People’s Hall of Fame for bringing the steel drum to New York
City The steel pan, some claim, is the only widely played
instrument to be invented in the 20th century. During World War
II, when Trinidad’s noted carnival was banned, the first
rudimentary steel pans with one or two notes were invented. It
started with one musician who hit the pan so hard he made a
dent. Musicians discovered that dents made notes, then scales,
and in each successive year, pan makers devised ways to add new
sounds to the drums. “Everybody took part in improving the pan,”
Rudy says, “so everybody can claim they had a role in its
invention.” Rudy was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and took
part in carnival and steel band music as a youngster. He moved
to New York in 1949, anxious to pursue his music and teach New
Yorkers about this new instrument. He heard about some large
empty metal drums at a Brooklyn hospital, and in a friend’s van
swiped several. Hammering dents in one of the pans in his Harlem
apartment, he was doused with w