ROWLEY GIVES AWAY NATIONAL PRIDE

THE Government is giving foreigners a prized eight-acre parcel of land that was earmarked as the showpiece of an exciting fresh vision for steelband, the national instrument.

In handing the sentimentally-valued real estate to an international conglomerate, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley is crashing a long-delayed dream of a global pan tourist attraction.

Then-Prime Minister Basdeo Panday provided the land, worth $9 million at that time, to Pan Trinbago in November 2000.

“You come up with the plan for your headquarters and I will build it,” Panday said at a function on the site, along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, Trincity.

He said the steelband facility would be part of “a new city with commercial and industrial development to complement the new airport.”

Ganga Singh, Culture Minister at the time, said the ambition was to celebrate and promote the steelband and implement “The Best Plan for Pan,” a proposal by Lloyd Best, the renowned Caribbean thinker.

Best had also advocated a steelband facility in every community.

In the succeeding 24 years, the incomplete structure became a white elephant, overrun with weeds, as a monument of national shame.

Rowley recently revealed that “the Government has made the land available” to Reliance Industries, the Indian-based corporation of Mukesh Ambani.

Ambani, whose assets are worth US $120 billion, will construct a cricket stadium, to add to various under-utilised sporting facilities.

While Ambani’s entry in the local economy is a boost (investors worth US $914 million fled in 2022), the Government’s decision is another sharp blow to the longsuffering steelband fraternity.

It illustrates the gross under-development of pan in the land of its birth.

The United Nations named August 11, 2023 World Steelpan Day, another indicator of the global acceptability of the musical instrument.

In a move to pacify Pan Trinbago, the Government is handing over a disused building at Wrightson Road, in crowded Port of Spain.

The crime-infested capital city is in sharp decline and that facility is not likely to capture the potential for steelband and attract tourists.

The entire issue “reflects the current toxic sense of values of those in authority,” said a pan official who was at the 2000 ceremony.

He said: “We are surrendering our heritage, our national pride, to an investor who does not share our ideals and appreciate the struggles of the steelband movement.” 

There are pan facilities as far off as Australia and New Zealand, with tuners, arrangers and other skilled musicians, and talented ensembles performing in hallowed concert halls.

The steelband school in Washington, USA, is one of several such international places of musical education.

But in the land of its birth, look wey pan reach.