Pan’s renewable wealth

So, World Steelpan Day was observed yesterday, and we are in the midst of Steelpan Month.

By now we should all know that the instrument is much more than the music it delivers. That we frequently need to step back and ask ourselves: What in the manner in which we have clumsily begun to assemble a nation complete with intrigue, eternal conflict, and chronic confusion, have we done to deserve so handsome a bounty?

What exactly have we really done by creating this musical instrument here?

The answer, I propose, is not simply the development of a remarkable musical instrument. Nor is it merely the spectacle of Panorama or various spectacles throughout the year that fill venues and excite communities and people wherever and whenever they assemble here and all over the world.

This space has been frequently employed to propose value that extends to the productive mobilisation of human resources, creation of a model for social organisation, and establishment of a unique pathway for the generation of national wealth.

The fact is we have produced one of the world's most extraordinary renewable resources. It is not, sadly, that there generally exists in T&T any particular penchant for the sustainable. We have, as a nation, thrived on the expendable to the extent that when regenerative options present themselves, they are all too easily discarded.

But more on solar farms fed by a limitless input and expendable carbon resources at another time.

Exodus Steel Orchestra - Winners Panorama 2026

And, yes, I repeat for the umpteenth time my 40-year-old question to the late (great) journalist, Keith Smith, as we took a cigarette break along Independence Square: “When the oil is gone, what else do we have to keep us going?” (“Groan”).

And an identical query put to late energy guru, Barry Barnes, who responded that for as long as the planet remains viable, the oil and gas will continue to flow.

But the point of the questions was never really about hydrocarbons. It was about national imagination and wealth creation transcendent of the long-recognised and known. What, we now ask far more frontally, can we build that cannot run dry?

An answer appears to have lingered before us, without acknowledgement over all these years.

Less than a year ago, while paying tribute to pan revolutionary, Jit Samaroo, and referencing the great pan innovators, tuners, players and arrangers over the years, I suggested that the steelpan is one of the greatest available tools to have converted adversity into enduring national resources.

Think of it as an economic asset emerging from people with few material resources but with what has been manifest as unmatched ingenuity.

Its evolution created not only an instrument but entire systems of knowledge. Some essential ingredients include tuning, blending, arranging, composing, performing, teaching, organising and innovating.

Generation after generation has added to that inheritance without apparently exhausting it. If you have stuck around long enough you would have witnessed never-ending transitions. Renewal in its purest manifestation through the people who comprise the steelpan community.

Unlike oil and gas, every time we invest in pan, we increase the reserves. Isn’t this what renewable wealth looks like?

This is more than a steelpan and sticks on the national coat of arms – now subject to official indifference. It is getting to the root of important social, cultural, and economic conditions that may conduce to our advancement as a people.

A notion of national wealth must include a sense of economic potential especially in ways that are sustainable over the long-term. By associating such potential with provably beneficial elements such as capacity in steelpan manufacturing, enhancing the tourism experience, providing exclusive training grounds, and leading new initiatives in research and development.

As the indisputable Mecca of Pan, T&T cannot allow this momentous opportunity to pass. Happy Steelpan Month!

POST-SCRIPT: I join with the many others who are lamenting the loss of artistic genius, Willi Chen, in recognising his valuable contribution to Caribbean art in virtually all its facets. More than once, his work reflected the value of pan.

“But now we have triumphed with the steel pan as our renowned musical instrument indigenous of the century; through years of dedicated practice, and continuous innovative approaches, to make the invention more sophisticatedly improved, for the sonorous delicacy of its melodious rapture, the most cherished musical instrument in the modern world - our steel pan” – Willi Chen, Trinidad and Tobago Guardian July 20, 2011.