On Wednes­day, the first glob­al­ly-ori­ent­ed ex­am­i­na­tion of the steel­band in this cen­tu­ry be­gan at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pan (ICP) at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

The ICP is a mon­u­men­tal project and one with the po­ten­tial for hav­ing a piv­otal im­pact on the state of the steel­band move­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Not least be­cause it will bring this coun­try's pan mu­si­cians face to face with the glob­al spread of the steel­band, of­ten with lit­tle ref­er­ence to the coun­try of its ori­gin. That dou­ble-edged sword is the true mean­ing of mak­ing the mu­si­cal in­stru­ment our gift to the world. In much the same way that the British had to come to terms with the fact that they may have birthed crick­et and foot­ball, but they no longer own those sports ei­ther in terms of achieve­ment, pas­sion or–re­cent Ash­es vic­to­ry ex­cept­ed–spe­cif­ic, ac­com­plish­ments in the con­tem­po­rary game.

This is a dif­fi­cult thing to come to terms with and while the ev­i­dence of the scope of the steel­pan's in­flu­ence has been be­fore us for decades now, the scale and scope of the ef­fect of that has been in­vit­ed home and there are like­ly to be sur­pris­es.

When Matthias Kauer dared to sug­gest at the con­fer­ence that our tenor pan should, more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly be de­scribed as a so­pra­no pan and of­fered his the­sis in sup­port of that, it was not seen, in some quar­ters, as an opin­ion of­fered by a play­er and sup­port­er of the move­ment for the last 38 years but as an ar­ro­gant at­tempt at as­sert­ing Eu­ro­pean au­thor­i­ty on a na­tive move­ment.

The pro­gramme of the con­fer­ence reads more like a his­tor­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the cur­rent state of the move­ment than the for­ward-look­ing, re­search-fo­cused agen­da that to­day's pan play­ers so des­per­ate­ly need. Even the cli­max of the event on Sun­day was framed in the terms and lan­guage that the move­ment has found it­self mired in for al­most a cen­tu­ry now, plac­ing mu­si­cians in com­pe­ti­tion.

For many of the mu­si­cians com­ing to this coun­try to com­pete yes­ter­day, it is a pil­grim­age and an ho­n­our to per­form in the land of the steel­pan's birth. There is al­so no ques­tion that there is need for more for­mal doc­u­men­ta­tion that gath­ers the his­to­ry of the steel­band move­ment and makes it ac­ces­si­ble to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions in forms which are both age-ap­pro­pri­ate and de­signed to mo­ti­vate par­tic­i­pa­tion in this most crit­i­cal el­e­ment of our cul­ture.

But it's un­clear what, ex­act­ly, the ICP, bud­get­ed in 2014 at $25 mil­lion, was de­signed to ac­com­plish. The mis­sion state­ment that it was or­gan­ised un­der was "To­wards the Glob­al­i­sa­tion and De­vel­op­ment of the Steel­pan." But the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan, as an in­stru­ment to be re­li­ably du­pli­cat­ed and re­fined, as a move­ment or­gan­ised with­in the com­mu­ni­ties that have sup­port­ed it for gen­er­a­tions, and as a con­cept that de­mands more of its ear­ly in­ven­tive­ness, re­mains the most crit­i­cal mis­sion fac­ing Pan Trin­ba­go.

Know­ing where the move­ment has come from is un­de­ni­ably im­por­tant, as is un­der­stand­ing where it is to­day through far more me­thod­i­cal study. But chart­ing its fu­ture need­ed to be more firm­ly front and cen­tre in the plan­ning of the ICP.

It's sim­ply em­bar­rass­ing that in 2015, there are still con­ver­sa­tions about prop­er­ly sit­ing pa­n­yards and de­vel­op­ing more man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty for the in­stru­ment. T&T pan­nists must par­tic­i­pate more de­ci­sive­ly in its rapid­ly evolv­ing fu­ture if they are to re­main de­ci­sive play­ers on that cul­tur­al stage.