JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Jimi Phillip: The man with the hammer

by

20170114

When Jim "Ji­mi" Phillip was six years old he fell in love with pan mu­sic.

"I loved to hear how the pan sound­ed and I start­ed to play mu­sic on Mi­lo tins mim­ic­k­ing what I saw the pan­men do­ing," Phillip said.

Some 50 years have gone since Phillip first fell in love with pan mu­sic, but his pas­sion for it has not dwin­dled. In­stead of beat­ing old milk tins with sticks Phillip has now moved to ac­tu­al­ly mak­ing steel­pans.

On a reg­u­lar af­ter­noon in Ch­agua�nas if mo­torists lis­ten care­ful­ly when they en­ter Rod­ney Road, off the Uri­ah But­ler High­way they can hear pan mu­sic em­a­nat­ing from Phillip's work­shop. "From six years old I fell in love with pan. It re­al­ly touched me. I not ly­ing it re­al­ly did some­thing to me and since then, I have just kept go­ing," Phillip told the Sun­day Guardian.

Af­ter beat­ing old milk tins Phillip said he even­tu­al­ly grad­u­at­ed to be�ing ac­cept­ed in­to one of the area's pa­n­yards and al­lowed to play on re­al pans. It was a dream come true.

"I start­ed play­ing and in those days you just played ex­act­ly what they showed you. They told you to play this and play that and you watched and then you did what they showed you. We were not learn­ing mu­sic the�ory or any­thing like that, we were just learn­ing to hit here and hit there," Phillip said.

Phillip said he kept at it.

"When I turned about 20 years I start­ed to look in­to learn­ing more about the pan and this guy named Hen­ry "Ben­dix" Cum­ber­batch, he start­ed show­ing us chords and so we start­ed to learn more stuff," Phillip said.

"And then, lat­er on, I start­ed to read mu­sic on my own and start­ed to ask ques­tions and things like that. The pas­sion just stuck with me."

Phillip said his de­ci­sion to learn about tun­ing steel­pans was made more as a re­sult of prac­ti­cal­i­ty than any­thing else.

"I used to see steel bands trav­el­ling around the world and when they used to trav­el it was big fan­fare and when they came back in­to the air­port it was a big me­dia thing," Phillip said.

"So I said to my­self, if I trav­el and my pan goes out of tune what will hap­pen be­cause at that time they didn't have pan tuners all about, so I said I just want to learn to tune it back," he said.

So Phillip start­ed to teach him­self.

"So then I got a drum and I start­ed to sink it by what I saw the tuners do­ing in the pa­n­yard. And I start­ed to sink it and groove it and cut it and tune but it was not best be­cause I did not know what I was do­ing. It was rough, I was groov­ing and bussing it and all kind of thing but I tried," Phillip said.

In 1970 Phillip said pan tuner Wal­lace Austin came to Ch­agua­nas and he was tak­en un­der the wings of the "top tuner". "Austin came Ch­agua­nas to tune for a band and he want­ed peo­ple to work with him so I went and I hooked up with him and I al­ready knew how to sink so I just had to im­prove, so I be­came his right-hand man," Phillip said.

Austin, who last tuned pans for Ex�odus, died last month and his fu­ner­al was held a week ago.&nb­sp;Af­ter be­ing trained by Austin, Phillip start­ed mak­ing pans.

"By try­ing to learn to fix my pan I start­ed mak­ing pans. And in mak­ing them one wouldn't come out good so I tried to make a next one and I tried to make it bet­ter and tried to im­prove, and then a friend came and asked me to make a pan for him and I did, and then I made an­oth­er one and then I got pro­fes­sion­al and it be­came like a job and I nev­er want­ed to be that," Phillip said.

And like every pro­fes­sion­al Phil�lip makes the ex­cep­tion­al sound mun­dane.

"You get the steel drum, you use the bot­tom of the drum, you take a ham­mer and you sink it and it gets like a bowl, then you draw out the notes, you groove it, you set it back, you cut, you burn, af­ter you burn you clean it and then you start to put in the sound, that is where your ears are im­por­tant," Phillip said.

Phillip tunes his pans by ear. The en­tire process to tune a pan takes about half a day, he said.&nb­sp;Phillip said the most im­por­tant tool for him in the process was his ham­mer.

"Re­al­ly and tru­ly all pans are dif�fi­cult to tune, there are some pan tuners that like to tune the bass pan more al­though they can tune all the oth­er pans, there are some that like to tune front-line like the tenor pan and then there are some that like to tune midrange. But, then now, the mas­ter tuner is the man who will tune all the pans good. I do­ing that," Phillip said.

Phillip said he be­lieves pan tun­ing was in good hands in this coun­try. He has a school that trains tuners and sin­gled out Au­gus­tus Pe­ters as one of those who is keep�ing the skill alive.

&nb­sp;


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored