The early pioneers of the pan, were viewed as good for nothing vagabonds
to be treated with scorn. They were looked down upon as the outcast of
society. Laventille had become a settlement of people without land,
without work, and deprived of natural access to the full richness of
cultural resources. At the time of greatest pressure, the steel pan was
invented and quickly became a vehicle of social identification, with
John John &
Laventille being its birthplace, the cradle of the most momentous
musical occurrence in 20th Century musical history.
Oral accounts from
surviving steel band pioneers and enthusiasts, together with the little
that has been written, suggest that the invention and early development
of the steel pan was not the outcome of a stroke of genius of a single
individual, but the product of socially outcast communities groping for
self-expression.
Many people contributed to the development of the steel pan |