Description
Book SynopsisThe Steelband Movement examines the dramatic transformation of pan from a Carnival street music into a national art and symbol in Trinidad and Tobago. By focusing on pan as a cultural process, Stephen Stuempfle demonstrates how the struggles and achievements of the steelband movement parallel the problems and successes of building a nation. Stuempfle explores the history of the steelband from its emergence around 1940 as an assemblage of diverse metal containers to today's immense orchestra of high-precision instruments with bell-like tones. Drawing on interviews with different generations of pan musicians (including the earliest), a wide array of archival material, and field observations, the author traces the growth of the movement in the context of the grass-roots uprisings of the 1930s and 1940s, the American presence in Trinidad in World War II, the nationalist movement of the postwar period, the aftermath of independence from Britain in 1962, the Black Power protests and the oi
Table of ContentsMaps
Preface
Introduction
1. Festive and Musical Traditions in Trinidad
2. The Emergence of the Steelband: The 1930s and 1940s
3. The Institutionalization of the Steelband: The 1940s and 1950s
4. The Steelband in the Post-Independence Era: The 1960s and 1970s
5. The Steelband in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago
6. The Steelband: Cultural Creativity and the Construction of Identities
Suggested Listening
Notes
Bibliography
Index
