Playing the steel pans is more than pounding a wooden stick on a metal drum. It is an art form from Trinidad and Tobago, steeped in almost 200 years of history. During a free performance recently ...

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 ...