Dex Daley is performing from 1 to 4: 45 p.m. on Thursdays through Sundays at Indiana Live! Casino as a vocalist and steel drum player. The unique instrument's unusual sound is played on a hammered 55-gallon oil drum, and the music evokes the Caribbean as Daley plays the unique rhythms of reggae and calypso. Dayla Thurston photo

Distinct sound
Dex Daley brings new musical diversity to Indiana Live! Casino

B.J. Fairchild-Newman
Staff Writer

Nothing evokes the feel of the Caribbean more quickly than the sound of reggae or calypso music played on a steel drum. Indiana Live! Casino's new performer, Dex Daley, is now playing the distinctive music in the center bar every Thursday through Sunday from 1 to 4:45 p.m.

Daley adds musical diversity to the many soloists and small bands that have performed on the stage of the bar since the casino opened in June. He was actually hired to fill the slot left by violinist Colin Matthews, who is on medical leave. Matthews is a native of Trinidad, while Daley was born in Jamaica, but both men enjoy sharing their love of music with visitors to the casino.

Daley said that although many Midwesterners have heard music played on a steel drum while on cruises to the Caribbean or visits to the various islands, he talks to many people at the casino who have never seen the unusual instrument or heard its distinctive sound.

"I like the idea that I am educating people about the steel drum," Daley said. "I am spreading musical culture."

The steel drum, or steel pan, traced to the 1930s in Trinidad, is one of the most recent instruments ever invented, and it is a skillfully hammered 55-gallon oil drum which has been carefully tuned to produce tones.

Daley's professionally built steel drum is a long way from the first primitive instruments built by hand and tuned by ear, but the basic idea is the same.

Reggae music, which originated in Jamaica and was made famous by Bob Marley, is Daley's favorite of the variety of music that he plays on his steel drum. But he includes "a little jazz and a little rhythm and blues, lots of raggae and lots of calypso" in his repertoire. He also sings while he plays the rhythmic instrument.

When he started a few weeks ago, Daley was performing at the entrance to the casino where Matthews usually plays his violin in the afternoon as people enter Indiana Live!, but Daley felt that the volume of his music was overwhelming while people were trying to talk as they first walked inside the casino.

"I think they can appreciate the steel drum more when I am playing from the center bar area," Daley said.

Much more than a replacement for Matthews, Daley hopes to continue entertaining at the Casino even when the popular violinist returns. He is especially excited about performing at the permanent casino when it opens in the spring.

"I know that it will be a first-class facility with a great sound system," Daley said.

He also hopes to bring his band JAMX to the casino, a group that includes four other members in addition to Daley, who performs as keyboardist and steel drummer. Members of the band are from various Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and St. Vincent, and they consider themselves Caribbean musical ambassadors since starting to perform in the Midwest in 2006.

Wanting to compose and perform his own original material, Daley started JAMX in 1992, and it soon became one of the best-known Caribbean groups of the time, playing the summer circuit on the East Coast, doing parties in the Hamptons and on the Jersey Shore. JAMX Band clients include former President Bill Clinton, L.A. Dodgers manager Joe Torre and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

Daley didn't start to play the steel drum until the 1990s when he taught himself to play after becoming dissatisfied with the professionalism of some of the steel drum performers who played with JAMX at various times during those years. He originally was trained as a classical pianist in Kingston, Jamaica, and he studied under the tutelage of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

After mastering three grades of study with the Associated Board, Daley joined the evolution of reggae music that has made the Jamaica so famous around the world.

By the time he was 15, Daley was playing keyboards in local bands in Kingston and had the opportunity at 17 to play in back up bands for Bob Marley, a rising star in the fledgling world of reggae bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Daley migrated to the United States in 1972, and for the next seven years he worked as a musician, learning additional music genres, including jazz, rhythm and blues and pop. In 1980, he signed with CBS records as a bandleader for the group Zenith, touring with other rhythm and blues artists, such as Chaka Khan, Luther Vandros and the Silvers.

In 1982, Daley was introduced to Caribbean musician Scipio Sargant from Trinidad and Tobago, and the two formed a reggae/calypso/rhythm and blues group called Electric Dread.

In addition to JAMX, Daley also started Coral Sea Productions, which provides Caribbean talent and entertainment, using a staff of performers he has gathered from throughout the region. In addition to raggae bands or a single steel drum player, his company can supply fire and limbo acts, dancers to perform classic Afro-Cuban dances, fire eaters and moko jumbie, or stilt walkers.

"If you are a corporate events coordinator, party planner or a meeting organizer looking to add that extra spark and pizzazz to your next affair, think specialty entertainment," Daley states in a brochure promoting Coral Sea Productions.

Daley heard about Indiana Live! from the mother of a friend who is employed at the casino, and it didn't take long for him to convince general manager Mark Hemmerle that the unique sounds of his steel drum would provide a welcome and lively background to the general festive atmosphere of the casino.

"I love it here at the casino," Daley said. "Everyone is so friendly and easy to work with. I hope to work here for a long time."