Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter

The Tas­sa As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) has joined the de­bate on the al­ter­ing of the Coat of Arms, bold­ly claim­ing that the tas­sa drum is more of a lo­cal in­stru­ment than the steel­pan.

TATT’s as­ser­tion came hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley stat­ed that the sim­ple rea­son the steel­pan was con­sid­ered for the new Coat of Arms, where it will re­place Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships, is be­cause that in­stru­ment was in­vent­ed here and is in­dige­nous to this coun­try.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley made the co­ment dur­ing the PNM’s La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Con­stituen­cy Con­fer­ence at Phase II, La Hor­quet­ta, on Tues­day night, where he not­ed that as much as peo­ple may like the tas­sa and oth­er in­stru­ments, their ori­gins are from oth­er coun­tries.

But while ac­knowl­edg­ing and sup­port­ing the steel­pan as this coun­try’s first na­tion­al in­stru­ment, TATT yes­ter­day said, “No part of the steel drum is from T&T, as it is a ful­ly im­port­ed met­al con­tain­er that came from oth­er coun­tries in­to Trinidad.”

In con­trast, TATT said the tas­sa, which is al­so played every day in this coun­try, is ful­ly made with no im­port­ed ma­te­ri­als.

“The skin is from our lo­cal goat, sheep or deer, the sticks are made from T&T wild sug­ar­cane, the bowl is made from T&T clay and the bass is made from the man­go tree,” TATT said, adding that even the tam­boo bam­boo in­stru­ment is more in­dige­nous to this coun­try than the steel­pan.

Of­fer­ing its ver­sion of the his­to­ry of the steel­pan, TATT said, “What was done in Trinidad with the im­port­ed steel drums was the re­tun­ing and fine-tun­ing the steel drum/ pan in­to a full mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.”

TATT claimed the im­port­ed steel drum met­al con­tain­er al­ready came with a sound. How­ev­er, it thanked this na­tion’s an­ces­tors for re­belling against their colo­nial mas­ters to set off a chain of events which led to the cre­ation of the steel­pan.

“If the then colo­nial rulers did not ban the sound of what they called noisy sounds of the bam­boo and bis­cuit tins, ac­cus­ing the slaves of com­mu­ni­cat­ing via those in­stru­ments, to­day we would not have known about the steel drum as an in­stru­ment as we know it, be­cause the dis­card­ed emp­ty steel drums were then used and it start­ed with a two-note called the du­dop,” TATT said.

How­ev­er, even with that his­tor­i­cal con­text TATT main­tained, “To com­pare both in­stru­ments, it’s clear the steel drum is a for­eign met­al in­stru­ment and the tas­sa is a 100 per cent lo­cal in­stru­ment.”

But Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dal Mitchell ve­he­ment­ly dis­agrees with TATT.

While telling Guardian Me­dia he does not wish to be drawn in­to the “dog whistling that some find it nec­es­sary to en­gage in on the is­sue,” Mitchell ar­gued, “The is­sue was nev­er about whether the goat or the goat’s skin was im­port­ed or not. It is about in­ven­tion. There is one mu­si­cal in­stru­ment that was in­vent­ed and de­vel­oped in Trinidad and To­ba­go. That mu­si­cal in­stru­ment is the steel­pan.”

He added, “And it is the fact that the steel­pan was in­vent­ed here, as well as the care­ful process of con­vert­ing a dis­card­ed oil drum in­to a per­cus­sive mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, and the val­ue added by our skilled pro­duc­ers and tuners that al­lowed us, through Pan Trin­ba­go, to gain a Ge­o­graph­i­cal In­di­ca­tion from the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice.”

Mean­while, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore al­so re­fused to be drawn in­to a de­bate with TATT. How­ev­er, she sought to un­der­score, “Pan is Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is not an African thing, it is not an In­di­an thing, it is not a Chi­nese thing, it is not a Syr­i­an thing or any of the oth­er races, it is a Trinidad and To­ba­go in­stru­ment.”

Ram­sey-Moore said the pan fra­ter­ni­ty was ho­n­oured and ex­cit­ed with the pro­posed in­clu­sion of the in­stru­ment on the Coat of Arms. She said a lot of hard work went in­to en­sur­ing that the steel­pan was legal­ly recog­nised as this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.