Gillian Lucky

?It is said that cock­roach should not med­dle in fowl fight and the brew­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the "dead pan" re­marks made by Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) awardee Len "Boogsie" Sharpe dur­ing the na­tion­al awards cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent's House to the pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go, Patrick Arnold, which has caused the lo­cal mu­sic mae­stro to get some­what of a beat­ing, may not en­ti­tle every­one to ex­press a view on the mat­ter.

Worse yet, not be­ing in the coun­try when the state­ments were ac­tu­al­ly made, re­liance has to placed on the pub­lished quot­ed words of the pan mas­ter and the less re­li­able in­ter­pre­ta­tions giv­en in sev­er­al ar­ti­cles about what was stat­ed. But be­ing true to form, how­ev­er, I must make com­ment about a sub­ject that has, in typ­i­cal fash­ion, be­come a na­tion­al is­sue, not sim­ply be­cause of its im­por­tance but more as a re­sult of al­leged­ly con­tentious state­ments made on ap­par­ent­ly sa­cred ground and at a time when fo­cus should on­ly have been on the pos­i­tive.

New crew

Like so many oth­ers, I am not privy to the facts and can there­fore pass no judg­ment as to the stew­ard­ship of the cur­rent Pan Trin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tive. Based on Boogsie's state­ments, it is re­port­ed that he be­lieves "that pan is dead in this coun­try and on­ly a per­son with busi­ness in their blood would be able to en­sure its re­vival." And per­haps that is where Boogsie in his state of un­der­stand­able en­thu­si­asm and un­de­ni­able pas­sion for pan mist­imed his beat and launched, in­ad­ver­tent­ly, an em­bar­rass­ing at­tack on Mr Arnold and "his crew" and di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly blamed them for al­low­ing the steel pan to die. Which al­so rais­es yet an­oth­er is­sue–is the steel pan dead or in need of a ma­jor re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion? Ac­cord­ing to some cit­i­zens, there is a lot more than can be done to pro­mote the pan and we should have patent­ed our cre­ation a long time ago. Now that it has been adopt­ed by so many for­eign coun­tries, it is dif­fi­cult to claim own­er­ship.

Tak­ing note

But hav­ing hit that somber note at a pub­lic event wide­ly cov­ered by the me­dia, it could on­ly have been ex­pect­ed that the dis­cus­sion on pan and its fu­ture would once again be­come a na­tion­al de­bate but on­ly for the next few days un­til it is shoved aside and re­placed in promi­nence by some scan­dal, bac­cha­nal or in­ap­pro­pri­ate ut­ter­ance made by a high-pro­file fig­ure. In any event, the af­fect­ed par­ties know that the nine-day mem­o­ry bank of the Trinida­di­an/To­bag­on­ian pub­lic en­ables oth­er brew­ing pots of con­tention to be put on the front burn­er while the pan is rel­e­gat­ed to the back. And it is for that rea­son we are of­ten un­able to fol­low things through to the fin­ish or, as in the case of pan, reach our max­i­mum po­ten­tial, be­cause we nev­er re­al­ly en­gage the pop­u­la­tion in com­pre­hen­sive and mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion on mat­ters of pub­lic im­por­tance. In­stead re­sort is had to high­light­ing a play-off of egos, a clash of per­son­al­i­ties and, af­ter the nov­el­ty dies away, hap­pi­ly mov­ing on to the next mat­ter.

Play pan

For decades we treat­ed the pan with the great­est dis­re­spect and paid lit­tle homage to those who pi­o­neered and en­gi­neered its cre­ation and mar­ket­ed the beau­ti­ful in­stru­ment as an in­ven­tion to be reck­oned with. The main con­cern for the my­opic was the un­due at­ten­tion giv­en to this man-made won­der and when it was de­clared the na­tion­al in­stru­ment sev­er­al years ago, cer­tain so­ci­etal pock­ets raised their voic­es of dis­sent, claim­ing that the pan was un­de­serv­ing of such high sta­tus. Oth­ers claimed it was a po­lit­i­cal ploy to win the sup­port of the mass­es and that the pan "was no big ting." How un­for­tu­nate that such de­trac­tors could not recog­nise the val­ue of a sim­ple met­al drum that when con­fig­ured could make mag­i­cal mu­sic that would at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

Rac­ing with pan

And of course, as ob­tains even to­day, the race card was played by those who know well the trick of in­cit­ing the forces to win sup­port for their self­ish mo­tives. So when the talk of teach­ing school chil­dren to play pan sur­faced and to make knowl­edge about the pan part of the school syl­labus, there was a loud cry–what about teach­ing in­stru­ments of oth­er ori­gins? My point on the mat­ter re­mains that the steel­pan is our na­tion­al in­stru­ment and as such each cit­i­zen, es­pe­cial­ly the young mem­bers of our pop­u­la­tion, ought to be giv­en the fullest ex­po­sure to some­thing with which we can all iden­ti­fy and feel a sense of na­tion­al pride. Again I state with­out apol­o­gy that the lo­go of our na­tion­al air­line should have in­clud­ed the steel pan in some form or fash­ion and if the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the use of the non-ex­clu­sive al­though ad­mit­ted­ly beau­ti­ful hum­ming bird was to en­sure Caribbean iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, then the words flow­ing like nec­tar from the beak of the bird could have been–noth­ing sweet­er than pan."

Case closed.