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Caribbean Steel Drum Music – American Style!  - Since 1968
Contact us via e-mail: centralparkpanmandave@yahoo.com

Panman Dave, Rudy Bowen, and Mike Delcioppo are still together - having met in New York City's Central Park in 1968. Panman Dave and Rudy now perform all over the USA accompanied by Mike Delcioppo and Michael Stern on state-of-the-art backing tracks.

Read about their early days below.

 

A particularly infectious calypso rhythm gathers a crowd in Central Park. The drifting, airy melodies from a single set of steel drums are punctuated by an accompanying conga, timbale drums, and pedal cymbal. The crowd is enthusiastic, devoted. Listeners stand in a perfect half-moon circle around the five instrumentalists and wait for the music to make a sudden, uninhibited dancer out of one of them.

When it happens, the sounds pull an on-looker into the circle, the music swells. The clattering and hiss of the cymbal rise. The conga and timbale players hammer a little harder and the steel melody reaches a more dynamic harmony. The musicians grin and cry out to the dancers who, in turn, may respond shamelessly. Others will join from the crowd which grows in number and ardor; clapping, whistling. On and on, with only brief pauses between tunes, the band plays until nearly dusk.

 

The band is The Sound Of Central Park. The five men perform Saturday and Sunday afternoons under a majestic oak tree on the side of a hill overlooking the southwest side of the Conservatory Pond. Among the dozens of itinerant acts that dot the park and vie for an audience, The Sound Of Central Park has acquired unusual prominence. This season, they have been featured in television news reports, offered jobs playing at private parties and even approached by a professional music producer.

All of this attention hardly startles the band whose members say they are used to it. To many, the band is regarded as one of the park’s permanent fixtures. One person in a position to know is park security officer Lou Romano. He helps keep track of the variety of musicians, mimes, jugglers, comedians, magicians, and other unlicensed acts in the park. According to Romano, The Sound Of Central Park is one of the few that returns week after week, season after season.

Band members count as many as ten seasons. They have returned this year after a two-year hiatus. Before that, however, they played from the late 1960’s, throughout the 1970’s. The group has weathered a variety of personnel and name changes, common to many musical ensembles. But the group’s character has remained the same, and the band has found it’s way into television ads, guest appearances on talk shows, and even into the background of a nationally distributed film.

“I don’t remember the name of the band”, said Fred Caruso who helped recruit The Sound Of Central Park in 1970 for sequences shot in the film Who is Harry Kellerman. Shots of Dustin Hoffman walking through the park included the band playing in the background. “We went out and got the best band performing in the city at that time,” said Caruso.

Part Of New York

“We just became part of the New York scene,” said steel drummer Panman Dave. As one of the original members of the band, Panman Dave performed in the park since he was a teenager. “We’ve been part of New York for a long time and some of the people who come to watch us have seen me grow up. We must have entertained millions and millions over the years.” he added.

Current band members include Panman Dave, Wellington Murray, who plays timbale drums and calls himself Lord Wellington; Rudolph Bowen, who plays the cymbals; conga player Ralph Wakefield, and Michael “Angelo” Delcioppo, cymbals.

While others joined the band during the early and mid-Seventies, Panman Dave and Murray formed The Sound’s original core. They met when Panman Dave was barely a high school student and Murray was playing washtub bass in another steel band [The Upper Edge]. Panman Dave remembers walking through the park with his father, one afternoon, hearing the band for the first time and becoming captivated with the steel drums.

After following the band from spot to spot in the park each weekend, sometimes carrying the big metal bowls and occasionally playing a cowbell during a number, Panman Dave was given a small steel drum by his father. He taught himself a modest repertoire and in 1969, when Wellington’s steel drummer [Victor Brady went on to cut a record deal with Polydor Records and released the album “Brown Rain”. Victor subsequently released a classical album called “Classical Soul” and later appeared in Las Vegas with Charo, on PBS’s Sesame Street, wrote a book about the steel drum, and performed and lectured at the Smithsonian Institute] quit, 14 year old Panman Dave stepped in.

 

It was lucrative work, according to Murray. He, Panman Dave, and the variety of percussionists who accompanied them, made their livelihoods in a Pied Piper fashion.

Out of the performances grew offers for other work. They regularly worked private parties. In addition, they provided music at fashion shows and local store openings, high school dances and college concerts. In July, 1979, they appeared on the Merv Griffin show. Between shots in the limelight, they continued to return to Central Park, where they promoted themselves and collected steady income.

The band members’ faces are a curious contrast to their music. They include two West Indian natives: Rudolph Bowen, a native of Trinidad, where the [steel drum] music was born just after World War II, and Murray, a native of the Bahamas. Wakefield is black, and Panman Dave and Delcioppo are white. It’s a profile that Panmnan Dave says help to set them apart. Already this season, television crews have filmed The Sound Of Central Park for broadcasts and, according to WCBS TV News, Channel 2 reporter Dave Marish will film a feature on the band later this month.

But the band’s warmest reception comes from the people in the park. On a recent Saturday, Claudio Azevedo shed his shirt and danced all afternoon to the music. As the band packed it drums, the 33 year-old Brazilian native waxed poetic about The Sound Of Central Park. “You feel nature in your body,” he said in slightly broken English. “The music makes such a good vibe. You can feel it in your body. You feel like dancing.”

Just moments earlier, Azevedo could hardly hold onto his bicycle beside him as he pranced, twisted and shook to the beat. In front of him, Panman Dave, wearing a Yankees t-shirt, stood before the steel drums furiously dabbing at the dimpled insides with his mallets, like a painter gone wild. Beside Panman Dave, conga player Wakefield sat, a large figure filling out the yellow t-shirt that is inscribed in black letters with the name of the band. Angelo Delcioppo, in heavy aviator glasses, and Bowen, his grey flecked hair in pigtails – an Afro version of Willie Nelson – hardly watch their stampeding hands. Murray passed the hat with the experience of a one-man medicine showman.

He reaches out for dancers. His arms outstretched, a grin on his face, he pleads with a few hesitant girls and moves on with no luck. Soon he finds one who is less cautious. She steps out bare-footed and Murray crackles with delight, she raises her arms and spins under the oak limbs. She comes face to face with a tall man who suddenly jumps in and takes over for Murray. The two move barely inches apart.

 

 

Dave Marash Reporting

 

 

We begin this second season of Dave Marash Reporting with something completely different.  To date, we have been concentrating on what’s ahead, trying to bring you the first break on important news stories.  For this month, we thought that you would enjoy a look back at one of the great pleasures of the New York Summer – the music of New York City Streets.  People, who have come, half a world, or half a block to play it for you.

 

This is about streets and music – two things New York City has a lot of.  Lots of cities have streets, but no town pavements are as packed with music as New York City’s.  The reasons are many and they’re simple:  if you want to make a living, this is best place to start, and the best place to finish up.  No matter how long you have to struggle, no matter how far you have to come, the Big Apple is where your sound can find the most appreciative, the most valuable audience.

 

This particular sound, the rumble of conga drums, the snap of cymbals, those rolling round notes from the tuned 55 gallon oil drums, has hung in this air for twenty years now.  The band calls itself The Sound Of Central Park, and it’s a title they’ve earned.  Wellington Murray has been pounding on his steel drum since 1968 and a very young Panman Dave joined him in 1968.

 

Panman Dave:  “Well, I was in the sixth grade, and I was walking through the park with my dad and I heard a steel band in which Wellington was a member of.  I heard the music and I fell in love with the music, right away.  I basically started hanging out each week and got to know the music.  I started picking up, little side instruments, and after a while, the lead steel drummer, Victor Brady [Victor Brady went on to cut a record deal with Polydor Records and released the album “Brown Rain”. Victor subsequently released a classical album called “Classical Soul” and later appeared in Las Vegas with Charo, on PBS’s Sesame Street, wrote a book about the steel drum, and performed and lectured at the Smithsonian Institute], left the group, and I knew about three songs.  We just started playing from spot to spot, and Wellington and I have been together ever since.”

 

Panman Dave		Lord Wellington Murray

 

 

Murray:  “He’s a nice kid, I guess I can say that.  I remember telling him to go home and practice and he used to practice 8 hours a day, every day – he ran his father out of the house and all of the people.  And I think he is pretty good right now. 

 

Ralph [Wakefield] is the conga drummer – all I can say is that he’s a great conga drummer.  He has been with us for 3 or 4 years now.”

 

How did he join – same thing, just sort of walked up one Sunday?

 

Murray:  “Yeah, and sat in with the group – well we had seen him in the park 3 years prior to that, playing by the Fountain.  We knew he was a good conga player then, and he sat in with us.  He’s part of the group.”

 

Then, there’s David’s Manhattan friend, Mike Dell whose normal gig is playing guitar in a rock and roll band.

 

Ralph Wakefield

Mike Delcioppo

 

Panman Dave:  “Rudy’s [Bowen] the driving force with calypso, he’s from Trinidad and he really brought the calypso flavor to us.”

 

	Rudy Bowen

 

Bowen:  I came to this country in 1969 and I was passing through the park.  I saw three guys playing, there was a cymbal, and nobody was playing the cymbal.  So I automatically just start on the cymbal – which is something I learned from home.  Rhythm, you know, we learned – bottle and spoon, tire iron, you know – once it is rhythm!  Just give me a piece of stick or anything – and it is rhythm!”

 

A Bahamian black, a New York black, a Brooklyn white, a Manhattan white, and an East Indian from Trinidad.  If that doesn’t add up to The Sound Of Central Park, I don’t know what else could.  New York is still the melting pot; the fire that keeps things happily bubbling is found here.

 

Panman Dave:  “It’s much different, when you play on stage, or something like that, people have paid to see you – it’s a whole different feeling.  You know, here, people sit down and listen but they also get up and dance and they’re free to walk around and do anything they want to do.  It is not as structured, and that helps give that good feeling.  I just love to come out here, it just became a part of our lives.  Even if we become very successful, I think we might still come out here because we just love doing it.”

 

Music, wrote the play write Congreve, almost three centuries ago, “has charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted Oak”.  And wrote Shakespeare, a hundred years before that, “when gripping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind oppressed, then music with her silver sound with speedy help, doth lend redress.”

 

New York is tough, and her streets are mean, the unwary visitor can quickly become the prey, but New York sings and the songs start here.  The streets’ free music, to have its say.

 

Dave Marash Reporting