KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite a call by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the tas­sa to be made a na­tion­al in­stru­ment along­side the steel­pan, the head of one tas­sa group says the in­stru­ment is not a lo­cal in­ven­tion and ac­tu­al­ly be­longs to In­dia.

On Mon­day, dur­ing the Cer­e­mo­ni­al Open­ing of the Fourth Ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo urged par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to en­sure the steel­pan was of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised as this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

Re­spond­ing to Kan­ga­loo’s state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar agreed that it was a good idea. How­ev­er, she said tas­sa should al­so be in­clud­ed on the list.

But on Wednes­day, Hum­ming Bird Gold re­cip­i­ent and founder of the NGC Trinidad and To­ba­go Sweet Tas­sa group, Lenny Ku­mar, sup­port­ed the steel­pan be­ing the of­fi­cial na­tion­al in­stru­ment. How­ev­er, Ku­mar was di­vid­ed on whether tas­sa should al­so be­come a na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

In sup­port of tas­sa, Ku­mar said it would pro­mote the art form and earn more re­spect. But he was quick to point out that, un­like the steel­pan, tas­sa was not a lo­cal in­ven­tion as there are tas­sa drums all over In­dia un­der var­i­ous names.
“You might hear a taj. You might hear dhol-tasha or tas­sa be­cause tas­sa came with in­den­tured labour­ers. It is not an in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in Trinidad. It was re-in­vent­ed, mean­ing we did new things to en­hance the in­stru­ment to play in­to songs, dif­fer­ent tones and pitch­es,” Ku­mar ex­plained.

Ku­mar, who played along­side tas­sa drum­mers in In­dia, ques­tioned how they would feel if T&T took the rights of their in­ven­tion to call it a na­tion­al in­stru­ment here. Re­gard­less of whether tas­sa drums be­come a na­tion­al in­stru­ment, Ku­mar said play­ers should con­tin­ue to pro­mote it and he said it will fuse nice­ly with the steel­pan.

Mean­while, NL­CB Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Dar­ren Shep­pard said Kan­ga­loo’s state­ment gave him a sense of hope for the progress of steel­pan de­spite suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments ig­nor­ing it.

This year the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly for­mal­ly recog­nised the uni­ver­sal val­ue and sig­nif­i­cance of the steel­pan, de­clar­ing Au­gust 11 as World Steel­pan Day.

Shep­pard ques­tioned why T&T had to wait for for­eign recog­ni­tion to act on some­thing lo­cal­ly made.
“We al­ways seem to fol­low as op­posed to lead,” Shep­pard said. 
He want­ed to know what rights and priv­i­leges play­ers would have af­ter pro­claim­ing the steel­pan as a na­tion­al in­stru­ment and how the coun­try would view pan yards.

“Are we go­ing to take it that deep be­cause the av­er­age pan man or mu­si­cian in Trinidad and To­ba­go is not seen as a pro­fes­sion­al? You can­not go to the bank and say ‘I am a pan man or a pan arranger and get a loan’ be­cause the sys­tems are not in place for you to be recog­nised as such,” he said.
Shep­pard added the coun­try has prob­lems with raw ma­te­ri­als for man­u­fac­tur­ing steel­pans.

“Right now, we have one de­cent chrome fac­to­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have a fac­to­ry that man­u­fac­tures pans that has to send pans to the Unit­ed States to chrome and then bring them back to Trinidad to sell them in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. So it means there are a lot of leaks in the sys­tem, that if we tight­en up, things could be smooth,” he said.

Gold­en Hands Steel Or­ches­tra founder Fran­ka Hills-Headley said for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning shared Kan­ga­loo’s po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment years ago. Hills-Headley said the im­me­di­ate steps are to de­vel­op steel­pan pro­to­cols, in­clud­ing guide­lines for trans­porta­tion and per­for­mance. She said if the steel­pan be­came like the na­tion­al em­blem, peo­ple would not want it treat­ed like trash and would recog­nise the peo­ple who play the in­stru­ment.

“We have to recog­nise it for­mal­ly, and we need to sit down and iden­ti­fy things that would af­fect the treat­ment of the in­stru­ment and, by ex­ten­sion, the peo­ple who per­form on the in­stru­ments,” she said.

Hills-Headley called for all cit­i­zens to have some con­nec­tion to the steel­pan.

“It is the on­ly acoustic in­stru­ment cre­at­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry. It is a com­mu­ni­ty thrust. It was not one per­son who cre­at­ed it. Every­thing about our cul­ture un­der­lines this,” she added.