Source: Wikipedia

Steelpan (also known as steeldrums or pans, and sometimes collectively with the musicians as a steelband) is a musical instrument and a form of music originating in Trinidad and Tobago. Steelpan musicians are called pannists.

The pan is a pitched percussion instrument, tuned chromatically (although some toy or novelty steelpans are tuned diatonically), made from a 55 gallon drum of the type that stores oil. In fact, drum refers to the steel drum containers from which the pans are made; the steel drum is correctly called a steelpan or pan as it falls into the Idiophone family of instruments, and is not technically regarded as a drum or Membranophone.

Origins
The steel pan evolved out of earlier musical practices of Trinidad's enslaved Africans and Afro-descendants. Drumming was used as a form of communication among the enslaved Africans and was subsequently outlawed. Through their innovativeness and determination, they went through a series of musical alternatives from slavery to emancipation, using whatever materials they could find to construct musical instruments. It was therefore a specific cultural response to the specific demographic conditions present on the islands. Eventually, someone picked up a biscuit tin and realised its potential. From then, it developed further, moving on to an oil drum. In its contemporary form, it first arose in the 1930s and was developed largely during World War II. The first record of a pan band in the press appeared in a report of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival in the Trinidad Guardian dated Tuesday, February 6, 1940.

One of the oldest steelbands in the world is The Neal & Massy Trinidad All-Stars, which celebrated its 72nd anniversary in 2007.

Early bands were essentially rhythm bands. However, during the 1940s discarded 55-gallon steel oil drums became the preferred type of pan and, perhaps noticing that constant drumming changed the tone of the pans, techniques were developed to tune them to enable melodies to be played. During WWII, tamboo bamboo bands, who usually performed during Trinidad's Carnival began using steel drums discarded by the US military (see Destroyers for Bases Agreement) to make advanced versions of their instruments. Ellie Mannette is credited as the first person to use an oil drum in 1946. By the late 1940s the music had spread to neighbouring islands.

In 1951 the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO) took the music to the Festival of Britain in the United Kingdom - pan music still features in the annual Notting Hill Carnival.

In 1957, Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery formed what became the US Navy Steel Band, which toured the world as ambassadors for the U.S. Navy until 1999.

During the 1960s the tuner Anthony Williams developed a pan - the fourths and fifths - that has since become the standard design used today.

Two Americans, George Whitmyre and Harvey J. Price, have secured a US patent for "the process of formation of a Caribbean steelpan using a hydroforming press". This patent is being challenged by the Trinidad and Tobago Legal Affairs Ministry, since many Trinbagonian drum makers have used similar methods for years. Their pan making company, Hydroforming, has gone out of business.

Steelbands in the early years were looked down upon by upper class society, and the panplayers were seen as undesirables. This view has completely reversed to the point where there are much more church steelbands than conventional bands.