Be­fore a steel­pan can make the melo­di­ous sounds known to all in T&T, there are many steps to be tak­en in the pan-mak­ing process.

Al­though the process was done man­u­al­ly for decades, in 2022, the Mu­si­cal In­stru­ments of T&T Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MITTCO) be­gan sim­pli­fy­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the steel­pan.

Ac­cord­ing to MITTCO di­rec­tor Akua Lei­th, the idea for what he calls this pan ecosys­tem start­ed years ago.

“This idea came to me in 2018 and things start­ed to hap­pen in 2019. Mario and I spoke in a car park,” he said.

Now, one year lat­er, Lei­th said the jour­ney had many bumps along the way.

“I mean the chrome fac­to­ry burned down and we had to get chrome from Ire­land and then drums from Japan,” he said.

Lei­th said things are fi­nal­ly sta­bil­is­ing, but he ad­mit­ted they don’t an­tic­i­pate a prof­it any time soon.

“I think we got the goal and frame down but we (are) on­ly 30 per cent in prof­it, but we will see a prof­it in three to five years,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Lei­th, in­ter­est is com­ing in from all over the world and lo­cal­ly.

MITTCO not on­ly pro­duces steel­pans but al­so pro­vides em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for new and old pan lovers.

“We are talk­ing about fel­las mak­ing pan for decades and oth­ers who just want to be a part of (it),” he said.

Lei­th hopes all cit­i­zens have the same en­thu­si­asm to­wards the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, es­pe­cial­ly ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers.

“See MITTCO as more than just a fac­to­ry. We need to let chil­dren know there is a lot that can be done es­pe­cial­ly for a ca­reer path,” he said.

Lei­th al­so sug­gest­ed keep­ing the cre­ators of pan’s lega­cy alive, as they turned trash in­to a Trin­bag­on­ian trea­sure. He sug­gest­ed a pan mu­se­um, a hall of fame, pan fes­ti­val and even a schol­ar­ship fund.

Mean­while, at MITTCO, Lei­th and his team are do­ing every­thing in their pow­er to ed­u­cate peo­ple about the steel­pan.

The Unit­ed Na­tions’ World Steel­pan Day will be cel­e­brat­ed to­day. It will al­so mark the first an­niver­sary of MITTCO.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, in­tro­duced the draft res­o­lu­tion at the 77th Gen­er­al As­sem­bly sit­ting in New York on Ju­ly 24.
The draft res­o­lu­tion was adopt­ed and will be ob­served an­nu­al­ly on the UN cal­en­dar. It re­ceived co-spon­sor­ship from 84 mem­ber states of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

World Steel­pan Day will cel­e­brate the mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, which orig­i­nat­ed in T&T in the ear­ly 1930s and is the on­ly new in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry.