“The grand­chil­dren of Bertie Mar­shall,” was my ex­u­ber­ant greet­ing to a Laven­til­ian friend and col­league as I stood in ad­mi­ra­tion of the young play­ers in the High­landers Steel­band of 2024 at the Laven­tille Fes­ti­val of Pan.

But meh pard­na from the area throws cold wa­ter on my en­thu­si­as­tic com­par­i­son for the high tenor Mar­shal­lian ex­per­i­men­ta­tion (the 1960s-70s) with the elec­tron­ic sound and the grum­bling heavy bass parad­ing be­fore us. Not close, my para­phrase of his re­sponse. He clear­ly is not pre­pared to de­part a cen­time­tre from the gold­en mem­o­ry of the orig­i­nal Hi-Lan­ders, Let Every Val­ley be Ex­alt­ed, and the Ma­ma Dis is Mas fame.

The glo­ry of our youth is not eas­i­ly sup­plant­ed though. But I was once again im­pressed by the young play­ers in near­ly all the bands of the evening/night and their fa­cil­i­ty with the in­stru­ments; their “style-mak­ing” while play­ing and their ob­vi­ous em­brace of the in­stru­ment as their own. Their ca­pac­i­ty is sure­ly an ad­vance on the play­ers of the 1950s-80s. That as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween the pan and the play­ers of the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od must sure­ly make a con­nec­tion be­tween the gen­er­a­tion of Mar­shall him­self, Jules, Williams, Man­nette, Pierre, and Pouchet and the youths of to­day. Here is a cos­mic meet­ing be­tween the grand­chil­dren and their an­ces­tors who lived and bore the brunt of the pain for cre­at­ing, play­ing and be­ing sent to jail to con­tem­plate their au­dac­i­ty to con­sid­er this thing a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.

Know­ing she was on cam­era, ah salt ah de earth Dougla bass woman from Cordettes takes on the char­ac­ter of Scrunter’s bass woman: “This In­di­an gyul tie she shut on she bel­ly beat­ing ah sweet, sweet melody, on the bass …”

What lyrics, what cap­tur­ing of a mood on the Laven­tille Main Road out­side Coop­er’s Pan­land, which does or­gan­ise this an­nu­al steel­band street pa­rade. Ge­nius in pan time. Boogsie and Phase 11 in­ject the ca­lyp­so-jazz el­e­ment—not ex­act­ly a break­away but a Pan Groove in char­ac­ter with the band and its leader. “What hap­pen to de Had­co ting boy?” some­body near­by asks as if I should know; “Me ent know pard­na, go ask Boogsie, look him dey.”

What I know is the melo­di­ous sound of the band, the sure-hand­ed play­ing of its mas­ter pan man and the ex­pe­ri­enced youth of a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion now en­ter­ing their mid­dle age in­ter­pret­ing Black Stal­in: “We vow to fight, to­geth­er for our rights, to grow a fam­i­ly free and healthy … and we must stick to­geth­er in any kind of weath­er, giv­ing praise to the Cre­ator Jah Jah foreve ….”

With the voice of the Black­man ring­ing in meh head, ah look around and won­der about Laven­tille. What is it, what does it rep­re­sent in the psy­che of the na­tion—how do we view it? How do I, an out­sider with­out any depth of knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of it be­yond the or­di­nary, think of it and its res­i­dents?

My son finds a park amidst the crowd­ed mass of homes and small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es of some va­ri­ety. I look around the night try­ing to find an an­swer to Laven­tille.

A mix­ture of good qual­i­ty hous­ing of the present and a gen­er­a­tion ago and the not-so-good; res­i­dents turned in, liv­ing their lives out­side of the steel­band; the youth, from all over, and not so young on the street en­rap­tured in the pan. How are they do­ing out­side of an evening or night of a gath­er­ing of peo­ple from here and every­where? What do they have to ben­e­fit from this fleet­ing vis­it and at­ten­tion paid to them and the pan? When leav­ing the fes­ti­val grounds, a ma­ture gen­tle­man, ac­com­pa­nied by his wife and neigh­bours, calls me out. I take that to mean he’s some­one who par­tic­i­pates in the life of the coun­try and is aware of what’s hap­pen­ing in­side and out­side Laven­tille.

I hes­i­tate and do not ask the ques­tion on my mind—a re­porter look­ing for a sto­ry al­ways has ques­tions: “Now that de pan silent, how al­lyuh do­ing? On wit­ness­ing and con­tem­plat­ing the ob­vi­ous un­der­de­vel­op­ment of Laven­tille, its peo­ple, and its lack of hu­man in­fra­struc­ture, which can have a ben­e­fi­cial ef­fect, I pon­dered the ques­tion asked over decades by many: “Has the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, which has been in pow­er for more than two-thirds of the pe­ri­od—1956-2024—done its best to en­gage and stim­u­late hu­man and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment here where PNM has been all but in­vin­ci­ble?

It was not the mo­ment to ask the ques­tion to at least two min­is­ters I saw, one beat­ing iron and the oth­er in fine fash­ion; maybe some prob­ing re­porter will ask of them when the cam­paign is on the ground.

Com­pare what has hap­pened to the peo­ple and the area of oth­er parts of the coun­try rep­re­sent­ed by oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties; the con­trast is sharp and un­favourable to Laven­tille.

Af­ter an in­tense pe­ri­od of shoot­ing and killing in the area, three to four years ago, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley es­tab­lished a team to go in­to the area—an ac­knowl­edge­ment of a se­ri­ous deficit in the hu­man and phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple and phys­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty of Laven­tille.

Where’s the re­port and the ac­tion out of it for Laven­tille, boss­man?

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor.