On mutually assured survival

(First published in the T&T Guardian on September 28, 2022)

It may well have been the case that Caricom leaders had strategised to weave a vast multitude of questions into the chaotic underside of the Caribbean embroidery at the UN General Assembly debate which closed on Monday.

However, the knots and ragged snips and dissonant entanglements required to produce at the frontside, a partial, yet seductively healthful view of the whole remained on full display.

To be certain, both our hemispheric neighbours, and those beyond, too frequently lease a homogeneous Caribbean visage of their own design. Initially, as cover for brutalities of the past, and latterly as deception to escape complicity and responsibility.

It could not be, we once thought, that even those who shared major hurts of our disturbed past could now be seated at the table, two elbows away, and be despising us.

It is the stuff of diplomatic routine to negotiate such multi-polarities. Ambivalence bred by both self-interest and the prospects for mutually assured survival in the face of undeniable interdependence.

In what ways are the stories of Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba not our own, was the gist of Ralph Gonsalves’ retort. To what degree are Russian depravities at its borders irrelevant to Gaston Browne’s admonitions regarding the increasingly anachronistic Security Council?

In what ways, as Dickon Mitchell urged, do we harness the value of youth and the rich harvest they may bring.

T&T’s Amery Browne notably cited the scourge of transnational, organised crime without, as was required I must say, substantially dissecting the hemispheric dynamics that facilitate it.

Instead, like almost everyone else, he went for the scattershot, knowing full well that officially appointed dissent would ritualistically fall short of anything resembling a competent response or rebuttal.

It may have been that the joint regional brief was to cast a wide fine-mesh net to signal a vast terrain of limitless priorities. But, as with the fisherfolk out at sea, we are not always best served by the resulting catch. In too many ways a hierarchy of needs is assured disorder especially when everything, as is the current case, is proposed as a priority.

Ironically, we have also been undecided, at the height of the pandemic for example, whether we, as a regional community, should ride the waves or crash against the same heavy seas on different vessels.

Successive collective bubbles either popped or contracted to the size of smaller spaces. There are even those who would have preferred smaller capsules – in the process leading the charge of destructive denialism and applauding tragic failure.

Of course, to those who pursue other destinies, none of this really matters. We can tell by the way you grasp that passport or how you frame partisan desire. We got to know you well – deformed shadows in the face of approaching light. Laughing emojis at the sight of tragedy and pain.

All this as an unapologetic response to those who picked up on the prospects for hope this page has attempted to offer in recent weeks. Complete repudiation of the notions of a “lost generation” and of a “failed race.”

So it is with our embrace of the world, self-validation is needed in consort with far greater self-confidence. The UNGA presents an opportunity to say what about the challenges is new and unique and to explain why the disparate vessels of change may collide and be lost at sea.

This, to me, requires far more diligent management of all the processes involved when it comes to our Caribbean future. The banal challenges fed by fear and an absence of fraternity are not among the least important of the assignment.

Here in Kingston, where I am briefly, the battle cries persist despite the recent, gratuitously displayed full mast of white flags. In Georgetown, a single flag, not all, is soaking in the rich mud these days.

What has been uttered in New York is but a faint spectre of what pierces our silence here at home. There remain many who believe that we sink or swim on our solitary own. Changing all of this can make the difference between sad conclusions and our mutually assured survival.

Just transition questions

Today’s packed public affairs agenda can have the impact of shattering the desire for unifocal attention. At the top resides continued parliamentary consideration, via the Senate this time, and public commentary on the contentious Special Operations Bill.

Yet, the timeline for this submission and its publication today undermines a desire to be thorough and to capture a vast and growing variety of perspectives.

These include my concerns about the secure practice of journalism, and the impact on the creative sector by less than thoughtful application of constitutional derogations. More, next week. I promise.

Alongside this, there is at least one other significant event. Our Prime Minister and her delegation are currently in New York attending the 81^st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

The Prime Minister’s meeting with Venezuela’s acting President, Delcy Rodríguez, should provide a nice photo-op and produce the usual bland foreign ministry communiqué, while avoiding mention of the Venezuelan map showing claimed Guyanese territory that she wore as a pin when she arrived in New York. The PM, based on her prior utterances, should take public note of this.

We should also be minded that while special attention justifiably turns to the General Debate – which began yesterday – there are, typically, several other concurrent events with the potential to sharpen focus on the platitudes of the main stage.

UNGA 2026

We would do well, for example, to regard today’s UNGA’s High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Climate Action and the Just Transition as one of the more important events.

Its significance lies in the opportunity to move beyond broad declarations and confront a difficult question: How can developing countries reconcile climate obligations with the equally urgent demands of economic development?

That precise question was explored by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in her address to the 80th UNGA last year. I believe her rather contentious pronouncements on the “force-feeding” of the climate agenda and “blackmail” by the developed world did not attract the critical dissection they deserved.

Later on, at COP30 in Belém last November, Planning Minister Kennedy Swaratsingh was not exactly on message (as per UNGA 80) when he argued that “ambition alone is not enough” and that the transition to a low-carbon future (my words) must take centre stage.

He called for predictable, accessible, and adequate climate finance to bridge the gap between ambition and implementation.

The Prime Minister’s more combative, and therefore instructive argument had been that national climate policies must balance development and poverty eradication with environmental protection.

She also maintained that fossil fuels remain essential to contemporary economies. The PM may as well have been referencing the dilemmas of not only T&T, but the energy market’s regional newcomers, Suriname and Guyana.

For, though their economic circumstances are different they too confront the complicated interface involving hydrocarbons, development, and the international drive towards decarbonisation.

The HLM thus provides an opportunity to turn that dilemma into a more substantive Caribbean conversation. I hope Monday’s meeting of the Caricom Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) did not leave this subject abegging, even if geopolitical neglect dominated.

The Concept Note on the HLM acknowledges that initial ambitions aimed at containing global emissions to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels are more likely to be “overshot” with a trajectory tending in the direction of 2°C.

At the global level, if we subscribe to scientifically supported “anthropogenic” human triggers (some flat earthers even here in T&T do not), this calls for accelerated execution, adaptation, resilience, increased renewable energy (not idle solar farms), and substantially greater access to affordable finance.

But implementation is precisely where the argument becomes complicated. Swaratsingh had pointed to measures being pursued by T&T, including electric vehicles in the public sector, solar water heating, exploration of green hydrogen, and emerging carbon markets.

He had stressed that the transition must be fair and just, while protecting workers and vulnerable communities and creating new economic opportunities.

Taken together, these positions suggest that the Caribbean debate need not be framed as climate action versus development.

The more useful question is what a genuinely “just transition” means for economies whose development has been or is about to be closely connected to fossil fuels.

How quickly can such economies diversify without jeopardising employment, government revenues, and energy security? How can they finance the transition when capital remains expensive? And who should bear the costs when developing countries are being asked to transform their economies?

These are not arguments against climate action. They are questions about the conditions under which climate action in our neck of the woods can realistically succeed.

Haiti’s election mirage

The Caribbean news agenda is currently so packed, the temptation would be to relegate some important issues to the bottom of the lineup in the belief they would somehow resolve themselves - out of sight and out of mind.

Haiti’s proposed December 13 elections – 10 years after the last one - has been reduced to brief paragraphs signalling everything between remote possibility and terminal impossibility.

Thankfully, the diligent eyes of indigenous Haitian outlets and committed observers, have maintained a realistic focus on developments as nuanced as they are problematic to portend.

My Haitian Tuk Tuk watercolour (Aug 2024)

On Monday, a release on the September 2-9 visit of the Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to Haiti acknowledged intractable challenges but fell short on the more realistic conclusion that a first-round December 13 encounter, if it happens, is unlikely to produce viable political conditions.

“The EPG observed several positive developments, including the work being undertaken to reignite an election process after more than ten years,” the press release says.

However, days before, OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin, was advising: “There is a certain collusion between the political world and the gangs. I am saying this clearly because everyone knows it, but no one is talking about it.” The EPG should be prepared to publicly confront that reality.

Now, there is no doubt that Caricom’s diplomatic engagement is, at minimum, symbolically significant. But I am fearful that the expectations conveyed exceed realities reflected on the ground.

This is not at all to diminish the value of the efforts of the EPG comprising former Saint Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony, former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding and former Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie.

But, in reality, the prospects for Haiti holding a first round of credible, inclusive, and safe elections on December 13 look increasingly dismal. A second round has been scheduled for February 21 next year.

Voter registration is behind expectations. Large parts of the country remain beyond effective state control. Political parties have raised the possibility that important procedural changes might be postponed. 

Most fundamentally, the EPG itself acknowledges a “recent spread and spike” in deadly violence and kidnappings, and the slow deployment of the international Gang Suppression Force whose tenure faces renewal on September 30.

The OAS SG has been far more outspoken on the hazards. Do not dismiss this observation as an attack on the competence or commitment of the EPG. Their mandate is essentially one of political dialogue and good offices. The problem is that political mediation cannot by itself create the conditions under which democracy operates.

My friend and eminent Haitian journalist, Phares Jerome writing in Le Nouvelliste, described the election plan as “increasingly hypothetical as the government struggles to take the appropriate measures to create the conditions for holding elections.”

He references the August 23 Kenscoff massacre which claimed the lives of 47 men, women, and children as proof that “the government has not yet found the right formula to neutralise the bandits. On the contrary, fear is once again taking hold in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas.”

Jerome also challenges acting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé’s effective influence over the “conditions for organising elections.” Miami Herald journalist, Jacqueline Charles’ reportage also poses similar questions.

How can candidates campaign freely when roads remain controlled by armed groups? How can voters register when territories are beyond state authority? How can citizens cast ballots safely when the security forces themselves cannot guarantee freedom of movement?

The humanitarian numbers make the disconnect even more stark. According to UN figures, in the first half of 2026, at least 2,310 people were killed, 1,106 injured, and 99 kidnapped in gun-related violence.

These are not simply security statistics. They describe the environment in which Haiti is expected to conduct a national democratic exercise. The humanitarian crisis is equally formidable.

By the end of 2025, the UN estimated that about 1.5 million Haitians were internally displaced. There is severe food insecurity and the collapse of basic services in many areas.

Elections require more than laws, registration centres, candidates and polling stations. They need citizens to have the security, resilience, and freedom to participate.

There have been solidarity slogans, resolutions, conferences, and security initiatives. Yet the resources required to translate those commitments into reality have consistently fallen short.

What is required appears to be a substantial, sustained investment by all – and within our means in the region. We must also resist the temptation to confuse diplomatic progress with political transformation.

The December 13 election should therefore be regarded as a conditional objective, not an inevitability.

Beyond emotional regionalism

I believe the idea of Caribbean unity - in all its various geographical/historical/political manifestations - is something that enchants most (not all) people who live in our region.

I would say it comforts rather than disturbs a majority of Caribbean nationals and generates a measure of warmth and affection. This is particularly so for those of us who have come to know and understand this unique space.

And, yes, there are some who yearn for other intimate, remote alignments as wholesale substitutes rather than as convenient extensions. Others who pursue exclusive internal alliances. This has been so over the many years; not only now that the absence of collective self-esteem is being geo-politically challenged.

Yet, none of this erases shared, immovable attributes related to human experience - history, culture, and economic endeavour.

Members of the Caribbean Community (green)

Since 1973, Caricom has become part of the emotional vocabulary of regional unity. Even among the sceptics and recently converted opponents of multilateralism, there has been room for sentimental attachment. There are flavours of it in sport and music and art.

Not unlike our independence experience, there is no substantial nostalgia among younger folk when it comes to the federal experiment of 1958-1962 or for CARIFTA (though the latter persists as titular anachronism in more than one sporting arena). Where emotions on these persist, they are largely positive or reflect lost or fading love.

Not much of this specific perspective is captured in the inaugural edition of the Regional Institutional Risk Monitor published on September 1 by the Caribbean Business Review (CBR) under former Caricom Assistant Secretary General, Joseph Cox. I think it should have.

The Monitor does, however, offer an implicit suggestion that beyond integration sentimentality – what might be called emotional regionalism - “functional regionalism” is what can and will make the difference between the success or failure of the movement, in its disparate parts, to collectively achieve developmental objectives.

The publication raises the fundamental question of whether key Caricom institutions are “fit for purpose” through an assessment of “institutional risk across the Caribbean Regional Architecture.” Big words to, in effect, gauge success or failure.

No doubt, the region has conducted introspective exercises before. During my brief tenure at the Caricom Secretariat in the mid-90s, then management consultant, Dr Suruj Rambachan undertook a review of the effectiveness of the Secretariat in delivery of its respective mandates. I cannot recall the grade/s earned.

There have since been several similar projects, often at the insistence of international benefactors. But the CBR Monitor attempts to dissect the question of “fitness” by assessing the qualitative performances of four key institutions: the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Caricom Secretariat itself.

“Any assessment of Caribbean regional institutions must begin by avoiding a common analytical error: Caricom is not synonymous with the Caricom Secretariat. The regional architecture comprises several layers of institutions with different legal foundations, responsibilities and relationships to Member States,” the report says.

The CBR Report

The report also identifies the methodological challenge of examining four institutions that are not “variants of the same organisational model.” (Read the report here: CBR Report.

Through it, though, readers can acquire a better understanding of the fact that the durability and effectiveness of integration efforts depend much more on the quality, resilience, and performance of our regional institutions than on the romance of integration.

They have been created largely because of the undeniable absence of scale, specialist expertise, financial resources, and bargaining power to do some important things on our own as single entities. Countries and delusional politicians who think otherwise are often rudely awakened to this fact – whatever their typically unreliable external dalliances.

We ought to have learned this during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic as CARPHA was called to action at a time when external friendships grew lukewarm and even cold. Let’s also see what’s currently happening regarding the accommodation of third-country deportations. Friends indeed.

The report does not get into these kinds of details but spends time on whether the selected institutions have been successfully leveraging their authority, expertise, convening power, and partnerships in the conduct of their affairs.

The perception of repeated failure has meanwhile not been matched by effective programmes of public awareness and education, and regional bureaucrats have not all been convinced that open communication provides the best avenues for interrogation of performance.

This goes beyond affection and communion. Emotional regionalism amounts to almost nothing without functional regionalism. The CBR risk monitor makes the point more strongly than most other self-diagnoses of the last few decades.

Our audacious expectations

My 65–70-year-old cohort emerged around the tail end of the colonial era – a quickie experience that left precious little to non-vicariously stimulate any substantial tabanca as seems to currently be the case.

Our “good old days” occurred post-Marlborough around the time of the assembling of colonial fragments and the setting of early targets.

For us, uncontrived nostalgia relates to efforts at the time of our awakening to come to terms with new responsibilities, the building of self-esteem, and a new kind of social compact.

There was, everywhere, a sense of wrongs to be righted. Bold, new directions to be forged from a developmental crossroads.

Back at Caroni Presbyterian, Grandpa/Headmaster Gibbings   - who had a first-born (my father) by the name of “Arthur Andrew Cipriani” - would assemble us in an ‘n’ shaped structure in the middle of the canefield to speak about “citizenship” and devotion to duty.

One day, artist Mahmoud Pharouk “M.P” Aladdin, then cultural officer in the ministry of education and culture, stood over our shoulders as we drew people and stalks of cane. I cited this experience recently when I exhibited for the first time at the QRC Art Legacy show at NAPA.

Aladdin had published a guide book for teachers called Man the Creator which argued that the arts were central to and not peripheral to the education process.

Grandpa would never frame consciousness in the manner of the irreligious title. He however paid close attention to Aladdin’s work and gifted me a compilation of local writings including poems by the late artist/writer/educator.

Later on, he gave me a copy of The Monstrous Angel – Aladdin’s 1969 collection of poems - which I read alongside Tagore and Naipaul and the Trinidad Guardian.

Aladdin’s efforts, together with Cipriani’s Labour Party creed of “human dignity” had by then echoed from the red concrete corner of the little school in the canefield out to the main road that took us back to Curepe every day.

There seemed to be, in all this, an under-current of deprivation to be addressed, inequity to be recalibrated, inhumanity to be humanised.

One day, somebody “important” visited the school or was nearby and we all held little red, white, and black flags and waved them high and briskly. It had to be Miss Holder (who taught me most of what I know about the English language) who explained the meaning behind the colours far more clearly than designer Carlisle Chang was to later elaborate.

Miss Diane played the piano and we sang “national songs.”

Then, through Grandpa, we heard about “nation building” and “respect” and his version of Cipriani’s “dignity” message – directed at a largely shoeless, rural school population.

These are among the early “independence” memories of some of us: colonialism as an instrument of “man’s inhumanity to man”, and independence a mission to correct this through principles and standards focused on a different kind of future.

So, off I went one day to Queen’s Hall – hair slicked back, seams straight and sharp, and hungry (because we got there too early), reciting The Test of a Man: “The test of a man is the fight he makes,/The grit that he daily shows;/The way he stands on his feet and takes/Fate’s numerous bumps and blows.”

The views of American poet Carlyle Straub (or whoever; people aren’t too sure) were considered appropriate by my grandfather to describe the task at hand for a new T&T.

Grandpa Samuel Gibbings in his later years

Grandpa insisted in his “citizenship” lectures that such was the challenge of the new era. There was nothing shameful, embarrassing, or regrettable about the sights set by a new T&T. We were onstage ‘live’ and proud.

Then came the QRC years whose first chapter opened in Form 1A in September 1970. Against the backdrop of major challenges to an obstinate post-colonial status quo, came the assertion that “better” was there to be acquired.

Today’s nostalgia is thus less impressive through talk of the “good old days” than for the audacity of expectations.

The years after Marlborough were no golden age, and the independence generation was hardly innocent of failure, exclusion, or contradiction. But there was a sense that the future was ours to construct and that citizenship meant accepting responsibility for what we built.

That, more than any remembered song, flag or school uniform, is what remains from those early years: an unfinished promise that a small country with two names could nevertheless develop a common purpose - and that “better” was not merely something to be desired, but something for which we were expected to work. When was that mission outsourced or terminated?

Our Coat of Arms

We are getting to Independence Day 2026 and the end of World Steelpan Month, during which there was celebration of UN World Steelpan Day.

These two key occasions meet us with inconsistent implementation of a 2024 decision to replace the three ships, at the base of our national Coat of Arms, with the steelpan.

Indeed, there have been claims of wilful sloth even as a 2031 extension was imposed at the end of last year – five years later to presumably cater for cost, logistical and perhaps emotional issues. The initial target date for implementation was January 1, 2026.

High profile official events are meanwhile being hosted with prominently displayed versions of the old design, and not all ministries and state agencies appear sufficiently impressed to make the transition a priority on all forms of public displays and communication.

Yes, changes in signage, stationery, uniforms, backdrops for special occasions, and other displays cost money, are a bother, and can take time. But governments routinely manage significant administrative and visual changes when political priorities change

Between April 2025 and now there have been quite efficient and seamless changes in reinventing recalibrated ministries and associated agencies. The same urgency has clearly not been applied to the Coat of Arms.

Use of the Coat of Arms remains protected under the National Identity Guidelines – as mandated by the National Emblems of Trinidad and Tobago (Regulation) Act (Chap. 19:04), amended in 2025 to include the steelpan.

As of now, with Independence celebrations afoot, there are displays of national emblems throughout the country. I find I have become pretty fussy about these things lately. I shudder at times when some occasions are considered to be appropriate for flying of our flag.

For instance, Trinbago Knight Riders (TKR) is a commercial cricketing franchise and does not fit the profile for “national” recognition. Supporters of one competing team, which included T&T nationals, once considered it appropriate to stomp on our flag to signify opposition to a TKR team comprising mixed nationalities.

Last week at a big event in another Caricom state, I made my displeasure felt over the improper display of my national flag (upside down). The issue was promptly addressed.

Now, when we do this to ourselves, it is even more disheartening, if not maddening. True, there is cost and inconvenience involved, but if there is a big signing ceremony involving the future well-being of our country why is the added cost of a new backdrop a problem? Or borrowing one from an agency with one? Do the event checklists of the various state agencies include this?

If there is a not-so-subtle message being delivered in all this, then say so! I am proud of where the steelpan has taken T&T. Additionally, to the extent that the new Coat of Arms is being deployed at a wide variety of state events (though not all) I have not detected the emergence of “ethnic rivalries, societal strife, and hate” over this.

I have looked for sadness or feelings of alienation over the course of this month’s pan celebrations. Where is the “societal strife”? Where are the predicted tensions?

Try to find a single instance when the steelpan has produced such an impact. On the contrary, it remains one of the most powerful sources of well-being and good in our society.

This space has been used time and again to make the point that the steelpan, and all that comes with it, remains the greatest thing we do – in all its facets as a musical instrument, a model for social organisation through well-managed steelbands, and an undervalued economic resource.

Whatever the clumsy management of its conceptualisation in 2024 and initial introduction as a key element of our Coat of Arms, its place on our state seal cannot be seriously challenged. In any event, the arguments over this have long ended.

Few things are as widely accepted as a part of our national identity. As I reminded people last week, there is unlikely to be another musical instrument played by more people (especially at such a high level of competence) per capita in any other country in the world. The case for its deployment as a sustainable, renewable resource is also now established beyond question.

So, what’s the problem? We have shown in recent weeks that when governments believe they need to do something – however questionable in value … and even harmful – they can get up and get it done.

 

Steelpan survival

Some of us have had the time, patience, and interest to repeatedly consider the late Merchant’s 1985 suggestion that the steelpan might have at that time been “in danger.”

Now, we have lived long enough to have put such an assertion to relatively comfortable rest. For, the young people who played then and who, some proposed, were not turning up in the audience, are now the “elders” sitting in the stands while new generations of young people play.

If you did not attend in person, you hopefully had a chance to sample online what was on offer at the Queen’s Park Savannah on August 11 – World Steelpan Day.

You would have had the opportunity to challenge that belief of 41 years ago that had been fueled by self-effacing fears generated since the turbulent birth of the instrument

There has been enough time, since then, to suggest that the turnstile of participation has rotated more than once. No. Pan is not in danger, at least not in the way of endangered natural species.

If there is danger of any kind, it would have to come from wilful vandalism. For, the current trajectory is progressive in nature and, in my view, irreversible.

By “wilful vandalism” I do not mean somebody taking a jackhammer to a pan. I am hinting at the likely impact of collective neglect, squander, politicisation, under-investment, mismanagement, and other actions to dismantle the gains that generations of people have painstakingly achieved.

Last week, I made the case that the steelpan is one of the world’s most extraordinary “renewable” resources. Oil and gas are extracted and consumed. Their reserves diminish. Upstream and downstream activities rely on expendable resources. They recede and disappear when supplies run short.

Pan is different. Every time a generation learns to tune, arrange, compose, perform, teach, manufacture, design, organise or innovate, it adds to the lineage. Every time we invest in pan, we increase the reserves.

If you have time, try calculating where else the same musical instrument is played as pervasively on a per capita basis than the steelpan is in T&T.

That, surely, is convincing evidence of renewable wealth.

Last week, I also proposed that one of the key factors with the potential to refute the "renewable" argument was chronic reliance on key non-indigenous inputs such as the drums themselves.

Akua Leith, who now chairs our country’s Steelpan Geographical Indication Board, does not agree. I had promised last week to come back to this and an interview with him helped bring further perspective to the argument.

He does not regard access to drums and other manufacturing materials as an existential threat.

Manufacturers can easily source inputs internationally – from more than one reliable source. His greater concern is precisely the same resource I have considered to be the least problematic – the people.

The Steelpan of Trinidad and Tobago

Who will make the pans? Who will tune them? Who will carry the knowledge forward? Who will regard manufacturing not as some quaint, exotic pastime but as a respectable and rewarding career?

Leith’s concerns reflect genuine challenges. But they are hardly evidence of impending extinction. Indeed, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Young people are still entering the creative world of pan in large numbers. Spend time with some of our more reputable bands and have a look at their child and junior band programmes.

There you’ll find music education, instrument handling, playing skills, mentorship, and support in other areas of need.

Younger players are teaching others. Teaching institutions and manufacturers are discussing closer relationships.

Contemporary musical arrangements delivered by young people are bringing new audiences to the instrument.

We have also acquired a geographical indication, giving us a mechanism for protecting the authenticity and quality of locally made steelpans. This can serve to stimulate greater awareness of intellectual property value.

Dr Savitri Rampersad has meanwhile been exploring the potential of pan sound itself as a wellness resource. She has argued that the instrument’s unique, distinctive sound could have applications in a trillion-dollar global wellness industry.

If there can be any significant danger, therefore, it is not that pan will disappear or that we will somehow run out of creative imagination.

It can however be threatened if it is deliberately starved, marginalised, and otherwise suppressed.

Pan does not need to be rescued from its apparent future. The natural course of events has taken it forward. It needs to be protected from some of us.