Daly Bread: Reclaiming pan manufacturing; and Pan Trinbago’s controversial headquarters

“All those initiatives are undermined by the fact that in 2024, the Steelpan Manufacturing sector does not have a dedicated and secured source and supply of high quality drums.

“To ensure a consistent supply of raw materials the industry requires in place a drum-producing facility, which will produce drums based on industry specifications. The same applies to metal plating.

“Skilled and experienced personnel are just as valuable as quality equipment, in order to provide high quality finishes. Applying high quality international industry standards in local plating facilities will ensure the same beautiful finishes as the facilities in the US, Canada and elsewhere.”

As they did in response to my column on the current inadequacy of chroming facilities, many accomplished persons in the pan making community responded with equally insightful comments on last week’s column, which confirmed the inadequacy of the supply of drums and availability of tuners.

Accordingly, I have opened this week’s concluding column on pan manufacturing with a quotation from one of those insightful comments.

Before moving on, I pause to emphasise that I did expressly acknowledge that there have been some initiatives towards lifting the business of pan. But my acknowledgement seemed to have been missed by those made willfully blind by narrow party political partisanship.

Perhaps willful blindness will also not permit some to see that the proposed display of the pan on our coat of arms to replace the ships of offensive Columbus will not carry forward the development of the steel pan industry.

We are now lagging behind, despite being the inventors of the steelpan and the steelpan being our national instrument. We have to reclaim the complete process of pan manufacturing.

Gestures, even if graced with the label of initiatives, will not put substance into our own country’s development of the steelpan industry. Later on I will refer to the grandstanding about “a 120 million dollar pan headquarters for Pan Trinbago”.

Professor Brian Copeland, whose scientific involvement with pan is well known, used the word “substance” in the course of a report in the Trinidad Express newspaper on Monday last.

In that report there was another validation of my assertion of the need to move forward with the development of our pan industry.

With regard to substance, Copeland was quoted as follows: “While the pan deserves a place on T&T Coat of Arms, the national instrument must also be given ‘substance’ through allocation of resources for development and ownership of the product in the global arena.”

Later in the report he was quoted as saying: “We’ve achieved something the world hasn’t achieved. We have to have the substance behind it.”

Copeland also reportedly suggested that “justice has not been done to the pan since creation”. He acknowledged “the taking root of the instrument abroad including the United States. Japan, Canada and Germany” and he emphasised that “T&T must put infrastructure in place to claim ownership of the product”.

Turning now to the much touted $120 million Pan Trinbago headquarters, discerning commentary prior to this weekend has already pointed out what a bad deal this is.

Pan Trinbago allowed itself to be politically seduced into surrendering 13 acres of land and to receive in exchange mere occupation of part of an office building and not ownership of it.

A chroming facility could have been established on the land surrendered. There are other lost prospects, such as a purpose-built venue to include an amphitheatre and a space for pan revelry. (See Kelvin McLean’s letter published in Wired868.)

The home of pan is not Pan Trinbago. The home of pan is in the communities where creative, scientific genius invented the only new acoustic instrument of the 20th century but were scorned for decades.

In those communities, new pan players and pan technicians are successfully brought into the fold.

Pan Trinbago is not the birth mother of the inventive genius of pan and should be respectfully guarded about politicians bringing gifts.

This weekend, I am in Brooklyn for New York City Panorama and a home lime the following day at diaspora friends.

It is not my first visit. Hopefully, my readers would have had peaceful enjoyment of Pan On The Avenue in Port of Spain last night.

Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.