ELLIE MANNETTE
INVENTS NEW PAN
FOR SOLOISTS
By Terry Joseph
Sunday Express
June 4, 2000
Page 9
Celebrated music pioneer, Elliott "Ellie" Mannette, has
developed a new pan, one that broadens the range currently available to solo
artistes, by offering them several more notes than were hitherto available from
a single instrument.
Called
the Quaduet, the four-piece instrument even exceeds the combined potential of
today's most popular choices of solo pans, the double seconds (contralto) and
tenor (soprano) pan - and then adds some.
At
its high end, the Quaduet not only matches the most popular configuration of
the tenor pan, peaking at F, but also goes right down the scale to A Flat, in
the octave below the current bottom end of the double seconds format.
Speaking
from West Virginia to the Sunday Express about his latest invention and
other developments, Mannette, who in 1960 created the very double seconds he
has now upstaged, said the idea behind the new pan is to give players the
ability to do more intricate tunes.
"With the Quaduet," Mannette explained, "the player will
no longer have to alter the key of songs that have a very wide range, or
transpose from original notes where an octave expires."
The
Quaduet also offers the soloist another significant physical advantage over
existing choices of instrument.
Mannette's new four-piece pan is played with a single pair of mallets,
which, he assures, deliver both the bass notes and soprano sounds with equal
sincerity.
Mannette,
73, denied a recent newspaper report that he plans to retire this year. A founder of the legendary Invaders Steel
Orchestra of Woodbrook, he is artist-in-residence and an adjunct professor in
the College of Music at West Virginia University (WVU). He has been involved with the development of
the instrument for the past 55 years and is also credited with pan's most
lasting innovation, the changing of the shape of its playing surface from
convex to concave.
Mannette's
pans are on display at many of the world's finest museums, including the
Smithsonian Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Contemporary Art
Gallery. His instruments are also used
in hundreds of schools, colleges, and private and community programmes in the
United States and elsewhere.
Since
1991, he has been working at WVU's steelband studies programme, which teaches
all aspects of the steel drum, including tuning and construction courses. Among the innovations in pan
making-technique currently being tested in the programme, is the replacement of
sledgehammers by the use of water-pressure to sink drums.
He
plans to come home in October, to showcase some of the results of his research
over the past 30 years. He is not
however one of the researchers listed to speak at the First World Conference on
the Science and Technology of the Steelpan, which takes pace from October 16 to
18 at the Crowne plaza (formerly Holiday Inn) Hotel.
The
Sunday Express understands that the October trip comes as a result of a
personal request from Prime Minister Basdeo Panday and will involve an
interface with the Culture Ministry and the University of the West Indies. "I am bringing a group with me to show
some of our techniques," Mannette said.
"They may not be better than anyone else, but they are great. They want to come down and play and work on
some drums."
Mannette,
whose work in promulgating indigenous culture last September earned him a US
Arts Endowment Award, America's most prestigious in the field (which came with a
US $20,000 grant); is equally proud of the students in his programme at
WVU. "They are all musicians. They play pan and build instruments equally
well," he said.
"The
students are also working on projects to come up with ideas for improving the
sound of the lead tenors and there are other experiments going on that are very
interesting," Mannette said. He has
turned out 78 pan makers to date and currently has eight tuners and a number of
builders in the programme, of which 15 students are doing the work for graduate
studies credits.
"I
know people back home criticize me and accuse me of selling out Trinidad culture,
but what we are doing instead is spreading it," Mannette said. "Nobody can steal the credit for pan
anymore. What we have here is the
advantage of technology and people who put money into research. At home, no one wants to spend money on
experiments, so if you are interested in development, you have to work in an
environment that affords that."
"I
am not saying that I am better than anyone else and certainly I know how people
in the pan fraternity are very sensitive, so I really do not want to step on
anyone's toes."
"But
I feel that the home of pan is not moving fast enough to ensure that Trinidad
and Tobago remains the leader," Mannette said.