The in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty band­ed to­geth­er yes­ter­day evening to cel­e­brate the first-ever World Steel­pan Day, which was re­cent­ly added to the Unit­ed Na­tions’ cal­en­dar.

Lead­ing the charge in the fes­tiv­i­ties as the icon­ic in­stru­ment’s home coun­try, hun­dreds de­scend­ed on Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, for Pan Trin­ba­go’s cel­e­bra­tion.

Every creed and race, young and old, rich and poor found an equal place at the square last evening, danc­ing and sway­ing to the rhyth­mic sounds that are now syn­ony­mous with the is­land.

“This is in­deed the un­fold­ing of great­ness,” Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore told Guardian Me­dia.

“When you look at what is hap­pen­ing in the peo­ple’s par­lia­ment or Wood­ford Square, where we have more than 10,000 per­sons present here to­day—it is telling a sto­ry that pan is Trinidad and To­ba­go. Pan can uni­fy the world. Pan is pas­sion and I am ex­treme­ly pleased and ex­treme­ly hap­py to see Pan dis­play in this mag­nif­i­cent way in the land of its birth.”

The T&T con­sulate in New York al­so took to Times Square with cel­e­bra­tions last night.

Dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions in T&T, mes­sages came in from coun­tries like Japan.
Ac­cord­ing to Ram­sey-Moore, the day was al­so ob­served in oth­er Caribbean is­lands, Cana­da and Eu­rope.

On Ju­ly 24, the Unit­ed Na­tions de­clared Au­gust 11 World Steel­pan Day af­ter a draft res­o­lu­tion was brought by Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell.
The draft res­o­lu­tion re­ceived co-spon­sor­ship from 84 mem­ber states of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

There have been is­sues on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage when it comes to trade­mark­ing the steel­pan, which was cre­at­ed in the 1930s, and is the on­ly sig­nif­i­cant in­stru­ment to be de­vel­oped in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­sey-Moore said the Unit­ed Na­tion’s ob­ser­vance now im­mor­talis­es the in­stru­ment as T&T’s.

“One of the things, in terms of the pre­sen­ta­tion in the res­o­lu­tion—it clear­ly stat­ed that the birth­place of pan is Trinidad and To­ba­go. So now, the world knows that the sto­ry is ours. From be­hind the bridge to the world stage,” she said.

The day now joins the ranks of oth­er ob­ser­vances on the Unit­ed Na­tions’ cal­en­dar like In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (March 8), World Wa­ter Day (March 22) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Peace (Sep­tem­ber 21). How­ev­er, there are scores of oth­er days marked on their cal­en­dar that may not be as well-known or even ob­served with as much fan­fare.

Asked how Pan Trin­ba­go in­tends to keep the mo­men­tum for suc­ces­sive years, Ram­sey-Moore said, “All the stake­hold­ers must work to­geth­er.”

She said the de­c­la­ra­tion has now opened a world of op­por­tu­ni­ties for the en­tire pan com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing, and need­ed to be cap­i­talised on.

Al­so speak­ing dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion, Mitchell said plans are al­ready un­der­way for next year’s ob­ser­vance.

“The Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Pan Trin­ba­go and its oth­er stake­hold­ers will pre­pare ear­ly for a fes­ti­val of steel to be cel­e­brat­ed around World Steel­pan Day in 2024, which will, as we fore­see, in­cor­po­rate a con­ven­tion of steel­pan where we bring peo­ple from all over the world who are in­ter­est­ed in steel­pan to dis­cuss the fu­ture of steel­pan—the tun­ing, and ed­u­ca­tion, the trade in steel­pan, and, of course, we will cel­e­brate in all our pa­n­yards and all our per­form­ing spaces. We al­so look for­ward dur­ing the year to get our young peo­ple more in­volved. You have heard ed­u­ca­tion with pan in schools,” he said.

Over the last week, there have been calls for steel­pan to be in­clud­ed in the school cur­ricu­lum and even to have its very own mu­se­um.

Ram­sey-Moore said they would con­tin­ue work­ing with the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um for it to be in­clud­ed in dis­plays.
She did not rule out any of the sug­ges­tions, as she said the es­tab­lish­ment of the in­ter­na­tion­al ob­ser­vance has led to a “pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment” for the in­stru­ment.
She al­so thanked the pub­lic for their sup­port and the Gov­ern­ment for work­ing on get­ting the day recog­nised.