tin-pan: noisy agitation to arouse political support; a noisy serenade

A tin-pan, or tinpan, is another word for a shivaree, a racket often created by banging on tin pans. The term was first used in a political sense during the 1840 "Hard Cider" presidential campaign, which included the popular song "Dying Groans of the Tinpan." Tin-panning meant drumming up support for the candidate - getting folks to campaign rallies and then to the polls. The term was still in use in Maryland in the midtwentieth century.

Another way to make a racket is on a cheap, tinny piano. Hence Tin Pan Alley, originally the area around New York's Seventh Avenue, where music publishers were clustered. The cheap, overworked pianos of the publishers' offices made the area reverberate with a tin-panny sound. The first use of the word in this way is from around the beginning of the twentieth century.