‘He saw signs saying No Blacks – but he never got bitter’: Sterling Betancourt, the man who brought steelpan music to the UK
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- Sterling Betancourt died on 3 June aged 96, identified as one of the last Windrush-era musicians and the last surviving member of Taspo (Trinidad All-Steel Percussion Orchestra), the 11-piece band that performed at the 1951 Festival of Britain and introduced steelpan to the UK at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
- While the other 10 Taspo members returned to Trinidad after a UK tour and a Paris recording residency, Betancourt stayed in London, building his own instruments from oil drums found in waste grounds and gradually infiltrating pan into the Soho jazz scene, then across Britain and from the 1970s into continental Europe and Asia.
- Betancourt partnered with Trinidadian jazz pianist Russell Henderson to organise Claudia Jones's 1959 Caribbean carnival and lead a 1966 steelpan walkabout around Notting Hill — two events the family credits as the basis for Notting Hill Carnival, which marks its 60th anniversary in August.
- On arriving in London, Betancourt recalled signs in windows reading "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs" and teddy boys attacking Black people, but his widow Beatrice says he "never got bitter" and "being a musician, he attracted a great deal of goodwill."
- In 2018 Betancourt recorded "Brexit Bacchanal Story," a calypso-flavoured lament about the UK leaving the EU; he told his wife he "loved playing pan all over Europe and believed in bringing people together, not pushing them apart."
- Southbank Centre's Steel Scenes festival — marking the 75th anniversary of Taspo's original Royal Festival Hall concert — will feature 500 pan musicians performing new commissions from Blue Lab Beats, Nabihah Iqbal, Delphina James and Soweto Kinch; Betancourt, who suffered a major stroke in 2024, recorded a final melody line for the event weeks before his death.
Why it matters: Betancourt's death at 96 closes a chapter on the Windrush generation that physically reshaped British culture: his decision to stay in London after Taspo's 1951 Royal Festival Hall debut turned steelpan from novelty act into the sonic seed of Notting Hill Carnival. He recorded one last melody for a 500-musician tribute at the very stage where his story began, with the festival's producer, Deborah Yewande Bankole, having commissioned the line specifically from him.
