steelpan
Pluralsteelpans
- 1A tuned percussion instrument made from a steel drum, originally developed in Trinidad and played with rubber-tipped sticks.
Like a metal drum reborn as a melody instrument, where each dented spot rings out a different note.
He tuned each steelpan carefully before the concert began.
The orchestra arranged its steelpans in a wide semicircle.
Similarpan
Note
The name joins two plain English words, steel and pan, for an instrument hammered from the head of a steel barrel. Its concave surface is shaped into separate note areas. Players often shorten it to pan, and steel drum is the common outsider's name. One plays on the steelpan, as the boys in Claire Adam's Golden Child (2019) do, tapping notes and practicing rolling the sticks.
- 2A style of music built around the bright, ringing sound of tuned steel drums.
Like jazz growing out of one city's clubs, this sound grew from the streets of Trinidad's carnival.
The radio station plays steelpan every Sunday afternoon.
Steelpan blends lively melodies with driving Caribbean rhythms.
Note
Here the word names the music rather than the object, and it takes no article and no plural. You listen to steelpan, but you play a steelpan, because the instrument itself is countable. The music is rooted in Trinidadian calypso and carnival. Its arrangements spread melody, harmony and rhythm across pans of differing range.
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Origin
The word is formed from "steel" plus "pan".