Wes­ley Gib­bings

The Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um’s on­go­ing ‘Sto­ries in Steel: Steel­pan through Chil­dren’s Books 1982–2026’ ex­hi­bi­tion pro­vides unique in­sights in­to the “lit­er­ary lega­cy” in­spired by the steel­pan.

The brain­child of Alaskan steel­pan re­searcher, archivist and con­nois­seur Ray Funk, ‘Sto­ries in Steel’ spans more than four decades, from 1982 to 2026, and cov­ers pub­li­ca­tions on the sub­ject from T&T, the USA, Cana­da, Eng­land and South Africa. The works of both child and adult writ­ers are on dis­play.

Se­nior Cu­ra­tor at the Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um, Nimah Muwak­il-Za­kuri, ex­plained to GML that the roller-ban­ner dis­plays are “in­tend­ed to be re­al­ly a trav­el­ling ex­hi­bi­tion to show­case and high­light the au­thors but al­so to be an in­spi­ra­tion to stu­dents and young peo­ple.”

Through this, she said, peo­ple would un­der­stand “you can not on­ly play it (pan), but you could al­so write about it, you could cre­ate fic­tion and even … true sto­ries around the pan and pub­lish your own books.”

“So, we cre­at­ed these posters on roller ban­ners so that they could just re­al­ly be rolled up and trav­elled with eas­i­ly all across the coun­try,” she said.

“I pushed for this idea of us­ing a se­ries of re­tractable ban­ners as a cen­tral part of the ex­hib­it so that they could be moved and pre­sent­ed in schools and li­braries around T&T and else­where,” Funk ex­plained.

He has al­so do­nat­ed ac­tu­al hard copies of the close to 50 books he has col­lect­ed over the years, but many won’t be mak­ing the jour­ney through the sev­er­al venues al­ready lined up in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bo­cas Lit Fest – the lit­er­ary arts or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“Bo­ca Lit Fest has agreed to ba­si­cal­ly adopt the ex­hi­bi­tion af­ter and take it through their route as they cel­e­brate their fes­ti­val which they do all through­out the year with sev­er­al pro­grammes,” Muwak­il-Za­kuri said.

Speak­ing at the launch of the col­lec­tion, Bo­cas Lit Fest Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Geor­gia Pop­plewell said the books be­ing high­light­ed “al­low chil­dren to en­counter pan not sim­ply as mu­sic or the sound of panora­ma, but as a sto­ry. A sto­ry of cre­ativ­i­ty, in­ge­nu­ity, strug­gle, com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.”

“An­oth­er im­por­tant thing that this ex­hi­bi­tion re­minds us,” she added, “is that the sto­ries we tell our chil­dren about our­selves mat­ter.”

Fol­low­ing the Cen­tral Bank ex­hi­bi­tion at the end of the month, the ban­ners will trav­el, cour­tesy of Bo­cas, to Siparia be­fore be­ing ex­hib­it­ed in To­ba­go in Oc­to­ber.

The pub­li­ca­tions in­clude “sto­ries that ex­plore the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, cel­e­brate no­table pan­nists and in­ven­tors, doc­u­ment steel­band tra­di­tions and il­lus­trate the glob­al reach of steel­pan cul­ture,” ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Cen­tral Bank.

Leg­endary news­pa­per car­toon­ist Sel Quam­i­na’s 1982 pub­li­ca­tion ‘From Tam­boo Bam­boo to the Steel­pan’ launch­es the ex­hi­bi­tion, while from 2026 come Neesa Bal­ly’s ‘Re­born – Trinidad’s Steel­pan’, with il­lus­tra­tions by Dani­jel Žeželj, and Ce­leste Mo­hammed’s ‘Spree: The Boy Who Made the Steel­pan Sing’, il­lus­trat­ed by Cory Thomas.

The year 2020 proved to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­lif­ic year, pro­vid­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion with close to half of the books dis­played. “I guess the pan­dem­ic brought out a lot of peo­ple in terms of writ­ing,” Muwak­il-Za­kuri ex­plained.

As­sis­tance in ac­cess­ing mu­si­cal arte­facts and pho­tographs came from pan re­searcher Dr Kim John­son, pan­nist/arranger Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, and Ja­mal Jasani Glynn of Phase II Pan Groove.

The Cen­tral Bank has al­so tapped in­to its vast artis­tic archives to dis­play pan- and mas’-in­spired paint­ings and cos­tumes.