Pan pioneer Elliot “Ellie” Mannette died on August 29, 2018, at age 91. As an artisan, his steel drums have been displayed in such places as the Smithsonian Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Art Gallery. As an educator, his leadership has helped to establish successful steel bands in universities, schools, and community programs all across the United States.

Mannette was born in San Souci, Trinidad in 1926. He began his musical journey at age 11 in preparation for Carnival as a member of Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Created by Alexander Ford, this band of steel featured performers banging away on garbage can tops, grease barrels, biscuit drums, and paint tins. From approximately 1939–41, Mannette performed with his own band, the Oval Boys. Around the same time, Mannette, who always had an interest in metals and machine-shop work, observed other bands and performers producing tonal qualities on biscuit tins. Mannette was fascinated with the ability to produce four or five concave pitches from a convex surface and tried to replicate the sounds himself. In his “trial-and-error methodology,” Mannette produced a small drum that had six or seven convex-shaped notes on a concave sunken surface. His experimentation with a concave sunken surface proved to provide a better tonal basis.

World War II interrupted Carnival between 1941 and 1945 but allowed Mannette a chance to continue experimentation on his drum. Also during this time, the Oval Boys became known as the Invaders—a name Mannette credits to the commandos of England. Mannette decided to use a 35-gallon oil barrel for his drum, allowing him nine pitches. Mannette nicknamed his drum the “barracuda” because it, just as the fish, represented the “baddest” on the island.

Mannette continued to experiment with stretching the tonal range of the drum. By early 1946, he secretly began building a lead pan out of a 55-gallon barrel. He unveiled the finished product while a contestant on the Scouting for Talent show. Mannette stunned the crowd and won the contest with his new, bigger drum capable of 14 pitches.

Mannette continued to explore and enhance his steel pans. Other innovations in steel drum design that are credited to Mannette include Double Seconds (1952), Double Guitars (1954), Triple Cellos (1956), Tenor Basses (1960), and Quaduet (1996).

Mannette first came to the U.S. briefly in 1963 to help develop the United States Navy Steel Band program. He returned in 1967 to work with inner-city youth in New York City as well as to tune for his friend, Murray Narell. By 1971, Mannette met James Leyden, a music teacher in New York, who wanted Mannette to tune some recently purchased drums. In the process, Mannette learned about concert pitch and the strobe tuner. This allowed him to improve the tonal quality of the drums through experimentation with the fundamental pitch and harmonics of each note.

Mannette achieved an artist-in-residency status at West Virginia University during the early 1990s. His work along with the guidance of his business partner, Kaethe George, at WVU and Mannette Steel Drums Ltd. trained many performers, builders, and tuners through workshops and apprentice programs.

For his work in the furtherance of indigenous culture, Mannette was recognized in 1999 with a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment of the Arts. Mannette traveled to Trinidad in October of 2000 where he received the Trinidad and Tobago Chaconia Silver Medal from the Minister of Culture. He also received the Honorary Doctorate in Letters from the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine Campus. He was elected to the PAS Hall of Fame in 2003.

Read Ellie Mannette’s PAS Hall of Fame profile here.