JumbieRecords

West Indian Parade videos and pictures

Labor Day weekend means one thing in Brooklyn: The massive, massive Caribbean festival. Most of the attention goes to the Monday parade, which is understandable, given that 2 million or so people attend- one account put the number at 3 million. There are hundreds of photos online, but before providing links to those pages, I have to wildly praise Panorama, the steelpan orchestra competition.

A dozen groups face stiff rivalry and exacting judges to win the prize. Every group works all year, rehearsing several times a week for no pay, and they all achieve a high level of musicianship and showmanship. Panorama attracts thousands of people willing to pay $35 to get in—I have a feeling the high cover price means that fewer casual observers show up, so there aren't as many photos online. Each group is made up of roughly forty musicians, each accompanied by their massive instruments.

I took some videos, and I have to warn in advance that they're not the best quality. Yet I hope the excitement of the event shines through. Here are the links of different groups:

• Pantonics
• The Sesame Flyers preping to go on stage
• Pan Sonatas, this year's winner

Here is the official website of the West Indian-American Day Carnival Association.

And now some colorful links:

• New York Post photo essay
• Village Voice shows the glorious and not-so-glorious
• Gowanus Lounge (This is nice! It includes links to several flikr pages)
• Daily News photos

2nd Annual Michigan Steel Drum Festival

On June 2nd, the city of Detroit will play host to the 2nd Annual Michigan Steel Drum Festival, the only Michigan festival to focus entirely on the breadth of music composed for steel drums.  The steel drum, or "pan" as it's known in the Caribbean, is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago where it was invented in the mid-twentieth century.  The instrument was first introduced and popularized in the state of Michigan by the Trinidad Tripoli Steelband in 1973.  Numerous community organizations, high schools, universities, and professional ensembles throughout the state have since taken up the steel drum.  The Michigan Steel Drum Festival will feature a total of twelve Michigan-based steelbands.  These groups will perform a wide variety of music on an amazing range of 55-gallon steel drums—including the rumbling six-drum bass pans, the powerful triple cello pans, the resounding double guitar pans, the lyrical double second pans, and the clarion single tenor pan.

The Michigan Steel Drum Festival is being produced by Island Foundry Productions.  The festival will take place on Saturday, June 2nd at the Hockeytown Café, where live steel drum music will be heard from 2pm until 2am.  In addition, a DJ provided by WD Production will spin island blends between each band's performance and traditional Caribbean food and handicrafts will be available for purchase.  Festival merchandise and CDs of the performing groups will also be on sale.  Admission for the entire day of concerts is $10.

“There’s been a growing interest in Caribbean steel pan music throughout our state," says Mark Stone, Special Instructor in World Music at Oakland University.  “Many people will certainly be surprised that all twelve groups are from Michigan.  I think they'll be even more surprised when they hear the incredibly diverse music performed by these Michigan steelbands.  The festival is a unique opportunity for people in the Michigan steel drum community to come together and share their passion for pan.”

The Michigan Steel Drum Festival will feature the following bands:
•    UPRIZIN
•    Southpaw Isle Steelband
•    The Gratitude Steel Band
•    Steelheads Steelband
•    Third Coast Steel
•    Oakland University’s Pan-Jumbies
•    St. Louis High School Steel Drum Band
•    Caribbean Pans Of Joy Steelband

Legend Hugh Borde and Many Others Come Together to Pay Tribute to

By Lesley-Anne Graham       
Photos by Matty Dread
Originally Published in panonthenet.com

from Jumbie Journal, July 2006       

      Hockeytown Café in downtown Detroit

DETROIT – The weather in Detroit on June 17th was absolutely tropical, with cloudless skies, high humidity and temperatures reaching into the 90s - the perfect setting for the first annual Michigan Steel Drum Festival. High atop the roof of Hockeytown Café on Woodward Avenue, history was made as pannist Hugh Borde and many others heated up an already broiling rooftop with 14 fantastic hours of steel pan music.       

Although the steel drum has been played in Michigan since Hugh Borde first performed at a Mackinac Island conference in 1964, the 2006 Michigan Steel Drum Festival was the first time that an entire festival of steel drum music had ever taken place in Michigan.  According to Michael Kernahan, one of the other early pioneers of steel drum music, "The festival was the greatest thing to ever happen to pan in Michigan."

Over 600 people braved the city heat to see eight different Michigan-based steelbands perform.  While the bartenders kept everyone well hydrated, Hockeytown chef Matt Thompson served up a tantalizing array of Caribbean-inspired dishes, including a mango-infused "Calypso Burrito" and mouth-watering barbeque jerk chicken.       

       
      The Gratitude Steel Band

The Gratitude Steel Band kicked off the festival with a pleasing array of familiar tunes, including several gospel pieces such as "Lord, You Are Good" and "The Glory of The Lord Rise."  The family group, led by Charles Russell, is well known throughout the Metro-Detroit area for their high-energy and engaging performances.        

As the festival volunteers were taking one band's equipment off the stage and moving in another's, DJ Billy the Kidd kept everyone in a Caribbean frame of mind with a mix of soca, reggae, and calypso songs pumping through the speakers.  With festival co-director Tony Wilson behind both the sound and the soundboard, even guests taking refuge from the heat in the air-conditioned building could hear the bands playing.

       

MSU's Hard Bargain Steelband

But even the blazing sun couldn't keep pan fans from the exposed rooftop as Michigan State's Hard Bargain Steelband and the Oakland University Pan-Jumbies took to the stage.  Hard Bargain, directed by Marie Kujenga, is part of Michigan State's Community Music Program.  The group performed a featured arrangement of Louis Bonfi's "Black Orpheus" from the film of the same name, and several Ray Holman compositions including "Keep it Nice."

                    

      Oakland University Pan-Jumbes

As the mercury continued to rise, Oakland University's Pan-Jumbies opened their set with a sizzling performance of Andy Narrell's "The Passage." The 20-member strong group, directed by Mark Stone, is comprised mostly of music education students from Oakland.  Pan man Michael Kernahan made a guest appearance with the Pan-Jumbies as they switched to playing old-style pan-round-de-neck drums that he had built for the group.  Kernahan, a masterful tuner, arranger, and performer, was one of the original members of the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Orchestra that toured with Liberace and received a Grammy Award in the late 1960's. The group eventually settled in Michigan in the early 1970's and began popularizing the art form in the state.       

The Steelheads Steelband continued the marathon festival and was the only group to incorporate the vibraphone and marimba into their set.  This Flint-based group, led by James Coviak, was made up of performers from Mott Middle College High School, Mott Community College, and the University of Michigan-Flint.  The Steelheads played "Sea of Stories," the second Andy Narrell tune of the day, along with a virtuosic arrangement of Mike Mainieri's "Beirut."

   

With the sun going but the heat of the day still hanging on, Southpaw Isle Steelband managed to make it hotter still with their opener "Capivara," a 7/8 samba by Hermento Pasqual, featuring a solo by drummer Matt Lemons.  Kernahan also joined Southpaw as a guest artist on a number of pieces, including the Kitchner classic "Steel Band Music" and Ray Holman's "Mariella's Dance."  Southpaw's soloing prowess was the highlight of the set, with expressive solos by Kernahan as well as leader Mark Stone, who improvised over an original tune, aptly titled "Red Hot."

Southpaw Isle Steelband

      Caribbean Pans of Joy

Things got joyful as dusk settled in.  With the day's fierce heat merely a memory, the air was still thick with humidity as Ralph Taylor's Caribbean Pans of Joy hit the stage.  The group played "All Inclusive" by the Calypsonian "Explainer," along with "Soca Train" by Bungi Garlen.  Caribbean Pans of Joy, a community group based in Detroit, is an extension of Taylor's award-winning company Caribbean Mardi Gras Productions.       

The festival's peak was a moving tribute to Hugh Borde, Michael Kernahan, and Ralph Taylor, the pioneers of steel pan and Trinidadian culture in Michigan.  The tribute began as Hugh Borde reminisced about touring with Liberace, performing on the Ed Sullivan show, and the bacchanal of life on the road.  As if on cue, fireworks from the baseball stadium across the street lit up the night sky as festival co-directors Mark Stone, Ian Ferguson and Lyndon Sorzano presented lifetime achievement awards to Borde, Kernahan, and Taylor   

      Awards Ceremony: L to R Ralph Taylor, Hugh Borde, Michael Kernahan, Ian Ferguson

"Presenting the awards was the highlight of the festival for me," said Stone.  "The festival committee had kept the awards ceremony a secret and it was great to see the surprised looks on their faces. They were the pioneers of this art form in Michigan and they deserve to be honored."       

By then the sun was long gone, but things were plenty hot on the dance floor as people wined the night away to the sounds of Lyndon Sorzano's group Uprizin.  The group wrapped up the festival with a set of jazz and popular tunes including "You Don't Know My Name"by Alicia Keys, with Lauren Alexis' vivacious vocals leading the way. Uprizin also performed an original piece by Michael Kernahan called "Mess Around," and showcased Sorzano's skillful soloing on the double seconds.

With Michigan being one of the first states in North America to embrace the steel drum, it makes sense to have a festival in Michigan dedicated to pan.       

"It was great to see the way the festival brought the steel drum community together.  From the '60's to today, our festival really brought things full-circle," Tony Wilson commented.

"It was a great beginning and we hope to continue to develop the event and develop the art form to a high standard," said Kernahan of the festival's success.  The plans for next year include bringing in more bands to perform, as well as utilizing Hockeytown's patio area in addition to the rooftop to allow for more people to gain access to the festival. With so many incredibly talented steel drummers living in Michigan, a steel drum enthusiast's odds of finding their own piece of paradise just got a lot better.       

      Ian Ferguson, Michael Julien (of WDET), Mark Stone

      

 

Recreating the "Pan-Round-de-Neck" Sound

by Mark Stone
from Jumbie Journal, October 2005       

At the impressionable age of sixteen I heard the sound of a steel drum for the first time. While visiting Toronto on a class trip I bought a tape-recording simply titled "Steel Drums" with a picture of a man wearing a wild headdress, and the subtitle "The Native Steel Drum Band (A Live Recording)." I had no idea what to expect but quickly fell in love with the sounds on that cassette and listened to it constantly during my junior and senior years of high school. I was captivated by the instrument and its mellow yet percussive sound.

      

O.U. students using bowling balls to start their steel drums

My fascination with the steel drum continued through college, where I began learning to play the instrument. At West Virginia University I had the pleasure of studying with one of the instrument's original creators, pan legend Ellie Mannette. However, the instruments we played had a beautiful, clear sound, much different than the woody sounds on my old cassette tape. I learned from him that what I had on my recording was the post World War II steel pan tradition called "pan-round-de-neck". Over the course of more than fifty years, Ellie has significantly refined the steel pan's sound. He achieved his goal of giving the instrument an "orchestral tone" by precisely tuning its overtones and carefully blending every note. As a result, Ellie appropriately christened our university steel band The Symphony of Steel.   

As much as I enjoyed playing in Ellie's Symphony of Steel I was still drawn to the sounds of pan-round-de-neck. This older instrument had a clearly African sound that reminded me of the kalimba and gyil. I was excited to find out from Trinidadian panman Tommy Crichlow that there were still many groups in Trinidad playing the pan-round-de-neck style on instruments with the updated name "single-pan." Tommy invited me to travel to Trinidad, the birthplace of the steel drum, to perform with one of the country's leading single-pan groups, the Scrunters Pan Groove. He was the arranger for the group, and I was blown away by their playing. However, even though the Scrunters wore their drums around their necks, the drums that they played had the same "orchestral tone" that Ellie's band had back at W.V.U. When I asked Tommy why his group hadn't kept the pan-round-de-neck sound he said, "Yankee boy, that's the old sound, we have moved on and left that behind."

And he was absolutely right. Every pan-round-de-neck group that competed in the single pan category during carnival 2001 had chromed pans with the modern pan sound.

Although playing throughout the carnival festivities with Tommy and the Scrunters Pan Groove was an incredible experience, I returned from Trinidad still without having found the "old school" pan sound I was looking for. I revealed what I had learned to my friend Michael Kernahan, another Trinidadian panman who had helped me to establish two modern steel pan groups in Michigan. Michael felt the same way that I did and told me, "This is where pan came from; it's a pity we aren't preserving the older traditions."

The following summer when Michael and I got together in Michigan he brought something important to show me. With a look of satisfaction on his face he pulled out an old steel drum and said, "A friend of mine in Miami was throwing this away, listen...." He started to play and the long-forgotten pan-round-de-neck sound filled the room.

HEAR the sound of pan-round-de-neck

With the memories of his youth and his friend's discarded instrument as a template, Michael set out to recreate an entire set of pan-round-de neck steel drums. Meanwhile, I had been asked to teach a summer steel drum course for music educators at Oakland University. Realizing that making a steel drum and learning the history of pan should be central to this university class, I asked Michael to come to O.U. as a guest artist.

I also enlisted the help of my friend and university colleague, Kerro Knox. Kerro is a theatre professor and Pan-Jumbie who played a very important role in this project as that guy who "knows how to build stuff". Together we set out to gather the necessary materials. Our shopping list read:

12 Bowling Balls
4 cut-off sledgehammers
1 propane tank
1 torch
20 fifty-five gallon oil barrels
2 cans of paint
12 flexible rulers
8 ball-pen hammers
8 piece nail punch set
drafting pencils
markers
safety goggles
ear plugs

Gathering all of these items was an adventure in itself involving numerous phone calls to bowling alleys, confused looks from employees at hardware stores, and a trip in a beat up U-haul truck to an old

Detroit

warehouse. In typical fashion, we gathered the final items minutes before the first class began. We were ready to build our own steel drums.    

Mark Stone and Michael Kernahan at work       

Every student was given a fifty-five gallon barrel, a bowling ball, and a pair of earplugs. We spread out underneath the shade of the pine trees behind the theatre shop and Michael instructed us in the process of sinking the face of an oil barrel. Each barrel needed to be sunk approximately six inches to make the old pan-round-de-neck drum known as a "grundig." We all lifted our bowling balls high into the air and began slamming them into our oil barrels. This process was physically demanding yet the excitement of making our own instruments carried us on. Once he could see that progress was being made, Michael showed us how to finish sinking a drum with a sledgehammer.

      

Grundig

VIDEO clip of Michael sinking a drum

After the drums were sunk to the appropriate depth, we carefully marked where each of the drum's pitches would be placed.

VIDEO clip of Michael marking a drum      

Using different size ball pen hammers we began shaping the notes. Once these notes had the correct shape a groove was etched along the lines we had drawn in order to separate the vibrations of each pitch.

VIDEO clip of Michael shaping the pitches      

Finally, once all the notes had been correctly placed the barrels were cut in half and burned with a propane torch. Michael explained that the drums needed to be burned in order to temper the metal.      

Michael cutting a pan

VIDEO clip of Kerro burning a pan

Mark burning a pan       

Everyone was able to construct a drum after a week of intense work. However, this was the easy part! Although the drums had been correctly constructed the individual notes still needed to be tuned. Everyone quickly realized that tuning a steel drum was truly an art form that we could not expect to master in one week. Michael patiently showed us how by tightening and loosening the steel with a ball-pen hammer a note would eventually take shape. Some of us were able to get a few notes in tune, but this very challenging process was one Michael completed largely by himself.

I have always had a great respect for Michael Kernahan. Through a lifetime in pan he has proven himself to be an outstanding steel drum craftsman, tuner, arranger, and performer. His two weeks spent as a guest artist at Oakland University also proved him to be an incredible teacher. Michael's ability to patiently guide us all through the process of transforming a raw oil barrel into a musical instrument was nothing short of miraculous. In the end, every participant left the class with their very own grundig to proudly carry around their necks and share with the world.

VIDEO clip of O.U. students playing pan-round-de-neck       

Find out about the 11/18/05 concert of pan-round-de-neck at Oakland University