The London Steel Band

We’re The London Steel Band and we’re a modern professional UK-based steel band or ‘steel drum band’ as our American cousins mistakenly call it! We’re available for hire with musicians based mainly in London.

Beyond The London Steel Band core we are a small family of musicians that spans 3 generations.

We regard ourselves as good musicians above all else and most of us have a second instrument we also play at a professional level.

What also distinguishes us from other steel bands is that we can offer vocals and other instrumentation to play the diverse repertoire that you can see here in our playlist.

The best musicians

Miguel Barradas, Mark Cherrie, Michael Bailey, Francis Hylton, David Morris, Dennis Davis and Tom Alleyne have all played extensively with the band over the years and they all share very important qualities for me. They’re musicians first and pan players second.

They all play other instruments as well as pan and they all understand that to be a good musician is as much about listening as it is about playing!

Playing in a small steel band like The London Steel Band is a great outlet for people with this level of ability. It’s not something I particularly regret but I never had any experience of playing in a steel ‘orchestra’.

It always seemed to me that with the big bands you get to play the arranger’s music, but with the small band you get to express yourself more and improvise.

Traditional steel band

As a fully instrumental and unplugged acoustic steel band, the melodies that we play need to be long and strong and our own traditional Caribbean music fits the bill.

We like to include a lot of traditional Caribbean material, much of it 'calypso' which is the national folk music of Trinidad & Tobago, some (but not all!) of which will be familiar to the average UK audience.

So, in this mode we are an outstanding Caribbean Folk band. As such we fit in perfectly with any venue or event that’s broadly themed 'World Music'.

Modern steel band

Our musicians are modern and progressive and listen to all styles of music. We like to cover some modern Pop and Latin American standards, but there's a lot of great songs that don't have particularly strong melodies yet have catchy 'hooks' and are very strong rhythmically.

We like to play this music too, but we prefer to play it as a steel combo with a bass guitar and a drummer and with vocals included.

So we can sing, we can perform in various sizes and guises, organise steel band workshops and generally on request mould performances that expand upon the traditional calypso and Latin styles of music that form the core of a traditional steel band music repertoire.

Requests & vocals

We also play requests and are particularly suited to this because we are one of very few steel bands that offer professional standard vocals as well. Of course, this is far more doable if we have prior knowledge of your requests before your event.

Unless we don't know your tune and don't consider it suitable to play on future engagements, we will freely add it to our already extensive repertoire. We'll always try to play the right material for you at the right volume whether there are 3 or 12 members in the band at your event.