Rotarian June Nathaniel and I jockey for chairs at the packed Silver Stars Pan Yard in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, where the pan orchestra – also known as a steel drum band – has started its kinetic performance. A dozen musicians sway to the rhythm, pounding out the melodies.

It’s late November and already most of the unpaid pan orchestras are rehearsing for Panorama, the competition held during the pre-Lenten Carnival. Anyone can sit in on a practice in the open-air pan yards, where the bands perform. Emptied of the dancing crowd, the pan yard would look like a place to get your car repaired. But tonight the cement courtyard reverberates with the loud, joyful sound of steel bands.

I’ve been in Trinidad and Tobago for a little more than a week, and already I’ve learned the importance of pan – and music of all kinds – to life here. A trip in a taxi bus is also a musical experience, as drivers blast soca, calypso, reggaeton, chutney, rapso, indo-calypso-jazz, American hip-hop, and other musical offshoots. “Trinidadians have a wonderful ear and feeling for every kind of music. You name it; they’re listening to it or making it,” Nathaniel says.

My guide is a local voice and piano teacher who trained at the Royal College of Music in London and has performed across Europe. She returned to Trinidad in 1996 and, four years later, joined the Rotary Club of Maraval, where she has worked with the government to promote music education in Trinidad’s schools. After just a few days with Nathaniel, an energetic woman in her 60s, I can now differentiate between a tenor and bass pan and between calypso and soca, a blend of soul and calypso that emerged in Trinidad during the 1970s.

The size of Delaware, the 49th smallest U.S. state, Trinidad has produced many musical traditions, inherited and adapted from the Spanish and British colonialists, French planters, Carib Indians, East Indian indentured laborers, and African slaves who came here.

Port-of-Spain is a sprawling modern capital and the economic hub of the Caribbean, a base for oil and high-tech industries. Still, it has retained many of its Victorian houses, decorated with delicate gingerbread work. The National Museum also dates to the 19th century, when Trinidad was a British colony. At the museum’s Carnival exhibit, I learn that pan is the historic soul of this celebration.

The colonialists outlawed African drums because slaves used them to communicate, so the slaves tapped rhythms on other objects, including dustpans and metal cans. Anything would do, provided it made a distinctive musical sound. During World War II, when the U.S. Army set up bases in Trinidad, discarded steel oil drums became the instrument of choice. Drum tuners hammered the cans into a more tonal bowl shape and forged dents producing different notes.

Calypso originated in Trinidad in the late 1800s, then spread throughout the Caribbean and beyond to become an international phenomenon, with lyrics that often lightly veil political and social commentary. Many calypso pieces are sung extempore, like rap, and steel drums are essential to the sound. Soca, the other well-known homegrown genre, blends calypso and soul and often is played with electronic instruments. It’s ideal for dancing. Nathaniel recommends several other favorite pan yards in Port-of-Spain, among them Neal and Massy Trinidad All Stars, BP Renegades, and Caribbean Airline Invaders.

One night, we drive to the Trinidad campus of the University of the West Indies for a concert by graduating music students. The program includes arrangements of Bach, Schumann, and Brazilian samba, all played on pans and occasionally accompanied by piano or guitar.

On my last day with Nathaniel, we drive in her Spanish-made Seat to Maracas Bay, about 45 minutes away on the island’s north shore. We follow a mountainous road from Port-of-Spain to the coast, with sweeping glimpses of the Caribbean and rugged shoreline below. Maracas Beach offers several miles of fine sand, where locals are enjoying an afternoon in the waves or under the palm trees. Nathaniel tells me she used to come here as a child.

She makes sure we follow a “Trinny” tradition and head to Richard’s, the most famous of the  beach stands serving a local dish called bake and shark. The shark meat is fried, then stuffed in fried bread and smothered with condiments, including lettuce, tamarind, chopped tomato, pineapple, and a delicious piquant sauce made from chadon beni, a local herb that tastes like cilantro.

At the beach, Nathaniel explains the Rotary club’s music project. A few years ago, she learned of a 30-year-old program in nearby Venezuela that teaches classical music to disadvantaged youths. Through music education, the students also learn spatial reasoning, self-discipline, and teamwork. The Maraval club and Nathaniel’s school, the Key Academy of Music, organized a music workshop and camp. With government funding, they provided students with instructors from Venezuela and instruments for the monthlong program. The club now also holds music lessons at its learning center for disadvantaged youths. One afternoon, I watch some boys practice. They play tentatively on the donated violins, smiling with embarrassment when they can’t find the right note and beaming with pride when they do.

Later, I attend a concert by the St. Augustine Chamber Orchestra, which is primarily made up of students who began their musical careers in the Rotary club project. The orchestra plays at the Queen’s Hall in Port-of-Spain, where the list of past performers includes Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott, the Chinese Dance Theater, and England’s Royal Opera.