Landing the narrative

Sufficient to disclaim a once prominent charge (even from within) of a “single-story” agenda, our media have recently offered up a menu so diverse that observers with a genuine interest in exploring the more prominent highlights, now too often consider themselves hapless practitioners of negligent omission.

Latterly, the media industry itself – whatever the preoccupation with eluding our own front pages – has occupied the maze of confusions. The subject of survival did not have to reside in the column of sudden development, having long been the focus of critical, methodical scrutiny both from within and without.

For example, the largely ignored 2016 Caribbean media viability report of the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) on Jamaican media, provided substantial guidance on most objective circumstances characteristic of the T&T Newsday crash, even in the face of eminently dismissible post-facto claims and assertions.

“What has happened to Newsday is not an isolated anomaly but part of a wider pattern of vulnerability and, increasingly, contraction,” the MIC (of which I am Vice President) said.

The last print copy of the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

I have also seen submissions on the subject from media folks such as Julian Rogers and Joannah Bharose that more closely align with MIC’s deployment of research and informed analysis.

These dispatches also serve as counterpoints to the claim that media audiences are best served by naïve providers, paid and unpaid propagandists, and zealots who do not consider themselves bound by professional journalistic imperatives including (weighted) “balance” and pursuit of the truth.

Meanwhile, and not unrelatedly, we have an ongoing discourse on geopolitical realities that has been implanted through dangerously intimate engagement. Subject as it is to partisan fervour, there is certain to be confusion and discord, instead of reasoned debate and the pursuit of consensus.

“Sovereignty” is meanwhile selectively determined as factor and non-factor depending on the time of day or day of the week. So too, whom to love and whom to despise. Who is friend and who is foe. It all seems to depend on fickle political preference.

Then, right there on this endless menu, is the national economy. Through this you find rare consensus on untrammelled descent. Even when not so defined, witness the desperate ad hoc fervour to address a dire strait. Punishment and displacement defined as economic reward. Borrow, tax, and rearrange. What, indeed, is the plan?

This sits alongside inelastic relations between proclaimed lawlessness and authoritarian coercion, and a debasing of judicious prerogative in favour of inflexible retribution. It’s easy to get there once favourable crime statistics trump the pervasive presence of fear and when violent revenge is preferred over justice.

Not to be outdone, along came Monday’s Tobago House of Assembly elections – a cruel deadline prohibiting its upgrade to the point of exclusivity in today’s offering.

It was difficult through three short days there to suggest a forecast, save for the habitual durability of the status quo in the absence of visible, frenetic activism.

It would have been interesting to have explored the main factors behind the TPP’s sweeping victory. But by now you would have already had your fill of it.

There remain two promising things to add to today’s examination of the information maze: proposed amendments to the Maternity Protection Act (let’s leave the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act - RSBA - for now) and the conduct of this year’s steelband competitions.

The RSBA requires sole attention. I remember covering its early application in 1986 and the turbulent period in industrial relations history reminiscent, by some, of the watershed era of the 1930s. More on that another time.

The enlightened amendments to the MPA need further elaboration and analysis. The suggested changes appear, prima facie, to be in accordance with modern thinking on maternal and family rights – the latter concept fully resonant with a number of conventions establishing “family life” as a bedrock of civilised existence. I am hoping more specifics come to light as we proceed with this.

I did mention two “promising things.” The other is, of course, the fact that ongoing steelband competitions are reinforcing my view that pan is the single greatest and best thing we do. There is nothing else that comes close.

For the umpteenth time, it’s not just the music delivered. Here we have a model for social organisation and an avenue for generation of economic value that is tragically underestimated.

If you doubt me, head over to any panyard near where you live or work. Don’t judge only from the competitions – though Sunday’s Junior Panorama Finals should not be missed. When you’ve done that, then talk. Meanwhile, we have a crowded maze to negotiate.

Caricom bruised, not broken

It is increasingly apparent to me that whatever its operational deficiencies and political challenges – characteristic of all multilateral groupings - news of Caricom’s demise constitutes a gross exaggeration rooted in appalling, publicly exhibited ignorance of its structure, role, and functions.

Yes, breaches have widened along one critical pillar, but there remain other sturdy functioning structures. International relations expert Nand Bardouille’s suggestion of a widening Caricom “breach” is valid regarding the foundational pillars of foreign policy coordination, and associated regional security concerns, and cannot be dismissed.

However, past quarrels – Guyana, Grenada, Taiwan/China, Malvinas/Falklands – brought bruises and fractures, but nothing close to death.

It is also true, and not for the first time, the body blows have been bruising and extensive. Yet, there is no accompanying corpse - which would certainly include a gory exhibition of important T&T socio-cultural and economic organs and limbs.

For, who is sustaining the blows from whom? There is a certain nonsense about Caricom comprising a “them” and an “us.” It’s also there in the language that somehow “Caricom” comprises a monolithic “other.”

Regional political coordination is, by definition, a highly problematic pursuit. We may recall the early years that brought us Guyana’s chronic electoral challenges, the Grenada Revolution, and the embrace of Cuba as a regional partner.

We’ve also had the problematic embrace of Haiti as a member, the Taiwan/China divide, and differing perspectives on the Gaza genocide.

In this, all of us have at some point been unreliable allies on the consensus field. T&T stood its ground on the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. And let us not forget politely divided opinions surrounding the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982.

On matters such as these we have not been alone. Who, indeed, is “the United Nations” or “the OAS” or “the EU” or “ECOWAS.”?

Among the more important issues explored by OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin in my recent interview with him were the numerous challenges to the process of multilateralism amid current global turbulence.

It concerns many that while all of this comes down to questions of defensive self-preservation, there has been a growing trend by countries – big and small, rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless – to  contemplate the dismantling of regional and global alliances designed to address conditions that conduce to peace, cooperation, and ensuing development gains.

The Ramdin interview unveiled real-life experiences associated with the OAS and its place as a hemispheric platform for the realisation of declared multilateral values.

He was able to cite the “ups and downs (of) the United Nations in the 1940s and the later crises of the 1960s and 1970s which were bilateral in nature, in the first instance, but later expanded to global levels.

Since then, everywhere, there have emerged regional integration arrangements such as Caricom to distil the dynamics of multilateralism in measures of collective geographical self-interest and to activate the potential of joint enterprise.

As explained in this space two weeks ago, the longstanding Caricom project is ambitiously multidimensional in nature with core mandates including economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development, and security cooperation.

Its rules of engagement, especially in foreign policy, have never pretended to undervalue individual posture.

Despite this, there has been general consensus on international candidatures, and bloc representation in hemispheric and global decision-making. There is also the pursuit of a notion of open regionalism reliant on a high measure of policy coherence within Caricom.

“Not for the first time in their post-independence history, Caricom member states are mired in a foreign policy-related trajectory in which national and regional interests are pulling in opposite directions,” Dr Bardouille wrote recently.

In my view, the critical point to monitor would be the extent to which Caricom’s sometimes faltering foreign policy “pillar” teeters and destabilises other key structures.

Adjoin regional security and problematic foreign policy cohesion and witness what confronts the region now in the face of the US military attack on Venezuela and abduction of Nicolás Maduro and his wife. This was plainly a violation of international law.

The statement by the Caricom Bureau (comprising the heads of Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia) covers some essential points including “the fundamental principles of international law and multilateralism enshrined in the UN Charter, including sovereignty and territorial integrity of States and respect for human dignity.”

This is neither bland nor ideologically neutral. It is a useful guide. Propagandists and social media trolls had hoped for either congratulatory declarations or unqualified condemnation. That’s not how this works.

Here’s hoping all reliable regional partners meet and discuss even before the St Kitts and Nevis Summit next month. There are wounds, but none of them fatal.

A penalty of death

On December 17, in this space, I described what I considered to be the so-called “big and little” things of public life in T&T.

Among the several phenomena mentioned, when referencing the “little” things, was the absurd prevalence of potholes and disfigured roadways – both major and minor – all over the country.

I described the “beauty” of a hole near T&TEC along the Eastern Main Road in Curepe and jokingly noted its proximity to a tyre shop and three places of worship.

Four days later, a male pedestrian died when a car, presumed to have swerved to avoid that very pothole, struck him, narrowly missed a nearby metal bridge, and landed in the river some seven or eight metres below.

The last time I checked, the “complex” pothole - comprising a jagged, narrow horizontal strip and an adjoining axle-breaking crater was still there.

Nobody appears to have made a big, public fuss over what happened. The victim was described in news reporting as being “homeless,” and since the occupants of the car appeared to have received non-life-threatening injuries, there has been little follow-up – at least none that I have seen.

Both T&TEC and the tyre shop are back in action, road users who know the spot do a quick left and sharp right to escape; while others unfamiliar with the area painfully deal with damaged rims, tyres, and suspension systems.

The point here is that, in this instance, the penalty paid for what is at least state neglect was someone’s death. Speeding has not (yet) been proven - which would have, at minimum, introduced a notion of contributory negligence. Even so, should the penalty for speeding be someone’s death, if not yours?

The fact is that paying with one’s life has become, far too routinely, a grim feature of existence in a society that loudly proclaims the sanctity and preciousness of life – at least rhetorically.

An opinion poll would most likely show, for instance, that most of us approve of the continued presence of the death penalty on the statute books and that many would prefer to just kill “them” all … violently. This is especially so during this violent period when revenge is so frequently inter-changeable with a notion of “justice.”

It does not matter that shortcomings in the areas of policing, prosecutions, and prompt judicial action persist, and the potential for loss of innocent life - an accused in this instance - exists.

People here, by and large, believe that if you are adjudged to have taken someone’s life you should die. But even that is not the end of it.

For, simultaneously - and judging from public commentary on recent legislation introduced and passed - a penalty of death is also desirable even when all juridical and humane pre-requisites have not been satisfied.

For example, pair the eager passage of (largely misconstrued) “stand your ground” legislation with an expanded, voracious appetite for more readily available firearms and see what I mean.

Whatever the requirements of proportionality, the potential for violent escalation, and the absence of safeguards against deadly outcomes, there is a recognisable thirst for both tried and untried criminal blood. Intruders, you see, need to be killed.

It’s approximately the same mindset when it comes to people, including our own, in pirogues out at sea unilaterally declared to be engaged in criminal activity. Guilty or not, a penalty of death appears to be quite acceptable.

In such instances, insisting on any semblance of due process is certainly not a mere symptom of uninformed, partisan haste or irrational “angst.” In fact, a predisposition to question and to condemn such actions may well be a rare redeeming quality of the current period.

Meanwhile, from the same sacred platforms from which such angst is being noted there has been scarce mention of the fact that the penalty for being a baby or young child in Gaza has, for the past two years, been death by violence – all 21,000 of them (including 1,000 babies under the age of 1).

Okay, there is some disagreement over the numbers. So, let’s say, hypothetically, a single baby has been murdered (and not the 1,000 as claimed) without remorseful mention … even as we honour the birth of another, where does that leave us?

Could it be that a penalty of death is not as undesirable as we so often claim? That life, once it’s not ours, is an expendable commodity. It is a sorry condition to contemplate.

Happy New Year.

A Caricom primer

So, who/what is this “Caricom” about which everybody seems to know so much nowadays?

The Caribbean Community (Caricom) was inaugurated on July 4, 1973, at a signing ceremony in Chaguaramas, T&T. The Treaty of Chaguaramas (as revised in 2001) is a legally binding international agreement.

There are 15 full member states and 6 associate members. In 1973 there were just four members – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and T&T. The effort to establish Caricom is widely credited to the convening of several meetings of Caribbean leaders in 1963 and initiated by late T&T PM, Dr Eric Williams.

This was only one year following the dissolution of the West Indies Federation that was launched in 1958 and included Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent, and T&T.

On December 15, 1965, the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA) was launched in Antigua and Barbuda as largely a free trade grouping, but including issues associated with industrialisation and agricultural production.

CARIFTA eventually morphed into Caricom with a much wider scope of objectives and engagement and often overlapping agendas. The four main pillars of this new mandate include economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development, and security cooperation.

Over the years, each pillar has confronted its fair share of difficulties – foreign policy coordination being among the more prominent, but not sole area of concern and occasional conflict.

There have been differences in policy positions related to everything from Cold War posturing in the early Caricom years – the 1970s through to the end of the 1980s – to issues associated with intra-regional trade and overall economic integration.

For these and other purposes, the principal organs of the Community pay close attention to the setting of policy – which is the role of the Conference of Heads of Government – and include the important and second highest body, the Community Council of Ministers, followed by the Councils for Finance and Planning (COFAP), Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), Human and Social Development (COHSOD), Trade and Economic Development (COTED), the National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE).

For satisfaction of its extensive and diverse mandates, the Community also relies on close to 30 specialised and complementary autonomous and semi-autonomous institutions.

These include the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) headquartered in Port of Spain for the resolution of disputes related to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, but which currently serves as the court of final appeal for five member states.

The Court, in its Original Jurisdiction (resolution of Treaty disputes) has responsibility for all 12 participants in the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), including T&T, and has ruled in several such matters. So, yes, T&T is “in the CCJ.”

There is also the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) which played a leading role in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) which is currently quite active in Jamaica and works closely with our Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) located in T&T.

There are others that play leading roles in important areas such as climate change, telecommunications, renewable energy, regional standards and quality setting, tourism, meteorology, and regional security.

On issues of regional security there is the Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) which was established in 2006 and is headquartered in T&T. It is responsible for convening regional meetings through standing committees of police commissioners, military heads, immigration chiefs, customs heads and officials of intelligence and financial investigative agencies and units.

Recent promotion of the upcoming (finally) of a T&T online E/D travel card, for example, involves employment of a platform that has long been in use in several Caricom countries and is hosted by IMPACS.

T&T meanwhile has Caricom “portfolio responsibility” for regional security and energy.

My "CSME Certificate" issued in 2006

Among the key provisions of the Revised Treaty is provision for the “movement of skilled community nationals” (Article. 46). This became implementable in our instance through our Immigration (Caribbean Community Skilled Nationals) Act - amended in 2022 to include new categories.

I am the holder of “Certificate of Recognition of Caribbean Community Skills Qualification” No. 783 granted on February 23, 2006, which I have used for work permit-free employment in the region. My old friend, now Minister of Planning, Kennedy Swaratsingh, most likely received his Caricom skilled nationals certificate for work in Barbados long after I did.

There is much more to this basic introduction to Caricom, but I do not have a full newspaper to continue the story. At some point we will also need to explore the Caricom Secretariat.

 

Big and little things

Nothing like the rim-bending, tyre-slashing, suspension re-arranging, radio station changing  thud of wheel in pothole to remind you that while big things are in train, some of the smaller things can suck you into reality more urgently than the stuff of compelling newspaper headline.

Your country can be stumbling mindlessly into a violent, seemingly bottomless, geo-political pit, but all that concerns you at that precise moment is the trench of deeply excavated asphalt that took masterly aim at rolling rubber.

Up to a few months ago, we nicknamed such rascals “Sinny” or “Row Hand”, but today we encounter “Johnny” or “Jewel Een” - in all their best-performing omnipresence.

There is one – a “Johnny” - along the Eastern Main Road at the traffic lights in Champs Fleurs that wins first prize. It recently claimed my left front tyre and rim, and the radio skipped channels from BBC World to the endless chatter of a local talk show discussing raisins and pastelles.

There is another beauty near T&TEC in Curepe. Nearby stands a strategically positioned tyre shop and three places of worship walking distance away. Beat that!

I invite readers to enter their own examples in the award for most outrageous neighbourhood or work location pothole. Give it a name.

You can also have the most energetic debates on the ability of guns to silence guns and the value of eliminating bothersome judicial time – both at your home or out at sea – and not match a cloudy night under an eternally expired streetlight – particularly within dangerous range of a “Johnny”.

True, T&TEC has come a long way since the blackout years, but faulty streetlights now more regularly join with criminals, potholes, and uneven pavements to make life just that more uncomfortable.

There can be sophisticated discussions regarding world economic outlook and investment grade national rankings. Who or what is to be blamed or credited. What caused all of this. Where in the dynamics of macro-economic circumstance reside small, brittle states.

Yet, uncut grass in the neighbourhood and unattended drains can produce a solitary mosquito equipped with arboviruses to make you seriously ill or kill you. Dengue, my friends, can blunt dramatic news on world commodity markets and render irrelevant the negative interface between domestic mismanagement and global financial credibility.

It can end careers and prematurely terminate elaborate criminal investigations. It can defy geography, advanced technology, and clever sleuthing via microscopic proboscises.

There is one theological view that mosquitoes were created as vegetarians but because of “The Fall of Man” began sucking the blood of animals and humans. That’s pretty big, important stuff - sufficient to silence Sunday pulpits on the question of modern-day genocide.

For now, Mosquitoes 2.0 is all that matters. An audit probably needs to be conducted to calculate the numbers. Just one small factor against the backdrop of major things … such as climate change.

Fresh from the failures of COP30 and the bother of climate science scepticism, emerge concerns about things such as “climate justice” and the “just transition” to a more limited fossil-free future.

Yes, T&T’s final version of our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement – hifalutin stuff! – is moving us in the direction of biofuels and the renewables. Big things these.

Yet, WASA must move much faster to achieve “Water for All by 2000” (it’s not a typo, check your files). Much, much faster. Not for the neighbour to use more for “hosing down” the yard or for sweet men to wash their cars every single day of their lives.

But for the simple things like flushing the toilet, having a shower, cooking food, doing the dishes, washing clothes, and having a cold glass of water while sitting back tuned into a sport channel on cable …

Now, about cable television and internet … At one time, modern day “outages” were referred to as “blackouts.” Today, we have posh “outages” for “planned maintenance” and internet “outages” checked and double-checked in neighbourhood WhatsApp groups.

Don’t start on “noise pollution”, please. Not as in Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine. But as in every single night in some areas where there are no fireworks, but lots and lots of, well, harmful noise pollution. This is “Silence for All in 2025” done “Water for All” style.

Oh. Meanwhile, Brent crude oil futures hovered around $61.1 per barrel on Monday, near the lowest level in almost two months amid persistent concerns about oversupply, while investors monitored developments surrounding a new round of Ukraine peace negotiations.

 

Elections, Melissa, and Escazú

The Caribbean region is emerging slowly and painfully from a torrid season of elections, and an equally intense hurricane season – whether or not some believed they were affected by either.

It’s now evident there remain open wounds associated with combative politics, negative instincts related to transparency and social cohesion, and the consequential collective ability/inability to efficiently confront seemingly overwhelming challenges.

Westmoreland, Jamaica (Dec 2025)

For guidance on unravelling such connections we should spend time examining things such as institutional environment, political culture, and the impacts of an indisputable culture of official secrecy.

For this reason, today’s thoughts invoke the requirements of an international treaty – the Escazú Agreement which mandates public rights to access environmental information, participation in decisions, and social justice in environmental matters.

Escazú does not stand alone. There is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16:10 which calls for “ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms.” In many of our countries, today, there are also access to information laws, and other legislative provisions.

The impact of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica on October 28 provides us with an example of seasoned hands, on all fronts – politics, crisis, and nominal commitment to the free flow of official information – attempting to come to terms with the urgency of one of the biggest disasters in Caribbean history.

This is a country considered to provide the rest of us with a gold standard when it comes to institutional arrangements addressing perils, emergencies, and disasters – both natural and human-originated.

Post-hurricane fish prep at Border, St Elizabeth/Westmoreland

However, depending on whom you question today, including those directly exposed to catastrophic damage in the country’s southwestern areas since October, there are mixed reviews regarding overall performance.

Attorney, Debbie-Ann Gordon (a Westmoreland native) surmised in a December 7 Jamaica Gleaner column: “Recovery must address long-standing vulnerabilities: irregular land tenure, inadequate infrastructure, fragile housing, and limited economic options. Hurricane Melissa did not create these issues; it exposed them.”

Meanwhile, there is hardly a comparative regional example of the island’s extensive planning and ameliorative institutional landscape. Its Disaster Risk Management Act, for example, prescribes a multipartite Disaster Risk Management Council.

This mechanism impressively coalesces a wide variety of sectoral and inter-sectoral interests. This results not only from the good sense of bringing all hands on deck, but from past experiences in which multipartite arrangements supported by state financial, administrative, functional, and regulatory assets were systemically absent.

As is currently unfolding, there appear to be gaps between the existence of well-designed, well-intended, thoughtful state mechanisms, and timely, tangible requirements on the ground.

Contrastingly, private sector involvement in recovery among island businesses of all categories, has generally met the standards of urgency, data-focused, and strategically targeted. Civil society organisations are also significantly chipping in from at home and abroad.

“We are nowhere near the end … but we are doing the right things, taking an all of society approach and smashing the silos together when we confront them,” says Lisa Soares Lewis, who is leading the private sector Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

What's left of the sprawling Black River Market

Journalist Dionne Jackson-Miller has meanwhile diligently applied extensive scrutiny to a mandated Disaster Risk Management Council which, as everyone concedes, provides the best opportunity to bring an extensive selection of voices to the table … but which last met in June!

Follow Dionne Jackson-Miller on YouTube

However, I think it would be wrong to assume the worst intentions on the part of anyone involved – whatever the political finger-pointing. There are, in fact, important sub-committees and agencies of the state actively and diligently engaged.

However, someone I met in Kingston – with September third’s general election as a persistent backdrop – advised, sadly, that I encounter Westmoreland from neither side of “both fences.”

Think now of recovery efforts in countries such as Dominica and The Bahamas hit by Category 5 hurricanes in 2017 and 2019 respectively; and others such as Antigua and Barbuda, and the Grenadines that have witnessed serious impacts over recent years.

There had been precautions regarding “both sides of the fence” in all of these. Here, in T&T, there is every indication that we can fall prey to such a vulnerability (as we are), even as we do not quite boast anything near Jamaica’s organisational, regulatory, or administrative capacity in such matters.

The margins of the Belém Conference of Parties (COP30) on climate change considered the role of greater official transparency and social cohesion when confronting phenomena associated with the climate crisis. More than once, Melissa was identified by name and location.

At the CARICOM Pavilion at COP30, Belém

In Latin America and the Caribbean, relevant attention in this area of interest turned to the Escazú Agreement which entered into force in 2021.

T&T is yet to sign. Jamaica has signed but not yet ratified. Maybe there are lessons yet unlearned.

Pan and the outsourcing of development

The recent, poorly timed, unilateral withdrawal of multiple steelband sponsorships (better described as “investments”) by state companies drew the regret-laden attention of Pan Trinbago President, Beverly Ramsey-Moore, at the start of last Saturday’s Single Pan Finals at the Queen’s Park Savannah.

By then, Ms Ramsey-Moore must have already heard the term “dependency syndrome” applied to the condition purportedly being addressed by some newcomers to official, corporate leadership. Such a conclusion is clearly representative of appalling ignorance.

I have heard the unfortunate term more than once myself and wondered about the extent to which some key decision-makers have been aware of several longstanding, well-established facts about the relationship between steelbands and national life.

Look carefully and you will witness a situation in which both the corporate and state sectors have essentially been outsourcing key socio-cultural functions via sponsorships (investments) in steelbands.

Steelbands and their panyards – in instances where they represent legitimate, cohesive organisations (some do not) - have become important instruments through which key services, other than the clearly musical, are being delivered.

Add to this (and I repeat this for the umpteenth time) the value of pan as music, a platform for economic growth, socio-cultural development, the generation of creative capital, and the panyard as a model for social mobilisation and change.

I have employed the word “investment” at the very top of this, because anyone with even the slightest clue about the role of bands and their panyards to the development process must know that the links are inalienable.

For example, just days after the discontinuation of financial support for Skiffle Bunch Steel Orchestra (and curiously instructive notice to refrain from all branding associated with Heritage Petroleum), there was a break-in at the band’s homework centre. Yes, “homework centre.”

Junia Regrello would proudly submit for consideration the involvement of children between the ages of 5 and 15 in the band’s activities. At Supernovas, teens and young people are regularly in charge. (Unsponsored) birdsong remains a beacon in music education among the young.

Panyards, you see, are not the single-purpose facilities for performance of a single song at the Panorama competition some people still think they are.

Supernovas Panyard (watercolour 2023 by WG)

The folks at Siparia Deltones would also tell you that there is much more to not only what their organisation does, but almost all other large and medium bands. Stageside ensembles boast extensive repertoires in a wide variety of genres, keep people rewardingly busy, and generate alternative sources of band and player revenue.

Panyards are also not simply designed “to keep young people busy and out of trouble.” Clinging to this point as a standalone is almost as bad as subscribing to the “dependency syndrome” question. There is a built-in presumption in this that the cohort that gravitates toward panyards has “trouble” as default behaviour.

The reality is that the panyard has emerged as a singularly egalitarian environment where a construction worker section leader can instruct a medical professional on matters of timing and musical treatment.

As we learn from Skiffle and many others, general education and academic instruction have also become routine features of the panyard environment. People learn specific skills and are introduced to different perspectives on entrepreneurship.

Birdsong has for some years not competed in Panorama at the senior level and is paying greater attention to the junior band and the creation of a new generation of musicians. Its vacation camp experience includes academic, vocational, and music education covering a wide variety of musical instruments.

Speak with Exodus manager, Ainsworth Mohammed, and he will tell you about his “relay” theory of planning and the extent to which his band focuses on nurturing the abilities of the young to enrich prospects for the future.

I recently encountered young Niko Brewster whose university dissertation in the UK was entitled “The Emergence of the Panyard: Music, Cultural Production, and Spatial Contention.”

Brewster is clear that the “flexible space” within which the panyard operates enables near limitless options to deliver expanded services and to generate revenue. Look out for more on this in a subsequent dispatch.

It is meanwhile true, as birdsong’s Dennis Phillips suggests, that there is scope for changing the terms of reference of the steelband establishment to bring it more in line with some realities such as the fiction of over 100 registered conventional steelbands.

There is also a need for the steelband community to better tell its stories beyond involvement/success in annual competitions.

Had this been effectively done, there would be less of the prevailing nonsense that appears to be fuelling serious decision-making on investments in pan and their consequential contribution to national development.