938, took to celebrating their new found freedom by parading in the streets as a gesture of liberation.  This was the genesis of the Trinidad Carnival.

Carnival, the parading of people in their costumes on the streets, came from the French and African influence on the island. Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, like Carnival in Brazil, and Mardi gras in New Orleans, is celebrated just prior to the start of the period of Lent in the Christian calendar.  Before the emancipation of the slaves in Trinidad, carnival was celebrated only by the white upper-class and middle-class to commemorate the 1789 French revolution. Carnival started in December with house to house singing and dancing as a momentum to the build up to the grand Masked Ball, when all distinctions in social behaviour were abandoned.

By the 1900s, Trinidad already enjoyed a deeply multicultural society with “people from the four corners of the world … with their different cultures, religions, and languages”.    

To the Trinidadians, Carnival was a powerful symbol, a moment when they affirmed and celebrated the many dimensions of their African heritage” in dance, costume, song, words and percussion”.

With rhythm being an important element of African based music, drumming was performed on skin drums.  Drumming was used as a part of cultural and religious ceremonies and as a means of communicating with nearby villages and other tribes.  The European rulers, fearing that the slaves would use their drums to communicate a revolt, banned the use of skin drums. The African slaves, being very innovative, started using bamboo as a replacement of their banned skin drums. These bamboo instruments were called tamboo bamboo from the French word tambour meaning drum.

The bamboo instruments were not durable and were soon replaced by steel. 

The first steel pan used by musicians was made from an empty biscuit container. The next development was the discovery that when you hammered a paint pan into a convex shape, different notes could be played on the pan. Soon the bent piece of steel gave way to the steeldrum that could produce simple melodies. The early steel pans made of paint tins or biscuit tins had only a few of notes. They were one foot in diameter and two feet long. They were tuned to the highest upper pitch note the steel pan could produce.

In 1939, a drummer by the name of Winston "Spree" Simon began playing melodies on the first tuned tins. Spree later produced the first convex or dome- shaped steel pan.

Originally, steelpans were convex; however, in the pursuit of a wider range of notes Ellie Manette in 1946, developed the first concave pan.   In a steelband the melody is traditionally  played on a tenor pan, with support from the double seconds.  The guitar or cello pans, along with the bass provide supporting harmony. 

By the 1950s, steel pan music had gained enough popularity to be sent to the United Kingdom as part of the Commonwealth celebration. It was then that the instrument was strongly identified as an important element of Trinidadian culture.   

During the 1960s, the steel pan came of age. Numerous steelband festivals and competitions were introduced during this period and steelbands even performed for Queen Elizabeth when she visited Trinidad. Steelbands started to tour both the United States and Europe. On February 22, 1963, the first National Panorama competition was held in Trinidad.

Through the 50 years following the Second World War the steel pan has been further developed by pan-makers through sophisticated experimentation.

Today, huge steel band orchestras are common in many Caribbean islands, but the Trinidadians are credited with having been the creators of this instrument. According to Charles de Ledesma and Simon Broughton:

"The Trinis put something cheap and abundant to extraordinary good use and created the only musical instrument to be invented in the 20^th century."

As Afro-Canadians and West Indians it is not only our privilege, but our honour and our duty to keep pan music alive.