About the Steel Drums

The Steel Drum, or "Pan", is a unique instrument, and one of the most recently invented! It is a skillfully hammered 55-gallon oil barrel which has been carefully tuned by hand to produce musical tones. The Steel Drum carries the full chromatic range of notes, and can produce just about any type of music you can think of!

The drums were developed on the Caribbean island of Trinidad during the early years of the 20th century. The British colonial government had outlawed hand drums (conga drums, etc.), forcing the people of Trinidad to invent their own substitutes from whatever they could find.

Old rubbish tins, car parts and stolen garbage can lids formed the first "Iron Bands", which led to the realization that a dented section of a barrel could produce a tone. Careful refinement of this amazing discovery produced the modern Steel Drum instrument and the large orchestral Steel Drum Bands, a source of national pride to the people of Trinidad.

The Steel Drums played by the Toucans are all hand-made to their exact specifications by Trinidadian panmaker, Otto "Boots' Faustin.

Boots played in the early steel bands (notably The Renegades and the Invaders) as a youth in Trinidad, and moved to North America in 1969 where he began making Steel Drums for bands in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.

Boots is just one of a handful of Trinidadian Steel Drum makers who have helped to make this instrument popular world-wide. Go Boots!