Beating from the Heart

Steel a glimpse of a more artistic pan

Comments (0) By Patrice Elizabeth Grell Yursik Thursday, Mar 15 2007

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It’s kind of hard to believe that anyone in the world is still unfamiliar with the steel pan. The instrument was created in Trinidad and Tobago over seventy years ago. It is the only acoustic instrument to be invented in the Twentieth cCentury. And still pannist Doug Walker gets the most inane questions from curious onlookers. “People ask me at least once a week if I’ve invented this instrument. Or how did I come up with it. I don’t even know how to respond to a question like that,” he says.

Walker spent years playing the kind of music that vacationing tourists expect to hear from the instrument. “I basically sold out for ten years, and I can’t do it anymore. It’s been a slippery slope trying to please tourists and still please myself as a musician,” Walker says. His new CD, Jazz Pan, features original compositions that take the sounds of steel away from the sandy beaches and deep into Walker’s soul. Come out and support the steel tonight at Doug Walker’s CD release party at Jazid.
Fri., March 16, 9 p.m.