Steelpan in Education

A History of the Northern Illinois University Steelband

Andrew Martin, Ray Funk, Jeannine Remy

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781609092375
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

Founded by Al O'Connor in 1973, the steelband program at Northern Illinois University was the first of its kind in the United States. Thanks to the talent and dedication of O'Connor, Cliff Alexis, Liam Teague, Yuko Asada, and a plethora of NIU students and staff members, the program has flourished into one of the most important in the world. Having welcomed a variety of distinguished guest artists and traveled to perform in locales around the US and in Taiwan, Trinidad, and South Korea, the NIU Steelband has achieved international acclaim as a successful and unique university world music program. This fascinating history of the NIU Steelband traces the evolution of the program and engages with broader issues relating to the development of steelband and world music ensembles in the American university system. In addition to investigating its past, Steelpan in Education looks to the future of the NIU Steelband, exploring how it attracts and trains new generations of elite musicians who continue to push the boundaries of the steelpan. This study will appeal to musicians, music educators, ethnomusicologists, and fans of the NIU Steelband.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

If anybody had told me when I started messing around with this [steelband] in 1973 that we’d be at the point we’re at right now, I would basically tell them they were out of their minds.

—Al O’Connor (2003)¹

From the moment you step off the airplane, the experience of visiting Port of Spain, Trinidad and DeKalb, Illinois during the winter is a study in contrasts. For travelers from the north typically arriving in the evening to Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, the air-conditioned terminal fails to mask the impending shock of oven-like heat that blasts visitors exiting the airport doors to the taxi stand. After surviving the roughly forty-minute maxi-taxi ride from the airport to the city of Port of Spain, one arrives at steelpan mecca—panyards saturate the city and surrounding area, and the Queen’s Park Savannah located in the northwest part of downtown is the epicenter. During January and February, Trinidad (and its sister island Tobago) is bustling with energy. The Carnival season is fast approaching, and countless residents are making preparations for the Panorama steelband competition, masquerade (mas’) bands, calypso tents, competitions of all sorts, and the extensive weekend activities ranging from Kiddies Carnival, Panorama Finals, Dimanche Gras into Jouvert Monday and Carnival Tuesday. Considered the dry season by local standards, the temperature is hot and the humidity is oppressive. The daily temperature of equatorial Trinidad is relatively consistent, regardless of season, and visiting steelpan enthusiasts from the north, Europe, and Asia are not spared the blistering daytime sun. Midday finds local Trinidadian vendors tending food stands in preparation for the evening when, spared the afternoon sun, flurries of activity commence as the people emerge to take advantage of more temperate evening temperatures.

The hundreds of steelbands that saturate the island are busy too. The Panorama preliminaries are underway, and the lucky bands still alive in the competition can be heard nightly rehearsing in outdoor panyards that dot the cities and countryside. Weeks later, during the Panorama semi-final competition held in the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, the catchy melodies of soca/calypso tunes, chosen by steelbands as their song-of-the-year arrangements for the massive steelbands, are everywhere. The tunes waft in and out from various steelbands and blare from the park’s massive sound system and passing car stereos. For several months leading up to Carnival each year, steelbands capture the ears and hearts of Trinidad’s approximately one million inhabitants and many more expatriates living in the extended diaspora of Toronto, London, and New York.

February in DeKalb, by contrast, greets visitors with a starkly different reality. Exiting O’Hare International Airport in suburban Chicago during winter introduces one to the bone-chilling winds blowing off Lake Michigan. From the icy and snow-drifted taxi stand, Interstate 294 gives way to Interstate 88 as visitors are initiated to the towering concrete ramparts and high speeds of Illinois freeways. Traveling west on Interstate 88, the concrete and hustle and bustle of Chicago suburbs melts away, and after roughly an hour of driving, the suburbs gradually give way to the rolling cornfields of rural Illinois, which appear to stretch for as long as the eye can see. The quiet serenity of the farms dotting the countryside is interrupted by the city of DeKalb, and as the visitor pulls off the interstate the only thing separating him from America’s de facto steelband mecca is a few acres of plowed cornfields covered in snow. Upon arriving in DeKalb for the first time in January of 1993, Liam Teague recalled, “Al and Cliff picked me up from the airport; it was cold and we drove for what seemed like hours. Cliff was hungry, and we stopped at a McDonald’s, and I remember hearing people in the McDonald’s swearing and using foul language. I was shocked by this for some reason. I stared out the window of our booth and a snowstorm had hit. This was the first time I had ever seen snow. As I watched the blowing snow from that McDonald’s, I recall thinking, “Dear God, what have I done? Why did I leave Trinidad?”²

Steelpan—What Is It?

This is the story of how a university music program in the heartland of America became one of the most important hotbeds for the development of a new Caribbean musical instrument called the steelpan. The steelpan is a tuned idiophone created out of recycled 55-gallon oil barrels; it was invented in Trinidad and Tobago sometime in the late 1930s and further developed in the decades that followed. An instrument with many names, outside of Trinidad and Tobago the steelpan is sometimes called the “steel drum,” and in Trinidad and Tobago the favored term for the instrument is the “steelpan” or “pan.” Steelpans are grouped into sets and are conceived of in families called “steelbands,” which feature a mix of variations spanning high-pitch single steelpans to low-pitched multi-drum sets of instruments. Culturally and musically, steelbands descend from West African drumming and bamboo-stomping ensembles called “Tamboo Bamboo,” which historically provided parade music for Afro-Trinidadians during Carnival. Due in part to British colonial laws from the 1880s that banned the playing of drums and the like, Trinidadians transferred their Tamboo Bamboo rhythms to making music on paint cans, biscuit tins, and other types of metal containers before finally settling on oil drums sometime in the mid- to late 1930s. The United States has had a presence in Trinidad and Tobago since the Roosevelt administration’s “Destroyers for Bases Agreement” program in 1940.³ The US government traded old naval destroyer ships to Britain in exchange for swaths of land in various British colonies and territories (including Trinidad). The US military built the Chaguaramas military base on the northwestern tip of the island in 1942. Discarded oil drums, prime material for making steelpans, were abundant around the base and immediately became a favored source of material for steelpan construction.⁴

The Trinidadian steelband climate of the 1940s and early 1950s was driven in part by rivalry and turf warfare waged by the so-called “bad johns” found in Port of Spain’s tight-knit neighborhoods, and techniques for building steelpans were closely guarded secrets. Unemployed lower-class Trinidadians spent years toiling in panyards, creating and refining the instrument, and it is this class of craftsman that is responsible for the lion’s share of innovations in steelpan construction, building, and tuning.⁵ Despite the efforts and dedication of poor and working-class peoples, steelpan and steelbands achieved an entirely new level of social and cultural importance in the early 1950s as the growing Trinidadian middle-class adopted the art form and became increasingly involved in all areas of the steelband movement.

The acceptance of steelbands as a social and musical movement benefited greatly from the work and efforts of dance impresario Beryl McBurnie and the Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra. Dancer Beryl McBurnie founded the Little Carib Theatre in Port of Spain, and it was McBurnie who first arranged for steelbands (the Invaders Steel Orchestra and the Merry Makers Steel Orchestra) to perform in the context of legitimate theater. These early steelband performances at the Little Carib Theatre were an important gateway for the steelband to reach the power brokers of Trinidad and Tobago’s middle class, cultural elites, and politicians as it was here that the “common folk rubbed shoulders with the elite” and the steelband was in full bloom as a cultural expression and serious art form.⁶

The Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra (hereafter TASPO) was another key agent in the development of steelpans and steelbands in Trinidad and Tobago. TASPO was an all-star steelband comprised of the best pannists from steelbands across Trinidad and Tobago assembled for the purpose of performing for the Festival of Britain in 1951. TASPO was the first Trinidadian steelband to perform in Europe and contributed greatly to the musical development of steelbands in Trinidad and Tobago via its leader Barbadian Lieutenant Joseph Griffith who demanded that the TASPO members standardize many of the steelpan sets used by the various band members.⁷ TASPO would have lasting musical implications for the future of the steelband movement and its members, a who’s who of steelband pioneers, including Ellie Mannette, Anthony Williams, Andrew de la Bastide, and Winston “Spree” Simon to name a few.

As Trinidad and Tobago moved into the 1950s, there was a marked effort by the middle class to embrace local arts, and participation in steelbands by college boys (middle-class, educated young men) became a means for earning street credibility and hipness.⁸ With the formation of these steelbands comprised of middle-class individuals, many of which still exist today, including Starlift, Silver Stars, and Dixieland, the entire steelband movement gained a degree of social credibility that would eventually lead to many of the early steelbands becoming viable cultural institutions.

Why Steelpan? Why Northern Illinois?

How did Northern Illinois University (NIU) become an international hotbed for steelband? DeKalb and Port of Spain are approximately 2700 miles and several large bodies of water apart, yet they share an affinity for the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago. The present state of steelpan education in primary schools, secondary schools, and university steelpan programs in America forms a thriving and robust scene: the strongest and most active climate in the steelpan’s sixty-five-year history in America. In the past two decades steelbands have become increasingly popular additions to school curricula and after-school programs throughout the United States. The open arms of American universities proved a receptive outlet for steelband activity, though initially on a very small scale, following the implosion of the calypso craze and waning public interest in exotica during the late 1950s.⁹

Despite an initial flurry of activity in several isolated locations, a number of barriers hampered large-scale adoption of steelbands into academia prior to 1973. These included, but were not limited to, the availability of instruments and qualified individuals to tune them, the overwhelming size of Trinidadian-style steelbands, and the lack of qualified instructors in the United States. The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago achieved independence from Britain in 1962; however, until changes in United States laws that assisted immigration went into effect in 1965, political relations and dialogue between the United States and the newly postcolonial Trinidad temporarily slowed, and in some cases prohibited, university study-abroad programs.¹⁰ These restrictions were the third factor that served to create unfavorable conditions for the fledgling art form of steelpan as it attempted to gain traction in academia.

The story of the NIU steelband program is a tale of what has become the most successful steelpan program at an American university to date. Due to the talent and dedication of Al O’Connor, Cliff Alexis, Liam Teague, and a plethora of NIU students, staff, and administration, the NIU Steelband was able to succeed where other steelband programs failed, or at least failed to germinate. Their success is no doubt a reflection of the talented people of NIU; yet it also points to larger issues in the development of steelband programs in the American university system. Unlike the steelband movement in Trinidad and Tobago, the development of steelband in America is less a unified movement in terms of socioeconomic class disparities—the residual effects of colonialism notwithstanding as its impact has little to do with the diaspora playing steelpan in the United States. To this end regional developments in steelband stem nearly entirely from pioneering individual pannists forging new traditions, aided by the larger movement in American academia for multiculturalism and multicultural performing ensembles. As of the mid-2000s, steelband was the third most common non-Western performing ensemble in American universities, with over 100 universities nationwide housing steelbands.¹¹ The number has since rapidly expanded in the past decade as colleges and universities across the United States embrace the multicultural and musical versatility of the steelband.¹²

Research by leading music education scholars suggests that university administrators and/or music department chairs see value in the steelband and, for one reason or another, covet steelbands enough to invest the capital funds required to purchase the instruments.¹³ Folksinger extraordinaire and avid steelband enthusiast Pete Seeger considered steelband as an educational tool that could develop both a strong sense of rhythm and an even stronger sense of community and cultural appreciation among steelband participants.¹⁴ Regardless of the motivation, be it multiculturalism, cultural diversity, music education, community building, or what have you, the history of the NIU steelband program and its unique role within the overall educational mission of the university is a primary concern of this book.

In the June 27, 1999 edition of the Chicago Tribune, noted arts critic Howard Reich was charged with reviewing a recent concerto performance by steelpan virtuoso Liam Teague (who was, at the time, a recent NIU graduate) and the Chicago Sinfonietta. The performance was one of the first steelpan concerto performances with a notable American orchestra. Reich’s prose encapsulates the unlikely reality of NIU’s position as a steelpan mecca with the headline “Steel Pan Alley: To become a virtuoso on the steel drum, Liam Teague had to leave his native Trinidad to study in—where else?—DeKalb.” Reich’s review locates one of the central ironies of steelband education in the United States, in which regional sites such as DeKalb, Illinois are hotbeds of pedagogical activity whereas Trinidad and Tobago is, relatively speaking, lagging behind. Moreover, since Liam Teague, one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most prominent and virtuosic steelpan heroes, is in part a product of American steelband training, the notion held by many Trinidadians that steelpan belongs to any one place, people, or culture is under fire.

The following pages tell the story of precisely how the NIU steelband program was built from nothing, only to rise up and achieve a storied tradition and legendary reputation unique among university percussion programs. The story begins with an examination of NIU steelband founder Al O’Connor and how he came to steelpan. Chapter 2 explores the genesis of the NIU steelband as well as O’Connor’s early career path prior to discovering the steelpan. The first years of the NIU steelband were marked with many successes; however, by 1980 O’Connor was facing the heavy reality that maintaining a steelband in top shape was no small task. He was keenly aware that a steelband was like a piano and, in order to keep the instruments sounding their best, an in-house tuner would be necessary. A chance encounter with the US Navy Steel Band led O’Connor to Trinidadian Cliff Alexis who, at the time, was living and building steelpans in St. Paul, Minnesota. After a five-year period of negotiation, Alexis joined O’Connor as a faculty/staff member resident steelpan tuner/builder at NIU in 1985. Chapter 3 chronicles Alexis’s journey from Trinidad to DeKalb and O’Connor’s role in the process.

The NIU steelband program in its current form is a construct of the collective efforts of O’Connor and Alexis and their roles as defined over the course of years. Chapter 4 takes a look at the transformation of the NIU steelband program following Cliff Alexis’s arrival with a specific focus on how the pair worked as a team. One offshoot of the early success of the NIU steelband was the Birch Creek summer steelband music camp in Egg Harbor in Door County, Wisconsin, founded by O’Connor in 1982. Chapter 4 further details the emerging roles and changing facets of the NIU steelband program both in DeKalb and off campus.

Since the inception of the percussion program at NIU in 1968, O’Connor (and later Alexis and Teague) felt very strongly that bringing guest artists to campus was an integral part of the NIU experience. The roster of guest artists brought in to work specifically with the NIU steelband reflects the development of the band over the course of its history. Chapter 5 discusses the various guest artists of the NIU steelband program and highlights some of the particularly important and eventful encounters.

In addition to the early East Coast tours of the 1970s, the NIU steelband embarked on several major trips outside the Chicagoland area over the course of its history. Aside from two tours of Taiwan (1992 and 1998) and the World Steelband Music Festival in Trinidad (2000), the NIU Steelband also trekked forth on notable tours to the PASIC (Percussive Arts Society International Convention) in 1981 (Indianapolis), 1987 (St. Louis), and 1994 (Atlanta), and the 1995 ASA (Acoustical Society of America) national meeting in St. Louis. Beyond the publicity and prestige generated by the NIU Steelband on these various tours, O’Connor and Alexis sought a hands-on educational experience for NIU steelband members; these tours served as a laboratory for experiencing life on the road as a professional musician. Chapter 6 offers a synopsis and highlights of the various tours.

Domestically, things were going well for the NIU steelband program, and O’Con...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Al O’Connor’s Life Before Steelpan
• Chapter 3. From Hummingbird to Husky
• Chapter 4. The O’Connor/Alexis Era and the NIU/Birch Creek Connection
• Chapter 5. Guest Artists Throughout the Years
• Chapter 6. On the Road—The NIU Steelband Tours America
• Chapter 7. Panning to the East—The NIU Steelband Captures Asia
• Chapter 8. The Paganini of Pan, Liam Teague, Comes to Niu
• Chapter 9. Return to Trinidad and the World Steelband Music Festival 2000
• Chapter 10. Steelpan Degree Program and the NIU/UWI Pipeline
• Chapter 11. O’Connor Retires, Teague/Alexis Era Begins
• Chapter 12. Epilogue—The NIU Steelband into the Future
• Appendix One
• Appendix Two
• Notes
• Index