Dr. Kim Johnson, director of Trinidad's Carnival Institute and author of four books and a documentary about pan, says the largest steel bands are even bigger than a symphony orchestra.

Steel pan, born on the island of Trinidad in the late 1930s, began as an outlaw instrument, hammered from milk tins, biscuit boxes, paint cans, brake drums, garbage cans -- and later, the oil ...

The steel pan is the only surviving instrument to have been invented in the 20th century. Created in the 1930s, it was the result of a unique cross between Trinidad and Tobago's energy industry (the ...