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Musician: George Brade Location: Holloway, London Instruments: Steel Drums Music: Montserratian/ Steelband
'I make and tune all the pans for the band. I make them just from ordinary oil drums. Each pan takes me about two weeks to make'
How I came to this music:
I've been playing music from about the age of eight. I grew up in Montserrat, in a small village called Salim. When I was small, they used to bring these old cement drums and then we got the idea of playing them from Trinidad. Steel band music originated in Trinidad and then it spread right across all the islands of the West Indies. Originally in Montserrat we had our own tradition of string band music. It's a bit like the Irish dance music with the ukulele. Then we started to get the oil drums and do our own steel band music. But we made it our own by giving it some of that Montserrat influence, mixed it up with guitars and so on. On the Island different villages have their own band, so we always challenge each other to see who has the best.
I came to England in 1958 when I was 15 years old. At first I was living in Lancashire and they sent me to study music at the Polytechnic there. I started out playing guitar but then I moved on to the pan. I also learnt to blow trumpet. In the sixties I moved to Birmingham and we started to make a band with the pans.
