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Anthony Williams was born in 1931 in Port of
Spain and grew up at Nepal Street, St. James, where he still
resides. In the early 1940s, he began a lifelong
involvement with the steelband movement. He played with
Harlem Nightingale Steelband at age 12 for the first street
Carnival after World War II and subsequently co-founded several
bands including North Stars, the most successful band of its
era.
In 1951 he participated in the Trinidad All
Steel Percussion Orchestra's historic tour to Britain and parts
of Europe. His genius as a tuner was recognised when he
tuned a tenor bass using three standard oil drums. He
created this new instrument to replace the "tune boom" which was
made from two smaller biscuit drums of inferior quality metal.
At this time he also made an epic discovery and identified the
octave within the note itself.
Williams captained North Stars from the early
1950s on overseas tours and to winner's row at many local
competitions, including the first Steelband Panorama Competition
in 1963. He created complex introductions to calypsoes
utilising key modulations and experimenting with arpeggios.
He was the first tuner to compose complete tunes especially for
the steelband and recorded the album "Ivory and Steel" with
celebrated pianist Winifred Atwell, a pioneer quality recording
of the steelband playing the classics.
Williams was the first to put pans on wheels
allowing for mobile road bands in which pan men could play
several pans at the same time. He was also the first to
make a pan from flat sheet metal as opposed to a drum and the
first to make an "oversized pan".
He tested many of his ideas at the Caribbean
Industrial Research Institute in the first scientific study of
the instrument in the mid-1970s. Following years of study,
calculations and experimentation, he designed the layout of the
notes, arranged in circular chromatic scales such that each note
is a fourth from its neighbour in a clockwise direction (a fifth
from its neighbour anti-clockwise), and an octave away from the
nearest note in the radial direction. The arrangement,
which allows for greater ease of tuning, musical interpretation
and harmony, was a revolutionary innovation and is virtually the
standard format today.
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