The win­ning of two Gram­my Awards by Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, Jo­lene Mendes and Kwame Ryan, is ar­guably the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion achieved in the field of artis­tic ex­pres­sion of the kind. It’s a ring­ing en­dorse­ment of the nat­ur­al and stud­ied tal­ents of our na­tion­als in com­pe­ti­tion against the best in fields of high cre­ative out­put.

What makes this suc­cess even more sig­nif­i­cant is that the two na­tion­als were award­ed in fields, which, al­though prac­tised here, are not ex­pan­sive­ly and tra­di­tion­al­ly part of the na­tion­al cul­tur­al tra­di­tions. In the in­stance of Ryan, his award is for con­duct­ing the Best Opera Record­ing for the Hous­ton Grand Opera pro­duc­tion of Jake Heg­gie’s In­tel­li­gence.

Film pro­duc­er Mendes re­ceived the Gram­my for the Best Mu­sic video, Anx­i­ety.

The Gram­my Awards are con­sid­ered the high­est and most pres­ti­gious ho­n­our in the glob­al mu­sic in­dus­try, of­ten re­ferred to as “the pre­mier ac­co­lade for artis­tic and tech­ni­cal ex­cel­lence,” a stat­ed de­scrip­tion of the im­por­tance of the awards, which were es­tab­lished in 1957. “They are peer-dri­ven recog­ni­tion of achieve­ment across var­i­ous gen­res, heav­i­ly in­flu­enc­ing com­mer­cial suc­cess and in­dus­try val­i­da­tion,” its or­gan­is­ers say.

In win­ning the in­di­vid­ual awards, Ryan and Mendes take a place along­side in­ter­na­tion­al artistes of the ilk and recog­ni­tion of Quin­cy Jones, Be­y­once, Sir Georg Silti, Ste­vie Won­der and oth­ers.

Ax­iomat­ic with the win­ning of the in­ter­na­tion­al awards, is the ring­ing procla­ma­tion we can make for our­selves and to the world that in in­ter­na­tion­al achieve­ment, our artistes and cul­tur­al prod­ucts, too of­ten be­lit­tled even by our­selves, rank amongst the great­est in the world and so too our pro­duc­ers of orig­i­nal and in­ter­na­tion­al artis­tic ex­pres­sion.

But lest we for­get while smoth­er­ing the two awardees with de­serv­ing praise, we re­mem­ber those who went be­fore them in sim­i­lar are­nas. Ge­of­frey and Boscoe Hold­er, Spar­row, Kitch­en­er, Mon­tano, our col­lec­tive steel­pan in­ven­tion and in­ven­tors, our world class and recog­nised au­thors Lovelace, Selvon, Naipaul and Wal­cott; the last men­tioned two hav­ing been award­ed the No­bel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. Of course, it’s known that Wal­cott, a na­tive of St Lu­cia who spent a cou­ple decades here, cre­at­ed many of his mas­ter­pieces here.

The Gram­my Awards come at a very op­por­tune mo­ment, when this coun­try is fac­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges which of­ten lead to self-doubt and the too of­ten glib and non-think­ing ques­tion­ing of our sta­tus as a “re­al coun­try.” To be sure, the an­swer to such doubt­ing has come to that ques­tion in an area of ac­com­plish­ment that is high­ly com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The trick now is for the peo­ple of our na­tion to turn our en­er­gies and per­spec­tives to cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions and their val­ue to our hu­man and eco­nom­ic lives.

With such an un­der­stand­ing, we here can be­lieve that our cul­tur­al prod­ucts have val­ue and can be one el­e­ment of an ex­port in­dus­try — that is if the pri­vate sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment and those en­gaged in the cre­ative in­dus­try can recog­nise val­ue in artis­tic ex­pres­sion.

That the awards have been made dur­ing this pe­ri­od in which the cre­ative life of Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val, mas and de­sign, ca­lyp­so and steel­band, is on show; they could not have come at a more ap­pro­pri­ate cul­tur­al mo­ment.