Steel Band Music in Trinidad and Tobago: The Creation of a People's Music

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana. The focus of this paper is the class, color, and race components in the struggle to create a people's music-a music originally and essentially of the economically disadvantaged and less formally educated citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, primarily those of African descent. It is based on interviews with former and present panmen and panwomen in Trinidad and Tobago and also draws on government documents, newspapers, and personal observations during over sixteen months of fieldwork in Trinidad between 1972 and 1985.Music as a social phenomenon has been of interest to scholars for some time and has given rise to numerous books and scholarly articles and to several scholarly journals (for example, The Sociology of Music, Ethnomusicology, and The Black Perspective in Music). Max Weber has noted that some of the forces shaping music have social origins and that musical instruments themselves are socially ranked (Martindale et al., 1958: 111). Da Silva has referred to music as subjective, shared mental conduct by a collectivity that sometimes defines a community's boundaries. He has also called attention to the conflict inherent in the social organization of music (1984:34). Shepherd has observed that an elite musical establishment of intellectuals persuades society that popular music is an inferior and less desirable art form and that music's value is not a socially shaped reality but an ultimate one with objective criteria for judging its quality. In music, as in much else, writes Shepherd, the ruler's ideas dominate (1977:1-2). Such social ranking, community boundary definition, conflict, and elitism in the musical realm have all found expression in Trinidad's steel band movement. This content downloaded from 62.122.79.31 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 23:39:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Steel Band Music in Trinidad and Tobago : 27Background Trinidad and Tobago is a two-island independent republic in the southeastern Caribbean, seven miles off the coast of Venezuela. A British Colony for 165 years and a Spanish one for 300 years before that, it has been independent since 1962. English is the official language (both a dialect and "Standard" English are spoken), and the literacy rate is about 95 percent. Some Hindi and some French patois are spoken. Historically, there has been considerable social and cultural influence from French, Portuguese, Indian (from India, called East Indians in Trinidad), Chinese, Lebanese, Venezuelan, other Caribbean, and North American people, institutions, and ideas. Over one-half of Trin...

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