The Afropan Steelband (“the people’s band”) is Toronto’s oldest and most successful steelband. The pioneers of Afropan, an intimate group of pannists from Trinidad, got together in Toronto as early as 1970. Since 1973 Afropan, under the leadership of Earl La Pierre Sr., has won the Best Playing Steelband Competition at the Caribana Festival a total of 28 times, and ranked in the top three on all other occassions.
PRICES
Everyone: FREE
Monday, August 4, 2014
3:00PM – 4:00PM
Zone 5
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto Ontario
Afropan Steelband
The Afropan Steelband (“the people’s band”) is Toronto’s oldest and most successful steelband. The pioneers of Afropan, an intimate group of pannists from Trinidad, got together in Toronto as early as 1970. It was not, however, until 1973 as, “Harriet Tubman Survivors,” that the Afropan Steelband was formally founded. Since 1973 Afropan, under the leadership of Earl La Pierre Sr., has won Best Playing Steelband Competition at the Caribana Festival a total of 28 times, and has ranked in the top three on all other occassions. In 1987 Afropan had the unique distinction of winning the “Best Overall Band” participating in the Caribana Parade that year. Afropan is a registered non-profit organization.
Afropan has acquired the reputation, over the years, of being the “Peoples’ band” at the Parade. Its early beginnings in the 1970s were with the Harriet Tubman Centre in Toronto. Its players, at that time, were young people of Afro-Caribbean descent. Its early affiliation with the Tubman Centre has influenced Afropan’s leadership in having community service as a guiding principle of the organization. A primary activity of the band has been to offer instructional classes in the art of playing the pan among Canadians of non-Afro-Caribbean descent. Today the enrollment in the instructional classes ranges from about eighty to one hundred students per year. A class of learners usually reflects the diversity of the population of Toronto and for the past two years about 50 per cent of the enrollees were female.
From 1975 to 1999 Afropan was located at 44 St George Street on the University of Toronto downtown campus and designated as a community campus group. In 2000 Afropan moved to the Toronto Fire Academy, and from there we moved to Lamport Stadium where we spent five years. We now call the base of Jefferson Ave. home for our summer rehearsals.