Some of us have had the time, pa­tience, and in­ter­est to re­peat­ed­ly con­sid­er the late Mer­chant’s 1985 sug­ges­tion that the steel­pan might have at that time been “in dan­ger.”

Now, we have lived long enough to have put such an as­ser­tion to rel­a­tive­ly com­fort­able rest. For, the young peo­ple who played then and who, some pro­posed, were not turn­ing up in the au­di­ence, are now the “el­ders” sit­ting in the stands while new gen­er­a­tions of young peo­ple play.

If you did not at­tend in per­son, you hope­ful­ly had a chance to sam­ple on­line what was on of­fer at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Au­gust 11—World Steel­pan Day.

You would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge that be­lief of 41 years ago that had been fu­elled by self-ef­fac­ing fears gen­er­at­ed since the tur­bu­lent birth of the in­stru­ment.

There has been enough time, since then, to sug­gest that the turn­stile of par­tic­i­pa­tion has ro­tat­ed more than once. No. Pan is not in dan­ger, at least not in the way of en­dan­gered nat­ur­al species.

If there is dan­ger of any kind, it would have to come from wil­ful van­dal­ism. For the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry is pro­gres­sive in na­ture and, in my view, ir­re­versible.

By “wil­ful van­dal­ism” I do not mean some­body tak­ing a jack­ham­mer to a pan. I am hint­ing at the like­ly im­pact of col­lec­tive ne­glect, squan­der, politi­ci­sa­tion, un­der-in­vest­ment, mis­man­age­ment, and oth­er ac­tions to dis­man­tle the gains that gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple have painstak­ing­ly achieved.

Last week, I made the case that the steel­pan is one of the world’s most ex­tra­or­di­nary “re­new­able” re­sources. Oil and gas are ex­tract­ed and con­sumed.

Their re­serves di­min­ish. Up­stream and down­stream ac­tiv­i­ties re­ly on ex­pend­able re­sources. They re­cede and dis­ap­pear when sup­plies run short.

Pan is dif­fer­ent. Every time a gen­er­a­tion learns to tune, arrange, com­pose, per­form, teach, man­u­fac­ture, de­sign, or­gan­ise or in­no­vate, it adds to the lin­eage. Every time we in­vest in pan, we in­crease the re­serves.

If you have time, try cal­cu­lat­ing where else the same mu­si­cal in­stru­ment is played as per­va­sive­ly on a per capi­ta ba­sis than the steel­pan is in T&T.

That, sure­ly, is con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of re­new­able wealth.

Last week, I al­so pro­posed that one of the key fac­tors with the po­ten­tial to re­fute the “re­new­able” ar­gu­ment was chron­ic re­liance on key non-in­dige­nous in­puts such as the drums them­selves.

Akua Lei­th, who now chairs our coun­try’s Steel­pan Ge­o­graph­i­cal In­di­ca­tion Board, does not agree. I had promised last week to come back to this and an in­ter­view with him helped bring fur­ther per­spec­tive to the ar­gu­ment.

He does not re­gard ac­cess to drums and oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing ma­te­ri­als as an ex­is­ten­tial threat.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers can eas­i­ly source in­puts in­ter­na­tion­al­ly—from more than one re­li­able source. His greater con­cern is pre­cise­ly the same re­source I have con­sid­ered to be the least prob­lem­at­ic—the peo­ple.

Who will make the pans? Who will tune them? Who will car­ry the knowl­edge for­ward? Who will re­gard man­u­fac­tur­ing not as some quaint, ex­ot­ic pas­time but as a re­spectable and re­ward­ing ca­reer?

Lei­th’s con­cerns re­flect gen­uine chal­lenges. But they are hard­ly ev­i­dence of im­pend­ing ex­tinc­tion. In­deed, the ev­i­dence points in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

Young peo­ple are still en­ter­ing the cre­ative world of pan in large num­bers. Spend time with some of our more rep­utable bands and have a look at their child and ju­nior band pro­grammes.

There you’ll find mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion, in­stru­ment han­dling, play­ing skills, men­tor­ship, and sup­port in oth­er ar­eas of need.

Younger play­ers are teach­ing oth­ers. Teach­ing in­sti­tu­tions and man­u­fac­tur­ers are dis­cussing clos­er re­la­tion­ships.

Con­tem­po­rary mu­si­cal arrange­ments de­liv­ered by young peo­ple are bring­ing new au­di­ences to the in­stru­ment.

We have al­so ac­quired a ge­o­graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tion, giv­ing us a mech­a­nism for pro­tect­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty and qual­i­ty of lo­cal­ly made steel­pans. This can serve to stim­u­late greater aware­ness of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty val­ue.

Dr Sav­it­ri Ram­per­sad has mean­while been ex­plor­ing the po­ten­tial of pan sound it­self as a well­ness re­source. She has ar­gued that the in­stru­ment’s unique, dis­tinc­tive sound could have ap­pli­ca­tions in a tril­lion-dol­lar glob­al well­ness in­dus­try.

If there can be any sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger, there­fore, it is not that pan will dis­ap­pear or that we will some­how run out of cre­ative imag­i­na­tion.

It can, how­ev­er, be threat­ened if it is de­lib­er­ate­ly starved, mar­gin­alised, and oth­er­wise sup­pressed.

Pan does not need to be res­cued from its ap­par­ent fu­ture. The nat­ur­al course of events has tak­en it for­ward. It needs to be pro­tect­ed from some of us.