Georgia, USA - Melodic tones of the Unity Christian Steel Drum Band of Rome, Ga., transported Willis Park listeners to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago Thursday night.

Under the direction of Bill King, the group of students in eighth through 12th grades, made beautiful music in the style of the island carnival street bands on instruments that all began as 55-gallon steel oil drums.

The program began with a song titled "Sarah" and progressed to an island medley, featuring the familiar sounds of "Isle in the Sun," "Jamaica Farewell" and "Yellow Bird." A selection of three hymns, "My Faith Looks up to Thee," "Amazing Grace" and "But for Grace," followed.

Georgia, USA - Bainbridge was treated to a unique experience on Thursday evening when the Unity Christian Steel Drum Band entertained a Willis Park crowd. Many from the crowd joined in the conga line and, though not as many, the limbo.

Bill King, who has been in Georgia music education for 35 years, directs the band. He explained the beginnings of the steel drum in Trinidad evolved after the beating of African skin drums on the streets of Trinidad was banned. Mr King is a former student of Dr. Ed Mobley of Bainbridge.

Grenada - Grenada could soon have it's first edition of Steelband competition for Minor Categories. Pan Pioneers Production, has invited Steel Orchestras in Grenada to participate in the first ever Grenada Steelpan Music Festival - Minor Categories 2008 which is scheduled for April 2008.

The Grenada Steelpan Music Festival Minor Categories Championships are a series of Steel Pan competitions that consist of the following categories:

• Soloist. An un-accompanied performance on any Steelpan.
• Duet. Two pannists rendering a piece together.
• Quartet. Four persons rendering a piece together on Steelpans or Steelpans and drums.
• Ensemble. Fifteen persons rendering a piece together on Steelpans & Percussion.

Pan Pioneers say that the objectives of the competition are:

• To create an alternative avenue of musical expression for Pannists and Steel Orchestras in Grenada.
• To serve as a qualifying method for representatives from Grenada to take part in the equivalent competitions of the World Steelband Festival (WSF).
• To offer Pannists an opportunity to further study the instrument while being rewarded and recognized.
• Improving the quality of performance of the other units of the Steelband outside of the “Panorama Band”.

St. Vincent & Grenadines – How many of the young people who turned out to witness the commissioning of steel pans for the South Leeward community actually knew that they had royalty among them, was not easily discernable. Even after he had taken to the podium to pass judgment on the sound of the pans subsequent to a trial run by young pannists from the Starlift Steel Orchestra, there still was no real indication that here was someone deserving of national recognition.

Joseph Bedford has been home now for two years. He had spent the previous 45 years in England having, like so many of his generation, migrated to the ‘mother country’ in search of a “better life.” The Chauncey elder looks well below his age and that too is a lesson in itself. However, and befitting of the occasion on which THE VINCENTIAN chatted with Mr. Bedford, it is his steel pan prowess that caught the fancy of all pannists and lay people who sort to ‘find out a little more about this Vincentian’.. For here is a man who has been playing the steel pan, albeit a first generation tenor pan, for well over fifty years. He started playing at age twelve, under the tutelage of the famous pannist ‘Douche’ from Barrouallie.

He would graduate to play, before his migration, with Syncopators and Castrol Steel Orchestras, and he fondly remembers playing under the leadership of pan pioneer Woodley, in Castrol. Not even the strictures of England could stifle his cultural foundation, and he set about establishing his own steel band there, the Hurricane Force.

St. Vincent & Grenadines – Steel pan music is well on its way to being revived in the South Leeward area. That was the assurance the large turnout of residents seems to give with their presence on the occasion of the commissioning of steel pans for that community.  That official function, held at the Questelles Learning Resource Centre, March 13, was a bright and breezy occasion and one of encouragement, given the large number of young persons among the gathering.

After Ms. Anne Jones, former Principal of the Questelles Government School, social activist, church leader, had bid the gathering welcome in her distinctive style that always emits an air of simplicity and honesty, it was time for the movers and dealers to have their say.  Errol Sutherland of the Starlift Steel orchestra relayed with emotion how he and his team felt it an honour to be “delivering pans to another entity.” It was the Starlift Steel Orchestra that had won the tender to provide steel pans for five communities, under a Social Investment Fund Programme of assistance to the development of the stelband at the community level.  In addition to the South Leeward area, steel pans will be provided for Stubbs, Launders (South Windward), Canouan and Union Island.

Chief Executive Officer of the SIF, Bentley Browne referred to his Fund’s four-year assistance programme, backed by some EC$14m and EC$1m from the European Union and Venezuela respectively, as one aimed at “assisting poor communities and vulnerable groups.”

The projects for SIF assistance, “are identified by the community,” Browne stressed, He was particularly pleased that pans could be provided for the area, as a means to generating income and inculcating proper attitudes, since the Questelles area was listed as one of the twenty most impoverished communities in SVG.

And Mr. Browne was careful to emphasize the need for collaboration between community and the private sector, as though to introduce Michael Mann, of Ridgeview Investment, who handed over a cheque to Starlift for the construction of the stands for the pans.

Mr. Mann challenged the youngsters to make good use of the opportunity, and pointed to the Buccament Bay Resort project, with its proposed seven bars and seven restaurants, as an opportunity for employment of indigenous musical outfits, like a steelband.

The after/evening function was chaired by Fitz Jones, Administrator of the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, who made a repeated call for those who will learn to play the pans, to care for them.

Clive ‘Bish I’ Bishop, long known for his involvement in pan in the area during the late 1960s and 1970s, summed up the enthusiasm in the area when he intimated to THE VINCENTIAN, “Give us two years and we will be challenging the (pan) status quo.”

Georgia, USA – A Riverside Artsfest special free concert presenting the music of a steel drum band will be performed in Willis Park on Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m.

The Unity Christian Steel Drum Band will be in Bainbridge on that date to perform three concerts-one at Hutto Middle School in the morning, West Bainbridge Middle School in the afternoon, and then that night in Willis Park.

The band, from Rome, Ga., consists of 20 to 25 traveling student members in grades 8-12. The instruments they play all began as 55-gallon steel oil drums.

Trinidad & Tobago – Pan enthusiasts may have to quash plans to attend two exciting pan events on the local calendar and the second major pan competitions for 2008 – Pan in the 21st Century and Pan Down Memory Lane.

The competitions may be quashed, if sole sponsors, TSTT, fails to come forward with a decision by today regarding the event.

According to Patrick Arnold, President of Pan Trinbago, the competitions that was initiated in 1998, seems to be jeopardised because of last minute arrangements by sponsors.

North Tyneside, UK – Young musicians from North Tyneside have enjoyed great success at the National Music for Youth Festival regional event held in Blaydon.

The festival, which caters for musicians under 19-years-old from across the north east saw the North Tyneside Steelband (NTSB) take on the competition by storm.

The NTSB whose average age is 15-years-old and attend Churchill, Whitley Bay, Burnside and Monkseaton high schools and the Tyne Metropolitan College performed Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag' and the Stranglers' 'Golden Brown'.

The band was conducted by Jennie Gilberg, aged just 20, who also arranged both pieces.

St. Thomas, USVI – The 2008 carnival celebrations in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands officially get underway on April 6, and really take flight with nightly events from April 12—26. Major international soca and calypso artists such as Bunji Garlin, Byron Lee and The Dragonaires and many more will be part of this year’s events. There are at least two steelband components to the celebration, one in the main parade and the other in the April 20 steelband jamboree.

Steelpan was first introduced to the island back in 1949, and carnival started in 1953. Members of Antigua’s legendary Hell’s Gate Steel Orchestra came to St. Thomas for the celebrations and some settled on the island, and began teaching the artform which proved immensely popular, to school children and all who were interested.

Jamaica – The steely notes of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Steel Panoridim Orchestra have been ringing high and clear for more than 30 years.

The steelpan group has been a fixture on the Mona, Jamaica, campus for years and is well known to those who have frequented the school and heard the group's religious nightly practice at the Students' Union. More popular in Trinidad, the steelpan evolved out of earlier musical practices of Trinidad's enslaved Africans and their descendants. Steelpan is now a staple in the cultural landscape of Trinidad, but never gained as much ground in Jamaica.

When the steelpan was introduced on campus by students Arden Williams and Jackie Martin in 1954 it was soon dismissed by the general UWI population. Determined, the duo formed the University Steel Band a year later with a membership of eight, which expanded to 14 a few months later.