Steel Band Music Videos

Steel drum band for hire

Hear studio track samples in the Solid Steel Band shop

See 'live' steel band performances of Solid Steel in the player to the right.

History

I started the band in 1986, having served my ‘apprenticeship’ with my father Max’s band, ‘The Cherry Pickers’. Max was one of the first of his generation to play pan professionally in this country. I think I may be the first second generation British-born musician to run a professional steel band, but please don’t sue me if you know differently!

The band’s personnel has changed in subtle ways over the years with musicians taking time off for reasons as diverse as recording commitments, tours with pop bands, and parenthood! Through all this time, it has always been my policy to employ the best musicians. Miguel Barradas, Mark Cherrie, Michael Bailey, Francis Hylton, David Morris, Dennis Davis and Tom Alleyne have all played extensively with the band over the years and they all share very important qualities for me. They’re musicians first and pan players second. They all play other instruments as well as pan and they all understand that to be a good musician is as much about listening as it is about playing! Playing in a small steel band like Solid Steel is a great outlet for people with this level of ability. It’s not something I particularly regret but I never had any experience of playing in a steel ‘orchestra’. It always seemed to me that with the big bands you get to play the arranger’s music, but with the small band you get to express yourself more and improvise.

Our Style Of Music

Defining your own music can be a veritable minefield. If you differ greatly from your audience’s perception of it, you run the risk of sounding pretentious! On the other hand, if other bands similar to your own are keen to raise the profile of their music and you define it in less ambitious terms than they do, you are also open to criticism from your peers. But, I won’t let this deter me!

Solid Steel’s style of music is best defined as ‘Caribbean Folk’. Some people latterly like to label us as simply ‘World Music’- but that’s just I-Tunes labelling and more than a little lazy!. Regardless of what other steel bands choose to play at their engagements, we like to include a lot of traditional Caribbean material, much of it ‘calypso’ which is the national folk music of Trinidad & Tobago, some (but not all!) of which will be familiar to the average UK audience. As a fully-instrumental and unplugged acoustic steel band the melodies that we play need to be long and strong and our own traditional Caribbean music fits the bill.

Of course, we play other melodic music which we also love, particularly Pop and Latin American standards, but there’s a lot of great songs that don’t have particularly strong melodies yet have catchy ‘hooks’ and are very strong rhythmically. We like to play this music too, just not as an all- acoustic steel band trio without vocals, please!

Here’s a sample list of some of the tunes we play:-

Calypso/Soca:

Hot Hot Hot -Arrow

Miss Tourist -Kitchener

Who Let The Dogs Out? -Anslem Douglas/Baha Men

Sugar Bum Bum -Lord Kitchener

Obeah Wedding -The Mighty Sparrow

Soul Limbo (Test Cricket Theme) -Booker T & The MG’s

Brown Skin Gal -Traditional

Mango Walk -Traditional

Bahia Girl -David Rudder

Dollar Whine -Colin Lucas

St. Thomas -Sonny Rollins

Linstead Market -Traditional

Matilda -Harry Belafonte

Brown Girl In The Ring -Traditional/Boney M

Latin Standards (Boleros, Cha Chas, Merengues etc):

Brazil

Peanut Vendor

Guantanamera

Perfidia

South Of The Border

Quando, Quando, Quando

Samba De Orfeu

‘Island’ or ‘Tourist’ Music:

Yellow Bird -Harry Belafonte

Island In The Sun -Harry Belafonte

Jamaica Farewell -Harry Belafonte

Reggae/ Reggae-Pop/Ska:

Stir it up -Bob Marley

Three Little Birds - Bob Marley

One Love -Bob Marley

Baby I Love Your Way -Big Mountain -

Like Glue -Sean Paul

Red, Red, Wine -UB40

Rivers Of Babylon -Traditional/Boney M

Monkey Man -Toots and the Maytals

Israelites -Desmond Dekker

Soul/Jazz:

Summertime -Gershwin

Don’t Know Why -Norah Jones

Breezin’ -George Benson

But regardless of repertoire, the main reason I would always describe Solid Steel as a Caribbean Folk band is due to our instrumentation. Because, whatever we choose to play the appeal of our music doesn’t depend on the familiarity of the songs we play. It’s in the sound.

Our Instruments

The instruments we play are Caribbean ‘steel pans’ or ‘steel drums’, the national modern folk instrument of Trinidad & Tobago and arguably the most dynamic new instruments in world music. . Many players and administrators within ‘The Steelband Movement’ are striving to achieve a level of recognition for the instrument that would place it on a par status-wise with instruments that were developed many centuries ago. I applaud their efforts and support their goals, but whilst I wouldn’t want pan players (and yes, the term is preferable to ‘steel drum players’ and the awful ‘pannists’ in my opinion) to remain as eternally marginalised as bagpipe players, we have to be realistic and understand that the ‘steel drum’ or ‘steel pan’ is still a folk novelty for many people and that it will take some time yet before this is likely to change. Excellence in the playing and the sound of the steel bands can only help to move things forward in this respect. Solid Steel’s steel drums would be instruments played in any steel band, but sadly, we as a band are only one of a few who can be relied upon to play only the finest and most beautifully tuned steel drums worthy of professional steel band entertainment. We’re often asked if we make and tune our own drums. The answer is ‘no’. We give that job to the experts who specilalise in doing it. Most pan players aren’t great tuners and vice versa. There are still too many steel bands playing with old, out-of-tune pans. We would never find this acceptable.

As a 3-piece steel band we are committed to exclusively using steel drums in our band, but if hired as a larger steel band we augment them with some other non-steel band instruments as and when required.

Is the size of the band important? Well, only a minimum trio size offers all the elements of melody (provided by the tenor pan, mainly), harmony (provided by the second pan, mainly), bass and percussion (provided by the bass pan player who also plays maracas, tambourine and assorted hand percussion, entirely!) required for a full sound. Clients should be aware that booking any steel pan soloist or even a steel duo is a little like booking a one-armed pianist. Ours would be a very talented one-armed pianist, but he’d still only have one arm!