Sean Nero

Mixed emo­tions filled the precincts of the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), lo­cat­ed on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, last Sat­ur­day dur­ing the stag­ing of Pan Trin­ba­go's an­nu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny. Pa­trons at­tend­ing the gala cer­e­mo­ny, which was a sig­na­ture event on the Steel­band Month cal­en­dar, were over­come with sor­row on learn­ing that steel­pan pi­o­neer and in­no­va­tor Bertie Mar­shall had to be rushed to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter suf­fer­ing a head in­jury.

They lament­ed news that to­day's planned youth ral­ly which forms part of the Steel­band Month play­bill may be scrapped due to a lack of cor­po­rate as­sis­tance, but re­joiced on hear­ing about the op­por­tu­ni­ties that await T&T steel­bands in the Com­mon­wealth. While walk­ing up the stair­case in NA­PA's court­yard, Mar­shall, 75, a di­a­bet­ic, who had suf­fered two strokes pri­or, stum­bled back­wards, falling al­most eight feet, hit­ting his head on con­crete and was rushed to hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ers through­out the awards cer­e­mo­ny ex­pressed hope that Mar­shall's in­jury was not se­ri­ous and called on the gath­er­ing to con­tin­ue pray­ing for his re­cov­ery. Their prayers were an­swered. But, just as the hon­orees were about to take their fi­nal bow, news came from Richard Forteau, sec­re­tary of Pan Trin­ba­go that to­day's youth ral­ly, which formed part of the play­bill of ac­tiv­i­ties for the month of steel­pan ob­ser­vances, was in jeop­ardy. He said: "If there are any cor­po­rate cit­i­zens here, whose pock­ets are deep­er than mine, please come on board dur­ing the course of this week and help us to save the pro­gramme so that we can bring the youths to­geth­er."

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the awards cer­e­mo­ny, he said, for some of re­cip­i­ents, the award they were tak­ing home may have been the biggest to­ken they would have re­ceived since they start­ed to play the steel­pan. Fresh from his tour of Nige­ria and the Unit­ed King­dom, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az, who had been made a Yoru­ba chief, had noth­ing but plau­dits for T&T diplo­mats in those ter­ri­to­ries. Speak­ing be­fore an au­di­ence that in­clud­ed Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Win­ston Pe­ters; Sec­re­tary for Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Tracey David­son-Ce­les­tine; Pe­ter Kan­hai, pres­i­dent, Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce; for­mer Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Owen Ser­rette; for­mer Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs Joan Yuille-Williams, Di­az praised ef­forts by this coun­try's diplo­mats to bet­ter po­si­tion the steel­pan-the na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment of T&T-across the world.

High Com­mis­sion­ers Nyahu­ma Obi­ka in Nige­ria and Garvin Nicholas in Lon­don, said Di­az, were sow­ing the seeds for the greater steel­band re­lat­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the com­mon­wealth. In Nige­ria, Di­az vis­it­ed six states in ten days. While in Lon­don, Nicholas alert­ed him to the new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the steel­band move­ment in Wales. But Pe­ters cen­tred his con­tri­bu­tion to the hap­pen­ings in T&T. He cit­ed the im­por­tance of recog­nis­ing and sup­port­ing the ef­forts of those peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions in T&T said Pe­ters, was the long over- due projects ur­gent­ly need­ed by Pan Trin­ba­go. He made spe­cif­ic men­tion to the com­ple­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's head­quar­ters and de­clared his com­mit­ment to see­ing the struc­ture com­plet­ed dur­ing his term in of­fice. But he lament­ed the busi­ness sec­tor's luke­warm ap­proach to in­vest­ing in the arts.