Your2ndPlace

Yesterday, in my reading, I came across a post which featured a video with Steelpan. Immediately, I was intrigued. I'm in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Steel pan/Steel band/Steel Drums originated - so I tried to leave a comment on the post, but was thwarted somehow. When I returned, my comment wasn't there while someone else's comment had navigated its way through the exotic moderation system. Oh well.

But someone on one of the main email lists of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) had posted an article about SecondLife and asked, 'has anyone heard of SecondLife'? I laughed; I'd mentioned it to people months ago but a combination of bandwidth and the idea that SecondLife was a game seemed to be a hurdle I could not overcome. At the present, I responded about SecondLife - and that I was even an author related to SecondLife. Small world, huh? Of course, bandwidth is a difficult thing - and it certainly doesn't help with the T&T presence that PayPal doesn't work well with Trinidad and Tobago- or other countries in the Caribbean. Because of all of that, I was pretty sure that the drums were not made by someone from T&T - which is a travesty, perhaps indicative of how the digital divide impacts culture negatively by not allowing participation from some - but on the other hand, that they were even in SecondLife demonstrated that at least someone found the instruments interesting. Still, the fact that two Americans had secured a US patent for "the process of formation of a Caribbean steelpan using a hydroforming press" (when the same process has been used in Trinidad for some time) has made this a sore point with the nation - and perhaps this is a perpetuation of the same thing, however unconscious. Copyright, Patent, Digital Divide... the average steel band doesn't have the resources to deal with such things.

For this article, I'd like to think that someone replicated the instrument in Second Life so that it could be seen, used, spoken of - and that is a good thing.

Because of all of this, and because I grew up near 2 pan yards, I was still interested in finding these Steel Pan in Second Life. I did a search for Steel Pan/Steel Drums/Steel band using the Second Life interface, to no avail. I tried SLBrowser, which was equally ineffective. I tried finding the secret place the Naace folk were at in the video, but that might as well be a job for James Bond. I really wondered if I would ever find these instruments, but then I decided to search SL Exchange and after about 15 minutes I found one of them: the Steel Pans 'Single Tenor Steel Pan'. It is made by Robbie Dingo - who has been busy making many instruments. Good for him! So I searched his profile in world, and in his picks arrived at 'Musical Instruments...' - at Scafell (57,140,48). He had quite a few instruments around, very nicely made, and after a brief search I found the steel pans in a vendor (which explains why I could not find it using SLBrowser). He had no classified, so it wouldn't have shown up in classifieds. He had nothing in the land description, so it didn't show up in the 'Places' search.

I picked one up, and in the top right you can see me playing it at the Your2ndPlace.com store.

I bring this all up for a few different reasons. First of all, it was good to see this particular instrument not only available, but being used (however clandestinely). Next, it is a demonstration of how culture routes around divides - especially in the context of music. That Second Life has made this routing more possible is a credit to the virtual world. And last, but by no means least - searching has a long way to go within Second Life - but a web interface handled it quite easily.

That is the story of this steel drum. For more real world information, you should read the brief history of the steel pan.

Technorati Tags: Culture Miscellaneous Op/Ed SecondLife Trinidad Trinidad and Tobago Steel band Steel pan steel drum virtual world metaverse 3d digital divide ICT