Richard Lord

Pro­fes­sor Liam Teague said T&T has on­ly scratched the sur­face in dis­cov­er­ing the po­ten­tial of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment the steel­band.Teague, one of the three re­cip­i­ents of the 2014 An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence, said it was mirac­u­lous that pan pi­o­neers had been able to work against the odds to make the pan a le­git­i­mate in­stru­ment. He said he was com­mit­ted to tak­ing the in­stru­ment to high­er lev­els in what­ev­er way he can.

The T&T pan­nist re­ceived the award for his work doe in the field of arts and let­ter. The oth­er re­cip­i­ents were Karen de Souza from Guyana for pub­lic and civic con­tri­bu­tions and di­rec­tor of the UWI's Seis­mic Re­search Unit at St Au­gus­tine, Dr Richard Robert­son, of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The awards were pre­sent­ed dur­ing a spe­cial func­tion at UTC The­atre 1, Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day evening. Among those in the au­di­ence were Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and A Nor­man Sab­ga, group chair­man and CEO of the Ansa McAL Group of Com­pa­nies.

Teague, a pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, arranges for bands in the na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion. He is a re­cip­i­ent of the Hum­ming Bird Medal (Sil­ver) and has pro­mot­ed the steel­pan in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, col­lab­o­rat­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renown com­posers to com­pose mu­sic for the in­stru­ment.

De Souza is co-founder of the ad­vo­ca­cy or­gan­i­sa­tion Red Thread which sup­ports vic­tims of rape, do­mes­tic and oth­er vi­o­lence among the low­est-waged sec­tors of women in Guyana. She is a pi­o­neer in pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, hav­ing script­ed and pro­duced videos and dra­ma on do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sex­u­al abuse.Robert­son, af­ter re­ceiv­ing his award said there was need for greater sup­port from Gov­ern­ment for the work of the UWI Seis­mic Re­search cen­tre.

He said the time had come for those in au­thor­i­ty to build re­silience to nat­ur­al haz­ards in the re­gion."We need help to sup­port ap­plied re­search that is rel­e­vant and can pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on our na­tion­al and re­gion­al agen­da," he said.

Robert­son said the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre "will like to move away from sim­ply mon­i­tor­ing, da­ta col­lec­tion and re­search to the cre­ation of use­ful tools that pol­i­cy mak­er, plan­ners can ap­ply to guar­an­tee that de­vel­op­ment is sus­tained as de­sired." He said knowl­edge about haz­ards is not kept among the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty but dis­sem­i­nat­ed to a wide range of stake­hold­ers.

Chair­man of the Re­gion­al Em­i­nent Per­sons Se­lec­tion pan­el, for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Michael Man­soor, said it ap­pears that "our lead­ers have aban­doned the pos­si­bil­i­ties of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion" as they are "yet to ar­tic­u­late and in­tro­duce ap­pro­pri­ate re­spons­es to bend the ad­verse cur­rents that af­fect us".Among the chal­lenges which af­fect the re­gion, Man­soor said were un­cer­tain­ties about the fu­ture, glob­al­i­sa­tion and the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of the glob­al re­ces­sion.

Man­soor said the work of the lau­re­ates is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant to the cre­ation of a Caribbean space and de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment of every Caribbean cit­i­zen.