NIHERST: Caribbean Icons in STI

Anthony Williams is recognised as one of the inventors of the modern steelpan. He was responsible for the layout of the notes known as the cycle of fourths and fifths. A genius tuner, Williams also excelled as a bandleader, arranger, player and musical pioneer.

Anthony Williams was born in 1931 at the General Hospital in Port of Spain. After ten days in the hospital, he was taken to Nepal Street, St. James where he resides to this day. He was not even a teenager when he began his lifelong involvement with the steelband movement in 1943 as a pan player with the Harlem Nightingale Steelband for the first street Carnival after World War 11. From this early beginning, he went on to co-found several successful bands.

In 1951, when Williams was 20 years old, he was chosen by the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO) as one of 13 players in its historic tour to Europe. Although he was not originally chosen as a tuner, his genius was soon recognised when he tuned a tenor bass using three standard oil drums. At the time, the instrument which fulfilled this role in the steel orchestra’s harmony was the “tune boom”, which was made from two smaller biscuit drums of inferior quality metal. Williams’ use of oil drums created an instrument which surpassed the contemporary standard. During this time, he also made an epic discovery that would change the way steelpans were made, and the way the playing of steelpan music would be approached.

Williams identified the octave (range of notes) for each fundamental (last note in a harmony) on the steelpan and after years of study, calculations and experimentation, standardised the layout of the notes in circular chromatic scales. In this new creation, each note was a fourth from its neighbour in a clockwise direction (a fifth from its neighbour anticlockwise) and an octave away from the nearest note in the radial direction. This innovative configuration made the steelpan’s arrangement more orderly, making it more conducive to learning and playing and more attuned to formal musical scores. It allows for greater ease of tuning, musical interpretation and harmony.

As a bandleader and arranger, Williams was a captain of North Stars from the early 1950s and under his leadership, the band won the first Steelband Panorama Competition in 1963. North Stars won the competition two more times, winning titles in 1964 and 1966. Williams created complex introductions to calypsoes by utilising key modulations and experimenting with arpeggios. He was the first tuner to compose complete tunes especially for the steelband. The band also recorded the famous album Ivory and Steel with celebrated pianist, Winifred Atwell, a groundbreaking project in which steelpan and piano harmonised to play the classics. They performed around the world, even landing a spot on the famous television programme, the Ed Sullivan Show.

Williams was the first bandleader to put pans on stands (in 1954) and later on wheels (in 1956), which allowed for mobile road bands. He was also the first person to make a pan from flat sheet metal as opposed to a drum and the first to make an “oversized pan”. In this regard, he was way ahead of his time. Williams also designed the spider-web pan (so named because of the appearance of its playing surface), which has been described as a mathematical triumph. Each ascending note in this instrument is precisely one eighth of an inch smaller than the preceding note.

Although he spent most of his career in solitary experimentation and research, Williams also tested many of his ideas at the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) in the first scientific study of the instrument in the mid 1970s. He was eventually offered a government job as Steelband Development Officer in the Ministry of Youth Affairs and held this post until his official retirement in 1993.

Anthony Williams - Steel Pan Innovator

Anthony Williams
- Steel Pan Innovator