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Ramajay Steel Band
Steelband time !!! Ramajay Steelband invites you to discover carribean music and its fancy instruments, the pans, also called steelpans or steeldrums.
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The music
Equipped with a festive repertoire, punctuated by solo interventions, Ramajay Steelband offers to discover the music of Trinidad and Tobago, and more generally of the Carribean, thanks to a musical journey honoring the greatest composers of that region. Complying with steelbands tradition, the band makes the music its own with original arragements of classical tunes from Trinidad and Tobago.
The instruments
Invented in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 30s, these instruments are made from recycled petrol cans, hammered, and tuned like a piano. Pans actually constitute a whole family of instruments ranging from low to high pitch, and joined together to form a so-called steelband.
The band
From old French "ramager" (to sing), ramajay evoques, in Trinidad and Tobago's creole, the power of music on the people (dance, instrumental improvisation...), music seen as a posession and a probable testimony of the African origins of this population, coming from slavery. Besides, "rama" depicts, in India, the incarnation of Vishnu, hero of the famous Ramayana epopee, and "jay", in Indie, means "glorious", "victorious": a passing reference to the Indian origins of the people of Trinidad, which, a fact mostly unknown, amounts to 40%.