[Caribbean music] Lance: The history of Caribbean music, rich music with the blend of the African rhythms, the European influence, that all started way back with the story of slavery in the Caribbean.

From the colonial days, Africans were not allowed to play drums in Trinidad and Tobago.

So you know, we had rhythm in us, we had to get it out.

Tony: So they started playing, doing bamboo.

- Tambu bamboo.

- Yeah.

And then we had the biscuit drums.

- Yep.

The iron, it's a brake drum.

The anchor to Caribbean music, especially soca, calypso, that rhythm.

- And then somebody discovered that all these oil drums that they discarded and thrown away, we could do something with them, and started tuning them.

- There was a stigma with the steel pan back then.

- Came up from the poor neighborhood.

- Totally, came up from the hills of Laventille.

- And when you talk about steel drums, Cliff Alexis, he taught a whole lot of people in town here in the Twin Cities to play the steel drum.

- Yep.

Cliff started a program in Central High School in St.

Paul.

Cliff used to build pans up at Central.

- Clifford, he didn't just make pans for people in town here now.

- No.

- He made pans for colleges, even the Navy.

- The pan last year was designated as the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.

So I'm proud of the instrument, man.

It's something that came out of my little tiny island, you know what I mean?

Its the only instrument invented in the 20th century.

The movement has grown and the instrument is in the forefront now.

And you know, Minneapolis has always been sort of a music town.

It fit in well.