?Malis­sa Lara

An ex­cit­ing and rev­o­lu­tion­ary steel pan is here! The first elec­tron­ic Dou­ble Sec­ond Steel Pan made its pub­lic de­but in T&T yes­ter­day. Cre­at­ed by Tri­ni-born Salmon Cu­pid, who teach­es mu­sic in Toron­to, the pan is ad­vanced in tech­nol­o­gy. Un­like the orig­i­nal steel pan, the elec­tron­ic steel­pan (E-Pan) has dif­fer­ent sounds such as or­gan and trum­pet built-in. In a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view, Cu­pid said it al­so does not need pan sticks to be played. In­stead one's fin­gers can be used there­by of­fer­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to ef­fect more chords at a time. Cu­pid, who has been play­ing pan since the mid-80s, said the pan adds to the ex­cite­ment for youths and fi­nesse to the in­stru­ment.

This plas­tic and rub­ber in­stru­ment's fi­nesse did not come cheap as it took Cu­pid US$40,000 and five years to re­ceive a US util­i­ty patent on­ly. He has util­i­ty patents in Eu­rope and patents pend­ing world-wide. The re­search and de­vel­op­ment was al­so ex­or­bi­tant but it was worth it, as he said this ad­vance can take pan to an­oth­er lev­el. He has big dreams for the steel pan and said, "My biggest dream is to see steel pan at the Gram­my's." The steel pan when plugged in can be hooked up to an Ipod and the songs can be played through it. The mu­sic is just as sweet as the orig­i­nal pan. One can al­so use the song from the Ipod as a track and for prac­tice.

In ad­di­tion, a head set can be plugged in­to the E-pan and thus one can prac­tise, mut­ing the sound from any­one else. Cu­pid said he has al­ways had a pas­sion for pan and seemed dis­ap­point­ed that he got no calls from the T&T gov­ern­ment when he brought the pro­to­type for the E-Pan to these shores more than one year ago. Even when the tenor E-pan was com­plet­ed last year, he got no sup­port. "The Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment is sup­port­ing me more than the T&T Gov­ern­ment," he said. But Cu­pid is not daunt­ed and con­tin­ues to show his cre­ation to the world.