This semester, the Music Department at the University of Wisconsin - Superior has introduced a new band that follows the beat of a different drum-the steel drum, to be exact.

“The music is fun; everybody likes it. It’s happy and dance-type music,” said Dr. Brett Jones. Dr. Jones is the Assistant Professor of Percussion in the Music Department and is conducting the new band. Before coming to UWS, Dr. Jones taught at a two-year college in Texas, where he started a steel drum band.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “It was a way to bring about a lot of exposure…to the department. It’s also a good way to expose the music students or the people in the area to a different style of music from Trinidad…and incorporate world culture.”

The steel drum originated in Trinidad and Tobago, an island in the southern Caribbean. During the 1800s, there was an activity which the locals took part in called calenda, a type of fighting involving sticks. Drums and music often accompanied these fights, but the drumming was outlawed when the fighting became too frenzied to control. At that point, anything which could be used to make music was made into an instrument, from hollow reeds to oil drums from a nearby airbase. As these oil drums became more and more dented, the drummers noticed that they gave off different pitches in different areas; thus, the steel drum was brought into being.

Steel drums today are still made with oil drums-technically, the correct term for the instrument is a steel pan rather than drum. Drum simply refers to the material it is made with. In order to make the drum, an order must be put in to the drum maker, who makes it by hand, carefully tuning the drum. The entire process takes some time.

“This is my third year here. My first year was when we first started…making it work. And the drums…we ordered them over a year ago,” Dr. Jones explained. “We put the order in with the maker, and he has all these other orders for other people…and then he sends them in to the shop to get chromed, and then he gets them back to be re-tuned. It’s a process.”

It’s also a process to get used to the drum itself in terms of playing it. Unlike some instruments such as the marimba or piano, which are set up chromatically, the drum is set up in the order of the circle of fifths. However, Dr. Jones said the students are getting used to the instrument quite well.

“We’re starting with easy stuff that’s fun to play and sounds good but it isn’t that hard…I’m easing them into it,” he said.

Dr. Jones would like to thank Chancellor Julius Erlenbach, Provost Christopher Markwood, and Jan Hanson for providing the resources to purchase the drums and their instrumental roles in the making of the band.

The new steel drum band will hold their first concert on April 28th along with the percussion ensemble.