When he turned the sod for the new $14 mil­lion Des­per­a­does Pan The­atre at George Street, Port-of-Spain, last Au­gust, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hailed that de­vel­op­ment as “an in­vest­ment in our peo­ple,” where cul­ture can con­tribute to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and so­cial di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

It is a mod­el of de­vel­op­ment that has al­ready been tried and proven by some of T&T’s suc­cess­ful steel or­ches­tras. The new Des­pers fa­cil­i­ty, which will in­clude com­mer­cial space, is in keep­ing with a trend where pa­n­yards have been evolv­ing in­to pan the­atres—mul­ti­fac­eted spaces that ac­com­mo­date a range of cul­tur­al and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

One of the best ex­am­ples is the NL­CB Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra’s ex­pand­ed fa­cil­i­ty at Dot­tin Street, San Fer­nan­do, which in­cludes an NL­CB booth and gift shop. It was a pro­gres­sive step to­ward self-suf­fi­cien­cy ini­ti­at­ed in 2019, when the band was in­cor­po­rat­ed as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and then reg­is­tered as an en­ter­prise to be­come an eco­nom­ic hub in the Les Ef­fort East com­mu­ni­ty.

Oth­er bands have fol­lowed sim­i­lar paths, be­com­ing cen­tres of com­mu­ni­ty and com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties

But not all steel­bands achieve those lev­els of suc­cess and many of them, es­pe­cial­ly the small, un­spon­sored bands, do not even have se­cu­ri­ty of tenure in the places they oc­cu­py. They strug­gle to find se­cure, long-term lo­ca­tions where they can prac­tice and safe­ly store their in­stru­ments.

That is the plight of Wood­brook Play­boyz, for­mer Panora­ma Sin­gle Pan cham­pi­ons. Just this week, the band suf­fered the in­dig­ni­ty of be­ing evict­ed from its pa­n­yard at 6 Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Wood­brook.

De­spite the best ef­forts of of­fi­cials of the steel­band to work out an arrange­ment to stay at the venue, the prop­er­ty has been re­claimed by the pri­vate own­er and re­ports are that the land is to be leased for use as a car park.

Play­boyz has been giv­en tem­po­rary shel­ter on the com­pound of the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen on Mu­cu­rapo Road but is still faced with the chal­lenge of se­cur­ing a per­ma­nent home.

Re­gret­tably, in the coun­try that claims to be the birth­place of the on­ly mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, many steel­bands face evic­tions and oth­er chal­lenges in the spaces they oc­cu­py.

Not even the steel­band move­ment’s gov­ern­ing body is im­mune to such ac­tions. In 2018, Pan Trin­ba­go was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly evict­ed from its long-time home at Vic­to­ria Suites, Park Street in Port-of-Spain, af­ter fail­ing to pay more than $200,000 in ar­rears of rent.

For more than two decades, Pan Trin­ba­go has al­so been un­able to make much head­way on the con­struc­tion of its head­quar­ters on 11.5 acres of land off the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way in Tacarigua. All that stood on the land was an in­com­plete three-storey, steel-frame over­grown by bush­es un­til re­cent­ly when the stalled project was tak­en over by state agency UDe­COTT.

This year makes it 30 years since the steel­pan was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the na­tion­al in­stru­ment of T&T. But what does that mean when some bands are still strug­gling for shel­ter and spon­sor­ship?

The steel­pan de­serves high­er lev­els of in­vest­ment, not on­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son but year-round. The re­quires much more cor­po­rate sup­port for the move­ment than is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed. Un­til that hap­pens, Dr Row­ley’s dream of cul­ture con­tribut­ing to T&T’s long-promised di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion will not be re­alised.