?Pan­land T&T Ltd, the world's largest man­u­fac­tur­er and ex­porter of the steel­pan in­stru­ment, had rea­son to cel­e­brate last week up­on re­ceiv­ing an au­then­tic let­ter of sin­cere thanks from the man of pos­si­bil­i­ties him­self–US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

The of­fi­cial White House cor­re­spon­dence, di­rect from Wash­ing­ton, DC, fol­lows the grand ges­ture of good­will shown to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma dur­ing a vis­it by his pres­i­den­tial aide to the Se­lec­tion House ex­hib­it, dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as Meet­ing in April of this year. While Pres­i­dent Oba­ma's in­tent was to pur­chase two mi­ni-pans for his daugh­ters, he was met with a sweet sur­prise when pre­sent­ed with the com­pli­men­ta­ry "can­dy pur­ple" tenor pan pack­age from Pan­land's Colour of Pan col­lec­tion, as well as one black and one red mi­ni-pan for Malia and Sasha, re­spec­tive­ly.

While the event re­mained some­what of a mys­tery and sur­prise to the gen­er­al pub­lic that our na­tion­al in­stru­ment had board­ed Air Force One, Pan­land Pres­i­dent Michael P Coop­er sim­ply de­scribed it as a des­tined meet­ing be­tween two phe­noms–an in­stru­ment that was born out of the de­fi­ance of op­pres­sion, and a man who sim­i­lar­ly has shat­tered bound­aries, both root­ed in a com­mon his­to­ry.

"The won­der of the steel­pan con­tin­ues to cap­ture the minds and hearts of peo­ple around the world and, in this case, ge­nius has recog­nised ge­nius," said Coop­er.

"At Pan­land, we con­tin­ue to be in­spired by the unique ori­gins of our na­tion­al trea­sure, but are even fur­ther mo­ti­vat­ed by the lim­it­less fu­ture of the in­stru­ment, the in­dus­try and the com­mu­ni­ties that ben­e­fit from its de­vel­op­ment. The gra­cious sen­ti­ments sent to us from Pres­i­dent Oba­ma have fu­elled that fire and re­newed that com­mit­ment to our role as pan­mak­ers to the world. We feel that his en­dorse­ment is one to cel­e­brate and share with our fel­low cit­i­zens of this coun­try, be­cause pan be­longs to the peo­ple of T&T as a whole."

The Laven­tille-based com­pa­ny, which boasts over 40 ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees, con­tin­ues to blaze a trail that pro­motes the main­stream ac­cep­tance of the steel­pan with­in the glob­al mu­sic in­dus­try, due in no small part to its in­no­va­tion of pro­duc­tion meth­ods and the in­stru­ment it­self.

Since its in­cep­tion in the ear­ly 1990s, Pan­land has al­so pri­ori­tised the en­hance­ment of the steel­pan's so­cioe­co­nom­ic im­por­tance to lo­cal, re­gion­al and glob­al com­mu­ni­ties. In this vein, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to seize every op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case and val­i­date the im­por­tance of the steel­pan, with the en­gage­ment with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma now a key high­light in that jour­ney.

With pas­sion and vig­or, Coop­er un­der­scored this phi­los­o­phy, say­ing: "In the pan world, we can no longer af­ford to miss key op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­mote and re­alise the true po­ten­tial of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment, and we viewed the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as meet­ing as such an event

"Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez had a sim­i­lar mind­set. His gift to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has be­come an in­stant best­seller. While we were elat­ed that the op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed it­self to be en­dorsed by such an his­toric fig­ure and cul­tur­al icon, we can­not un­der­es­ti­mate the worth of the for­feit­ed re­wards of hav­ing the steel­pan grace the diplo­mat­ic res­i­dences of all heads of state. We must be proac­tive and so­phis­ti­cat­ed in our ap­proach to pro­vid­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate plat­forms and en­abling the re­sources nec­es­sary to en­sure sus­tain­able growth and sys­temic suc­cess."

This no­tion of sus­tain­able growth just hap­pens to be a pri­ma­ry theme in the up­com­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in No­vem­ber of this year.

It is Pan­land's hope and the hope of pan en­thu­si­asts alike, that the T&T com­mu­ni­ty, at all lev­els, will ex­ploit a sec­ond chance to not on­ly place pan up front and cen­tre dur­ing the week­end it­self, but more im­por­tant­ly to en­gage our dig­ni­fied guests with our na­tion­al in­stru­ment in a way that tran­scends the phys­i­cal gath­er­ing of the Com­mon­wealth lead­ers.

To quote Pres­i­dent Oba­ma's words in his let­ter of grat­i­tude to Coop­er: "If we work to­geth­er to ad­dress our na­tions' new and com­plex chal­lenges, we will emerge stronger and more pros­per­ous than ever be­fore."

?about pan­land

?Pan­land T&T Ltd is the lead­ing pro­duc­er and ex­porter of the steel­pan in­stru­ment world­wide.

Es­tab­lished in 1993 as T&T In­stru­ments Ltd, the Laven­tille–based com­pa­ny changed its name in 2006 to Pan­land T&T Ltd.

With a well-earned rep­u­ta­tion of high-qual­i­ty and un­par­al­leled ser­vice, the com­pa­ny of­fers the widest range of steel­pans, ac­ces­sories, lit­er­a­ture, and sup­port ser­vices in the in­dus­try.

A mem­ber of NAMM (Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Mu­sic Mer­chants) and PAS (Per­cus­sion Arts So­ci­ety), the com­pa­ny boasts of lo­cal and re­gion­al bench­mark recog­ni­tion, in­clud­ing the T&T Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur of the Year Award–1998, Caribbean Re­gion En­tre­pre­neur of the Year Award fi­nal­ist–2000, T&T Prime Min­is­ter Ex­porter of the Year Di­vi­sion­al Award–2001, and most re­cent­ly T&T Prime Min­is­ter Rook­ie Ex­porter of the Year award � 2007.

Pan­land T&T Lim­it­ed re­mains ac­tive in the com­mu­ni­ty, and has played an ac­tive part in the lo­cal de­vel­op­ment of its res­i­den­tial area of Laven­tille, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val Foun­da­tion.