pete seeger and steel drums 1956

Pete Seeger and Steel Drums

Seeger’s role as a steel drum advocate did not begin as steel drum consultant to the U.S. Navy Steel Band. Although the exact point at which Seeger first encountered steel drums is not known, we do know that his interest predated his work with Gallery and probably began in earnest during the winter of 1955, when Seeger started regularly performing on a steel drum as part of his folk instrumental repertoire. In January 1956, Seeger and his wife Toshi traveled to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and made the sixteen-minute film Music from Oil Drums, featuring Kim Loy Wong and the Highlanders Steel Orchestra. The film, released by Folkways Records in 1956, captures the entire process of making a steel drum over the course of one week. In the film, Seeger exposed the economic and cultural reality of steel drum makers by shooting the living conditions of lower-class Trinidadians. A contemporary review of the film by Caribbean music scholar Daniel Crowley praised Seeger’s efforts:
At a time when such commercial movies as “Fire Down Below” and “Island in the Sun” are seriously misrepresenting West Indian music and dance forms, Seeger promises the steel bandsmen that he will use their instrument to “tell the true story of Trinidad, as true as I can tell it, wherever I go.” Those who have seen his engaging stage presentation of the steel drum and its music know how well he has kept his word. (1959)
Seeger—as in his work with American folk and protest music—raised public awareness of this new musical genre. He advocated for the music and culture of Trinidad in his lectures while on tour in the United States during 1957 and helped start short-lived steel bands at UCLA and with his family and neighbors in New York.

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