It has been long in com­ing, the leg­isla­tive ac­knowl­edge­ment of the steel­pan as the na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment of T&T. Very im­por­tant­ly, the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors came to­geth­er with the Gov­ern­ment in Par­lia­ment to pass the leg­is­la­tion to give the ac­cord to the steel­pan.

While the steel­band fra­ter­ni­ty of the present and im­me­di­ate past has worked over a long pe­ri­od for recog­ni­tion to be made le­gal, an un­par­don­able mis­take with se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions will be made if we do not here and now recog­nise and ho­n­our the ge­nius of the pi­o­neers.

The en­tire so­ci­ety and world must be made aware of the res­olute re­fusal of the pi­o­neers of the pan to be daunt­ed by the colo­nial so­ci­ety of the 1930s-1950s, which did every­thing pos­si­ble to damn the steel­pan and steel­bands as “noisy in­stru­ments” and bands of “hooli­gans” and “crim­i­nals” who in­sist­ed on play­ing and ex­per­i­ment­ing with their drums.

It is a point that must nev­er be missed or men­tioned in a low-key voice so as not to dis­rupt “po­lite con­ver­sa­tion.”

The fact is that the steel­pan, the steel­band, and the steel­bands men and women were out­lawed; those who in­sist­ed on play­ing pan and bring­ing it on­to the streets were jailed and cat­e­gorised in a most deroga­to­ry man­ner.

The po­lice of­fi­cers, the mag­is­trates, and el­e­ments of the mid­dle and up­per class­es con­demned the pans and their play­ers as “hooli­gans”.

“If yuh sis­ter talk to ah steel­band man, she fam­i­ly want to break she hand, put she out, lick out every teeth in she mouth, pass yuh Out­cast,” re­mind­ed King Spar­row of the times and the so­cial val­ues.

For­tu­nate­ly, the he­roes of the pan move­ment, “Spree” Si­mon, El­lie Man­nette, Neville Jules, Os­car Pile, flag woman Supreme “May­field”, and Jam­mette So­ci­ety, and lat­er on the likes of An­tho­ny “Muff Man” Williams and Bertie Mar­shall were not put off. We must al­so mark the con­tri­bu­tion of “De White Boys, Col­lege Boys” from “Cobo Town”, Ernest Fer­reira, Cur­tis Pierre Dix­ieland, the Pouchet bros, Ju­nior and Ed­win (Sil­ver Stars) brought a mea­sure of re­spectabil­i­ty to the steel­band.

George God­dard or­gan­ised the steel­bands in­to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive group, the Trinidad All Steel Per­cus­sion Or­ches­tra, Taspo, which con­tained the mas­ter pan play­ers of the pe­ri­od, and along with Sergeant Joseph Grif­fith as mu­si­cal di­rec­tor, took the in­stru­ment to the then cen­tre of civil­i­sa­tion, Lon­don, Eng­land (1951), to demon­strate the val­ue of the steel­pan, the steel­band, and the pan men.

A piece of ad­vice to the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Tourism, Ran­dall Mitchell. Along with talk­ing about the steel­band as an eco­nom­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty, you must es­tab­lish a fo­rum and oth­er ven­tures to recog­nise and record the ef­forts of the pan pi­o­neers and their re­fusal to be bowed by the es­tab­lished so­ci­ety of the times. Many of these pan pi­o­neers took their jail sen­tences in stride and re­turned to the streets and the bar­rack yards and wore well the in­dig­ni­ty of be­ing a pan man in those ear­ly days; noth­ing de­terred them as they kept ex­per­i­ment­ing and play­ing their in­stru­ments.

Trib­ute must al­so be paid to leg­is­la­tors such as Al­bert “Bertie” Gomes and, lat­er on, Pre­mier Er­ic Williams for their sup­port of the steel­band move­ment. In the in­stance of the “Doc­tor”, he urged spon­sor­ships for the steel­bands. With­out grat­i­tude, the “Vengeance of Moko Go fall on we.”