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Brandywine Hundred be warned: it’s going to get noisy this summer.
Come August, the Wilmington Montessori School’s summer steel drum workshop will begin and a classroom full of kids age 7 and up will be learning the finer points of Caribbean clamoring.
But the shiny drums can be used to teach more than simply the principles of noisemaking, said instructor Atiba Fields, and one of the first lessons students will hear is an environmental one.
“I like to consider steel drums examples of recycling,” said Fields.
The instruments, first born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in the late 1940s, were made from discarded oil drums left by an American naval base set up at the end of World War II, Fields explained.
Trinidad takes its musical celebrations pretty seriously, particularly Carnival, and as people began to bang on steel drums as a way to keep rhythm during the festivities, they learned to create different tones with the drum, he said.
“Because of the need for music, steel drums were invented by accident,” he said.
Bang on a piece of steel for a while and it bends, he explained, and musicians quickly learned to create a host of different tones from the indentations on top of the drums. In fact, the drums have 12 keys, the same as a piano or a guitar, and can be used to play two-and-a-half octaves.
Over time, the best techniques for making a steel drum was hammered out, too, though the instruments are still built by hand, he said.
“Making a steel drum is about geometry, math and physics – taking a flat surface and stretching the metal,” he said.
Students will learn all about it – from how to pound out the indentation to the method for evenly dividing the drum head to mark the different notes. Creating a drum is the key to appreciating the nuances that make its sound so unique, Fields said.
The biggest challenge of playing the steel drum is training the brain and body to work together and use mallets in both hands to evenly play the instrument, he said. It takes plenty of concentration and discipline to play solo, but add in the other instruments in the steel drum orchestra and things can get complicated, he said.
“Playing a steel drum is all about thinking,” he said. “How well can you take direction? How well can you focus?”
Brandywine Hundred be warned: it’s going to get noisy this summer.
Come August, the Wilmington Montessori School’s summer steel drum workshop will begin and a classroom full of kids age 7 and up will be learning the finer points of Caribbean clamoring.
But the shiny drums can be used to teach more than simply the principles of noisemaking, said instructor Atiba Fields, and one of the first lessons students will hear is an environmental one.
“I like to consider steel drums examples of recycling,” said Fields.
The instruments, first born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad in the late 1940s, were made from discarded oil drums left by an American naval base set up at the end of World War II, Fields explained.
Trinidad takes its musical celebrations pretty seriously, particularly Carnival, and as people began to bang on steel drums as a way to keep rhythm during the festivities, they learned to create different tones with the drum, he said.
“Because of the need for music, steel drums were invented by accident,” he said.
Bang on a piece of steel for a while and it bends, he explained, and musicians quickly learned to create a host of different tones from the indentations on top of the drums. In fact, the drums have 12 keys, the same as a piano or a guitar, and can be used to play two-and-a-half octaves.
Over time, the best techniques for making a steel drum was hammered out, too, though the instruments are still built by hand, he said.
“Making a steel drum is about geometry, math and physics – taking a flat surface and stretching the metal,” he said.
Students will learn all about it – from how to pound out the indentation to the method for evenly dividing the drum head to mark the different notes. Creating a drum is the key to appreciating the nuances that make its sound so unique, Fields said.
The biggest challenge of playing the steel drum is training the brain and body to work together and use mallets in both hands to evenly play the instrument, he said. It takes plenty of concentration and discipline to play solo, but add in the other instruments in the steel drum orchestra and things can get complicated, he said.
“Playing a steel drum is all about thinking,” he said. “How well can you take direction? How well can you focus?”
Another lesson Fields wants to ensure the students take home is that invention doesn’t necessarily need to happen in a laboratory. The people of Trinidad invented a drum completely by accident, with nothing but a love of music and a bit of creativity, he said.
The workshop students will get their chance to invent their own instruments using found objects, Fields said, and he hopes it sparks their own creativity.
“I want the kids to come up with their own ideas of what an instrument is,” he said.
The camp will introduce the students to the island of Trinidad through one of its most unique instruments, Fields said, giving suburban kids a glimpse of a very colorful world.
Ultimately, Fields is hoping to drum up interest in a culture many of the students may not have experienced.
