Sean Nero

Mel­ba Dedi­er, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Tourism Min­istry, says the ob­ser­vance of World Tourism Day in T&T, held on Sep­tem­ber 27, was tru­ly a cel­e­bra­to­ry oc­ca­sion for the tourism in­dus­try. "We gath­er to cel­e­brate our pi­o­neers and in­no­va­tors, who have per­son­i­fied this year's theme, Tourism: Link­ing Cul­tures. Our nom­i­nees have laboured tire­less­ly to link tourism and cul­ture and place T&T on the world map," she said. Dedi­er was speak­ing at the in­au­gur­al tourism awards and din­ner held at the Casablan­ca ban­quet hall, lo­cat­ed at the Fi­es­ta Plaza, Movi­etowne, Wood­brook.

The ho­n­ourees were: T&T Guardian fea­tures ed­i­tor Pe­ter Ray Blood, tour op­er­a­tors El­ton Pouchet and An­drew Welch, mu­sic Mun­gal Patasar, and the com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion group, Bras­so Seco Paria Tourism Ac­tion Com­mit­tee. "World Tourism Day pro­vides the min­istry with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gen­der an aware­ness of the val­ue of tourism and its eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal so­cial con­tri­bu­tions to our so­ci­ety. The min­istry sees this year's theme as a time­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case the ways in which our unique and rich cul­tur­al her­itage is in­cor­po­rat­ed with­in the tourism in­dus­try."

Pe­ter Ray Blood:

T&T Guardian ed­i­tor, Pe­ter Ray Blood firms be­lieves that ed­u­ca­tion is the dri­ving force of this coun­try cul­tur­al tourism thrust. "We could be­gin with ed­u­ca­tion; add some as­pects of our cul­ture, that is, pan, in­dige­nous dance, to the ed­u­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum, from Montes­sori to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. A lot more needs to be done by way of pro­mo­tions and mar­ket­ing. "We must be more ag­gres­sive via so­cial me­dia and in­ter­na­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns. Pan and ca­lyp­so and chut­ney are much more than sea­son­al mu­sic forms. In­dige­nous cui­sine needs to ex­posed and giv­en a con­sid­er­ably high­er pro­file on the glob­al map. The ben­e­fits of eco- and sports tourism must be more ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sued." Blood was a for­mer com­put­er op­er­a­tor, pro­gram­mer and sys­tems an­a­lyst with Geo F Hug­gins and Ged­des Grant for 12 years.

He be­gan writ­ing as a free­lancer for the Trinidad Ex­press in 1980. Four­teen years af­ter, he joined the Trinidad Guardian as its arts and en­ter­tain­ment ed­i­tor, a po­si­tion that was cre­at­ed for him. Six months af­ter he broke his ser­vice in the print me­dia to be­come gen­er­al man­ag­er of Ebony 104.7FM, a mem­ber of the CL Fi­nan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Group, Blood re­turned to the Guardian as its fea­tures ed­i­tor, a po­si­tion he still holds. With 31 years in me­dia, Blood has writ­ten for every ma­jor news­pa­per in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and has judged arts and cul­ture events from Mi­a­mi car­ni­val, Ja­maica car­ni­val, To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val, Miss T&T Pageant, and Saaj Same­laan, staged by the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for In­di­an Cul­ture.

Blood was an ad­vis­er for the in­au­gur­al Ja­maica car­ni­val in 1988; and was a com­mit­tee mem­ber for the Na­tion­al Awards for Ex­cel­lence in the Arts (Nafei­ta) and COTT Awards; a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee for the 50th an­niver­sary of Queen's Hall; served as press agent for Ed­win Year­wood and Kros­fyah of Bar­ba­dos, and Blue Boy (Su­perBlue) in 1980-1981.

El­ton Pouchet:

El­ton Pouchet, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of In Joys Tours, be­lieves that since cul­ture in­volves our past, our present, our mu­sic, our dance and our way of life, we need to pre­serve in an au­then­tic way as pos­si­ble.

The tra­di­tions and be­liefs of the past, he said, have in­formed who we are to­day as a peo­ple. "We came from slav­ery and in­den­tured labour. We have come far, but we can­not and must not for­get the past. I am, there­fore, com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing our in­her­i­tance through the pro­mo­tion of our cul­ture in what I con­sid­er to be 'live the­atre' to as many vis­i­tors to our shores as pos­si­ble." Born in 1952 in­to a fam­i­ly that was steeped in the cul­ture of T&T. His un­cle was the fa­mous artist and paran­dero, Al­fred Cadal­lo, and his broth­er is pan­nist and arranger ex­tra­or­di­naire, Ju­nior Pouchet. Pouchet (El­ton) start­ed play­ing the steel­pan at age ten and had played with many steel­bands, name­ly Sil­ver Stars, In­vaders, Star­lift, Third World and Val­ley Harps. In 1982 Pouchet formed In Joy Tours, a tour op­er­at­ing com­pa­ny and pi­o­neered and spe­cialised in the "Down the Is­lands" boat tours. In 1986, he ex­pand­ed the con­cept to in­clude his pa­n­yard tours in which he has ex­celled over the years.

Bras­so Seco Paria Tourism Ac­tion Com­mit­tee:

The Min­istry of Tourism, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion in Agri­cul­ture and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, is work­ing with the Bras­so Seco Paria Tourism Ac­tion Com­mit­tee to de­vel­op an agro tourism project. The ma­jor suc­cess­es of the Bras­so Seco com­mu­ni­ty are its con­struc­tion of a co­coa and cof­fee house and the host­ing of its first co­coa and cof­fee tast­ing event at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in 2010. This has had the ef­fect of sen­si­tis­ing tourism in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to the prod­ucts be­ing made and sup­plied by the com­mu­ni­ty, with a view to ex­pos­ing this pris­tine tourism prod­uct to vis­i­tors. The group has al­so been able to com­mence its in­ter­pre­ta­tive sig­nage, the de­vel­op­ment of the don­key cart tour to Paria Bay for tur­tle watch­ing and Span­ish lan­guage train­ing as well as the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the Bras­so Seco/Paria parang group.

An­drew Welch:

An­drew Welch en­joyed ca­reers in hy­drol­o­gy and in­sur­ance sales be­fore de­vel­op­ing a pas­sion for tourism. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the two con­trast­ing pur­suits have been com­bined and utilised in his cur­rent pro­fes­sion: hy­drol­o­gy, which ex­posed him to many ar­eas of our beau­ti­ful coun­try, and in­sur­ance gave him ex­pe­ri­ence in sales and mar­ket­ing.Four­teen years ago, Welch es­tab­lished Ban­wari Ex­pe­ri­ence Ltd, a des­ti­na­tion man­age­ment com­pa­ny . His fo­cus is high­light­ing many of the unique peo­ple, places and ac­tiv­i­ties of T&T. He con­tin­ues to re­search com­mu­ni­ties such as Bel­mont, San Juan, Laven­tille and Paramin. Welch's pas­sion for these com­mu­ni­ties and their tourism po­ten­tial led to the for­ma­tion of the Tourism In­for­ma­tion Prod­ucts and Ser­vices (TIPS) in 2002 with busi­ness as­so­ciate Chris­tine De Gannes.

TIPS is a con­sul­tan­cy firm with a fo­cus on train­ing and sus­tain­able tourism prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and had in­tro­duced sev­er­al new ini­tia­tives, one of which is Com­mu­ni­ty Par­tic­i­pa­tion Cen­tred Tourism (Com­pact). Welch now of­fered train­ing in her­itage and cul­tur­al tourism through a pro­gramme called Her­itage 101. Welche holds sev­er­al per­son­al high­lights to his ca­reer:

• De­vel­op­ment and su­per­vi­sion of the itin­er­ary for the Trav­el Chan­nel's episode of Car­ni­val 2002 and high­light­ing the se­clud­ed Eng­lish­man's Bay as one of the top ten beach­es in the Caribbean

• De­vel­op­ing and su­per­vis­ing the most pop­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al­ly aired episode of Bizarre Foods

• Host­ing Jo­han­nes­burg's trav­el agents and tour op­er­a­tors to lunch in Pre­to­ria and gain­ing their in­ter­est in do­ing char­ters to T&T.

• De­liv­ered pa­pers and pre­sen­ta­tions on sus­tain­able tourism de­vel­op­ment to the Su­danese and Suri­namese gov­ern­ments.

Mun­gal Patasar:

Like most In­di­an artistes in T&T, Mun­gal Patasar grew up in a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly play­ing and singing bha­jans (de­vo­tion­al songs) and kir­tans (San­skrit), with his broth­ers and sis­ters in the vil­lage sand­hya (prayer) group. He lat­er played the man­dolin with the pop­u­lar Dil-e-Nadan and BWIA Na­tion­al In­di­an Or­ches­tra. Patasar, how­ev­er, dared to ven­ture out­side the con­ven­tions of In­do-Trinida­di­an mu­sic by choos­ing to learn the sitar un­der Shri HS Adesh.Sub­se­quent­ly, he be­gan to ex­per­i­ment with a new sound cre­at­ed by com­bin­ing the pan and the sitar, that has be­come a world phe­nom­e­non.

A state-spon­sored schol­ar­ship took him In­dia where he stud­ied at the Benares Hin­du Uni­ver­si­ty and ob­tained the bach­e­lor in mu­sic de­gree. He al­so ob­tained the gold medal in the Mas­ters de­gree at Al­la­habad, In­dia. He found­ed the band Mun­gal Patasar and Pan­tar in 1994 and has played in many in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals. Patasar is now ac­cept­ed as a world-class mu­si­cian play­ing at fes­ti­vals like the Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val, Switzer­land and the Roskilde Fes­ti­val in Den­mark.He holds the po­si­tion of dis­tin­guished mas­ter artiste in res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, where he was al­so ho­n­oured with a doc­tor­ate in mu­sic. He is al­so the re­cip­i­ent of the Hum­ming Bird (Gold) medal among many such ho­n­ours. He has al­so been in­duct­ed in Halls of Fame both here and in In­dia and has been ho­n­oured in Mi­a­mi and is nom­i­nat­ed for the (Sun­shine Award 2011) in New York.

At the age 65, Patasar is still cre­at­ing new mu­sic. At present, Pan­tar is work­ing on a pro­duc­tion in­volv­ing 12 Span­ish songs to be played at a con­cert host­ed by the Em­ba­ja­da de Es­paña (Em­bassy of Spain) in De­cem­ber this year. He is al­so work­ing on his sixth CD. He al­ready has two ma­jor projects for 2012 where he will ven­ture in­to new mu­si­cal ar­eas.