Quietly, unobtrusively, primary and secondary schools students have been participating in this year's Music Festival at the Queens Hall, continuing a tradition going back over 50 years.
It must be a reassuring indication that there are aspects of life and society here in T&T which are good and wholesome and they continue to be so notwithstanding whatever else is happening. It is also very comforting that the participants in the festival are the youth of the society–the organisers have registered 4,000 student participants–that is an indication of continuity and the re-assurance that the vast majority of young people are indeed productive and not given to wanton deviant behaviours.
For decades the music festival, a biennial event, has been providing students with an opportunity to display their musical talents. The fact is that many who have participated in the festival have gone on to develop and engage their talents in professional pursuits.
But even for those who do not follow musical careers, the festival has allowed them a stage to perform on; for many it would remain as the only national stage they would have performed on; a fact they can boast about to their grandchildren.
As an intrinsic element of participation by young people in exercising their musical talents, the festival is surely a source of having fun and for them to enjoy the company of their peers.
Camaraderie and rivalry have flowed out of the festivals. Students from far and near meet on common ground and learn to appreciate the gifts held by each other, learn to understand that people from north, south, east and west breathe the same air, have similar ambitions and notwithstanding social class and ethnic differences, they are all nationals of this place called Trinidad and Tobago.
This latter realisation is something that is forgotten when the contest involves power, status and other things which divide rather than bring peoples of the country together.
The musical festival has so obviously contributed in no small measure to the musical education and appreciation that nationals have in abundant supply.
It also provides a forum for discipline and the requirement for research and practice of musical talent. And notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of players of the national instrument, the steel pan, continues to show to the world the wonderful ear and eye they have for learning without being able to formally read music, the music festival creates the opportunity and incentive for young people to formalise their musical education. No doubt teachers take on much of the responsibility to train and encourage their students and much of that work happens outside of the curriculum.
Recognition must also come for the generations of organisers, teachers and others who have made the festival possible. The vast majority of the organisers are people who have been working for the love of it and have not expected and received any financial reward for their efforts.
And while the said organisers are always short of the quantum of financial resources required to put on the festival (it is said to require $1 million this year) certain corporate sponsors and the Ministry of Culture have advanced revenue to underwrite this year's festival.
It is now left to other corporate bodies to get involved to sponsor quality engagement by young people. It is settled research that the playing and appreciation of music enhance the capacity for academic work so the festival contributes to both disciplines.