Jim Tatum/Independent

Emma Futrell (left) and Hannah Simmons play leads in Linda Versprille’s advanced steel drum band.

Jim Tatum/Independent

Linda Versprille is a study in concentration during a recent performance.

People who have heard music teacher Linda Versprille’s students go through their paces on Trinidad Steel Pan drums – at Piccolo Spoleto, on television, and most recently, during African American Heritage Days at North Charleston’s Wannamaker Park – most likely enjoyed themselves, but may not have realized just how unique her program is.

Trinidad Steel Drums are not just a novelty of the islands, reminiscent of cruise ships and Jimmy Buffett concerts. In fact, steel drums are not just another genre, they’re an emerging musical technology; the steel drum is the only acoustic musical instrument to develop in the last 150 years, Versprille said.

The drums are fairly expensive and they have to be hand tuned by skilled craftsmen.

“They’re tuned with hammers,” she said. “There’s only a couple of people in this country who can do it.”

Versprille, who teaches strings, band, piano – and steel drums – in the Berkeley County School District’s STEP program, said she discovered steel drums by accident. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music with background in piano and strings, Versprille said the discovery took her by surprise, then by a storm.

“If someone had told me this would be my passion, I would have laughed and said, ‘no way,’” she said. “But this is so much fun!”

More important, the spirit of innovation inspires and motivates Versprille, she said.

Versprille formed her first student band, the Cainhoy Steel Tigers, in 2003 at Cainhoy High School. The Steel Tigers became a very successful program, ultimately landing gigs several years at Piccolo Spoleto.

Last year, she said she moved from Cainhoy High; she teaches at Cane Bay High School and at Sangaree Middle School and has two programs, one for beginners and one more advanced, known as Panjamdrum. It is the advanced band that people see performing around the area; the band will play Piccolo Spoleto May 23.

The steel drums were invented in Trinidad in the mid 20th century. The first drums were made from old biscuit tins and paint cans, instruments that basically gave off a single tone.

But a man named Ellie Mannette changed that, she said.

Today, the drums are tuned at different octaves and have different tones, from the deep bass drums, which she plays, to the high range spider lead drums.

“He is regarded as the father of steel drums,” Versprille said. “He was the one who really moved it all forward.”

In 1945, while a young man in Trinidad, Mannette made the first modern multiple toned steel drum from a 55-gallon steel container.

Since that time, he has been at the forefront of the entire steel drum movement. In fact, he is credited with inventing most of the instruments in the genre, she said.

“He actually came to Berkeley County in 1961, to St. Stephen, to build steel drums for the U.S. Navy, who was trying to form a steel drum band,” she said.

Unfortunately, Mannette’s first impression of America was not the best; he was deeply offended by the overt racism he encountered at that time, and after he finished his work for the Navy, he went back to Trinidad for several years, Versprille said.

Eventually, Mannette emigrated, this time settling in New York. Ultimately, he wound up in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he is Artist-In-Residence at West Virginia University.

And it was there, at a conference she decided to attend on the spur of the moment that Versprille first connected and fell in love with the steel drums.

“You have to understand, the program I attended is taught by the premiere steel drum musicians in the world,” she said.

In addition to Mannette, such performers and composers as Robert Greenridge, who is the steel drummer for Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, Andy and Jeff Narell, and Alan Lightner, are connected with the program.

“These people were my teachers; they are the best in the field,” she said.

She has also commissioned several musical works from several of these people, as they are the tops in the field of writing music for steel drums.

“We try to do emerging, original steel band music,” she said. “Just think, if Mozart and Bach had not had anyone commissioning their music, where would we be today?”

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