At the Unit­ed Na­tions Head­quar­ters in New York, far re­moved in so many ways from its birth­place in Laven­tille, this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment was el­e­vat­ed to in­ter­na­tion­al stature yes­ter­day at the sit­ting of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

The adop­tion of a draft res­o­lu­tion for Au­gust 11 to be de­clared World Steel­pan Day an­nu­al­ly ob­served on the UN’s cal­en­dar is a land­mark de­vel­op­ment that sets the stage for Pan Month, the an­nu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the steel­pan as T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

It was the most sig­nif­i­cant event in the his­to­ry of the steel­pan since Au­gust 31, 1992—the eve of T&T’s 30th An­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, when it was giv­en the of­fi­cial des­ig­na­tion of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. Yes­ter­day, in sharp con­trast to its hum­ble ori­gins in an east Port-of-Spain work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty that still car­ries the shame­ful stig­mas of pover­ty and crime, the in­stru­ment’s achieve­ment of glob­al sta­tus was wit­nessed by lead­ers and de­ci­sion-mak­ers from around the world.

And stand­ing as the na­tion’s wit­ness­es to that his­toric mo­ment was Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore and cel­e­brat­ed pan­man Ray Hol­man.

The UN de­c­la­ra­tion of­fers greater prospects to raise in­ter­na­tion­al aware­ness of the steel­pan, well be­yond the ac­tiv­i­ties that have been or­gan­ised lo­cal­ly by Pan Trin­ba­go to com­mem­o­rate Pan Month.

How­ev­er, ful­ly em­brac­ing the cul­tur­al, so­cial and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties of World Steel­pan Day re­quires greater in­put and com­mit­ment than is cur­rent­ly in­vest­ed in Pan Month, with much more cor­po­rate sup­port than is cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed to the steel­band move­ment’s gov­ern­ing body.

It al­so re­quires a lev­el of po­lit­i­cal will, well be­yond lip ser­vice, to en­sure that this pre­cious mu­si­cal lega­cy is kept at the fore­front of na­tion­al en­deav­ours.

Too of­ten, this na­tion has been guilty of un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the val­ue of the steel­pan, an in­stru­ment made out of in­dus­tri­al waste and the on­ly acoustic, non-elec­tric in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Were it not for the ef­forts of many pi­o­neer­ing fig­ures here and abroad over sev­er­al decades, the sig­nal UN event that took place yes­ter­day would not have been pos­si­ble.

A place of promi­nence among those pi­o­neers be­longs to the late Win­ston “Spree” Si­mon, the vi­sion­ary and in­no­va­tor from John John, east Port-of-Spain, who in­vent­ed the “ping pong” the fore­run­ner to the mod­ern day.

Al­so among the steel­pan he­roes is El­lie Man­nette, the first to wrap pan sticks with rub­ber to pro­duce a more re­fined tone when the in­stru­ment was played. He is al­so cred­it­ed with sink­ing the sur­face of a pan in­to its now char­ac­ter­is­tic con­cave shape.

Their ded­i­ca­tion and ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions to the evo­lu­tion of the steel­pan are made more re­mark­able by the fact that they per­sist­ed in craft­ing and pro­mot­ing the in­stru­ment in very dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. They were la­belled as Bad Johns, wa­jangs and jamettes—out­casts nev­er al­lowed in “re­spectable” T&T so­ci­ety in those ear­ly days.

The ear­ly pan play­ers were as­so­ci­at­ed with law­less­ness and vi­o­lence. The pres­tige and recog­ni­tion the in­stru­ment now en­joys seemed im­pos­si­ble in those years im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter World War II when the steel­pan was be­ing birthed.

World Steel­pan Day is on­ly pos­si­ble to­day be­cause of gen­er­a­tions of pan pi­o­neers who strug­gled and per­sist­ed. Now, with an of­fi­cial UN day on Au­gust 11, there is an oc­ca­sion to ho­n­our them and cel­e­brate the steel­pan with the pomp and cer­e­mo­ny it de­serves.