A prominent band to live in a container from the West Indies (9)
I believe the answer is:
caribbean
'the west indies' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't understand how one could define the other.
'a prominent band to live in a container' is the wordplay.
'prominent band' becomes 'rib' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'to live' becomes 'be' (synonyms).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'a container' becomes 'can' (can is a kind of container).
'a'+'rib'+'be'='aribbe'
'aribbe' going into 'can' is 'CARIBBEAN'.
'from' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for caribbean that I've seen before include "Sea between North and South America" , "WI" , "West Indian" , "Part of Atlantic off Central America" , "Atlantic Sea off Central America" .)