Oil Drum recycling

One way which I always contributed to recycling was in hitting up the Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc and getting my hands on those old records. Nothing is more satisfying to me than finding an old groove that I know ain't nobody thought about blending into a mix. During one of my several excursions I picked up alot of West Indian records from like that boom in pop culture in the 50's and 60's. While reviewing some of those records the other day it occurred to me another major way that Original people regenerate stuff when the colonial powers, known nowadays as big corporations, dump their feces on them. I am talking about none other than the steel drum band.

The steel pan evolved out of earlier musical practices of Trinidad. Drumming was used as a form of communication among the enslaved Africans and was subsequently outlawed by the British colonial government in 1883.[1] African slaves also performed during Mardi Gras celebrations, joining the French that had brought the tradition to the island.[2] The two most important influences were the drumming traditions of both Africa and India. The instrument's invention was therefore a specific cultural response to the conditions present on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

The first instruments developed in the evolution of steelpan were Tamboo-Bamboos, tunable sticks made of bamboo wood. These were hit onto the ground and with other sticks in order to produce sound.[3] Tamboo-Bamboo bands also included percussion of a (gin) bottle and spoon. By the mid-1930s bits of metal percussion was being used in the tamboo bamboo bands, the first probably being either the automobile brake hub "iron" or the biscuit drum "boom". The former replaced the gin bottle-and-spoon, and the latter the "bass" bamboo that was pounded on the ground. By the late 1930s there occasional all-steel bands were seen at Carnival and by 1940 it had become the preferred Carnival accompaniment of young underprivileged men. The 55-gallon oil drum was used to make lead steelpans from around 1947. The Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO), formed to attend the Festival of Britain in 1951, was the first steelband whose instruments were all made from oil drums. Members of TASPO included Ellie Mannette and Winston "Spree" Simon.

Jacked from the full wiki article Steel Drum

What is interesting is that in the article it is not mentioned at all where these drums were coming from. You KNOW people weren't going to the 'steel drum' store to buy oil barrels. What was happening is that the big oil corporations would just dump barrel upon barrel on the islands. Now it doesn't take a genius to realize that an island is a small, enclosed environment and that such pollution would have an immediate effect.

If your immediate lineage is from the country then you may also know another way which Original people in the United States have recycled (yet again, no credit). Go to a real down home BBQ and you might see that oil drum grill. This is just another innovation in recycling that doesn't get alot of shine.

Yet let me not be blase about the comparison between oil corporations and colonialism. Be aware of what Shell, Firestone and ChevronTexaco and other 'colonial powers' are doing in places like Indigenous (Latin) America and the part of Asia known as Africa.