If you stand in the center of Carl Chase’s classroom, you’re going to want to dance. You may even wish you were dancing on a white sandy beach with aqua water lapping against the shores of a Caribbean island.
That’s the power of the steel-drum classes Chase teaches at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. While other kids are studying violin, flute, or even math and English, Chase’s students are banging out “Silver Bells” on the bottoms of industrial drums.
“You don’t really need any musical skill to play it,” says Eliah Lux, a 15-year-old sophomore from Penobscot. “You just learn the patterns and play. It’s mellow. It’s calypso.”
Because of Chase, Blue Hill has become the Calypso Capital of Maine. Little children play pans. Teens play pans. Their parents play. There’s a community group, a professional group.
And Chase is the Pan Man. He even drives a vehicle with the license plate “PAN VAN.”
The pan craze was born in Hancock County in the 1970s when Chase heard the music during a sailing trip in Trinidad, where pan playing is like a national sport. A music major in his college years at Harvard University, Chase quickly picked up the beat, took out a newspaper ad to find others who were interested, and soon formed the Atlantic Clarion Steel Band. He eventually returned to Trinidad — where the instrument was born in the 1940s — to learn more about making, tuning, and playing steel drums.
As Chase has progressed, he has caused no small amount of pan-o-mania in Hancock County, where he summered and then took up full-time residency more than 20 years ago. Atlantic Clarion, which has six members, including Chase’s son, Nigel, has regular professional gigs throughout New England. And Chase’s community band, Flash in the Pan, has 25 people who play summertime concerts in the streets.
Panner Mariah Hughs, a bookseller in Blue Hill, had originally signed up for an adult education refresher course in violin. During class breaks, she heard the steel drum band and decided to sign up for a lesson.
“I was just absolutely bowled over by the sound,” says Hughs. “It’s joyful music. It’s music you simply cannot sit down and listen to. I said, `Forget the violin. I’ll never be able to play the damn thing anyway.’ ”
Now Hughs plays with the community band and her son plays with an elementary school group called the Rhythm Rockets.
In addition to his performing spots, Chase also teaches several sections of curriculum classes as well as evening adult education classes at George Stevens. When he pitched the programs three years ago, he knew it would appeal to young people.
“One of the things about this instrument is that you don’t need to approach it through the traditional route,” says Chase. “I have kids playing a simple tune within a half hour.”
Madeleine Goodman, who is 15, has never played a musical instrument before. In class, she follows a list of letters A through G that corresponds with indentations marked by the same letters on the face of the drum. Holding little wooden sticks covered on the tips with rubber surgical tubing, she keeps the beat precisely. She stands next to a door which has been opened to cool off the students who have worked up a sweat on a temperate day in a warm band room. When a truck drives by, Madeleine follows it with her eyes, her rhythm completely uninterrupted.
In front of her, three girls play tenor pans. They chew gum. Their hair falls forward as they clip off an arrangement of “Miss Mary.” Their feet tap in unison to a synthesized snare drum that serves as a metronome. Another student combines a funky shoulder swing with glances out the window to Blue Hill, but he bops away on a jazz piece that can be heard in every nearby room.
The bodaciously loud noise is not a problem, says school nurse Jill Baroody, whose office is across the hall from the steel-band room — except at the beginning of the school year when the students are just learning to play and pandemonium rules.
Throughout the class, Chase strolls, tapping out rhythms on a cow bell, sitting in for a song, or giving out tips.
The actual playing is not hard, the students agree, but going to the next class, says Madeleine, is “kind of a difficult thing. You’re active in here and then you’re just sitting around.”
At his home in the coastal woods of Brooksville, Chase has a studio filled with barrels in various stages of construction. He used to get them from a dump, but now he has them made to his specifications at a steel-drum manufacturing plant in Massachusetts. Wearing ear phones, Chase bangs on the drums with a rubber-covered hammer and other tools until the indentations and grooves create tones. He uses a wooden template to form the pitches of individual drums. Some, such as basses, have as few as three notes. The high tenor pans have as many as 29 notes. Once completed, the pans are hung by cord on a metal stand.
Chase’s hand-pounded pans range in price from $575 to more than $1,000 (for those that are chrome plated). Students in Chase’s courses play pans owned by the school, but Chase’s passion has spread, and many of his students and band members own their own pans.
Later this month, the school bands will play at Bangor Mall. In January, George Stevens will feature the school bands for a fund-raiser. And in May, the Pan New England Festival, including bands from other states, will be held in Blue Hill.
The interest in the instrument is, according to Chase, pandemic.
“Pan and happy are words that come out together all the time,” says Chase. “People hear this music and they smile.”
Students from the George Stevens Academy steel bands will perform 2-4 p.m. Dec. 18 at Bangor Mall.
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