We have two different stories in parallel: (1) An engineer named Helmut went to the
Trinidadien Carnival in 1974. There he got the first contact to steeldrums and steelbands. He got very interested and excited. He came back in 1975, where he bought a tenor pan. Not only facinated by the music itself, but also interested in building and tuning of the instruments, he got very incited by the steeldrummers, who told him only they were able to build and play the pan. So back in Berlin he began to look for
appropiate barrels and a place to store them. He found such a place at a repair shop, where he began to build pans in 1975. He did that for several months. After that work he had generated app. 50 pans. He came back to Trinidad in 1977. After that carnival he wanted to start playing on the pans. (2) Gene, an American grown up in Florida, lived in Berlin, where he studied music science, like his
friend Eckehardt. They were interested in steel drums as well, Gene knew them from Florida. Also they worked on them during their studies. They tried to build some instruments in 1977, but they had problems. As Helmut looked for some players, he met Gene and Eckehardt at the music science institut at the Freie Universität Berlin. Then they searched for other players at the local newspapers. The steelband was found on June 26th, 1977. They had 8 members.
Now they needed a name. One suggestion
was “Pumpkin Pie”. This name was rejected, since panwomen and panmen are “hard” and not as soft as a pie, right? Somehow they came to “Tin Pan Alley Steelband”. That’s a great wordplay: We have “Tin”, which has a certain relation to the drums. We have “Pan”, which is the official designation of the steeldrum. And we have “Tin Pan Alley”, a street in New York City, where a lot of music companies were situated. That was it, the name was born. Since
Gene is a musician and music teacher as well, he was able to arrange original calypsos from Trinidad for our steelband. The first gig was at a party of a swimming club. This was somehow strange, because they had to play right after a rock band and the audience was not interested of a steelband (“What the hell is a steelband all about?”). Fortunately this has changed very quickly in the last years. When Jens joined the band, we got more
and more original instruments, since he was in Trinidad very often. At the carnival he had not only learned to love steeldrums, he also met his later wife Carol. They still live in Berlin with their two daughters. Because of this contact more and more instruments were brought along from Trinidad. We got another contact to Aubrey in London, UK. He is a pan builder and tuner. So we also got some instruments from London. There was a time, when all instruments from Helmut were exchanged by original ones from Trindad and from London.
The first panyard was located at Helmut’s summer house. From there we went to the music institut. Now we are located at a school. Everybody can learn steeldrum playing with us through the Musikschule Neukölln in Berlin. Since these days members were changed several times, whereas still some founder
members are with the band. Today we have 16 steeldrum players, 3 percussionists and one drum player. Up to now the highlights of the countless appearances were the two times participation at the Nottinghill Carnival in London, which is organized by caribbean emigrants. | 
