SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sandy@gmail.com

When the Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), led by Emile Ramkissoon, start­ed its 2026 trade mis­sion in In­dia on April 20, lit­tle did they know there would be mag­i­cal mo­ments.

The mis­sion, which cov­ered Del­hi and Mum­bai, sought to boost the vis­i­bil­i­ty of T&T’s prod­ucts and ser­vices glob­al­ly and cre­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Among the 22 del­e­gates and 16 com­pa­nies was the world’s on­ly eight-part ecosys­tem steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing es­tab­lish­ment, Mu­si­cal In­stru­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pa­ny (MITTCO), rep­re­sent­ed by ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Trinida­di­an Akua Lei­th—a uni­ver­si­ty-de­greed pan­nist, arranger, con­duc­tor, and band leader.

Just as mag­i­cal and en­tic­ing as pan is, Lei­th cre­at­ed a mem­o­rable mo­ment be­fore per­form­ing at the Busi­ness Meet & Din­ner held on the sec­ond day in New Del­hi.

At the res­i­dence of the chair­per­son of host Glob­al Trace & Tech­nol­o­gy Coun­cil, In­dia (GTTCI), Dr Rash­mi Salu­ja, Lei­th af­ford­ed T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, Chan­dra­dath Singh, the plea­sure of re-ex­pe­ri­enc­ing one of his spe­cial loves—play­ing pan—af­ter be­com­ing en­ticed by the in­stru­ment. Singh as­ton­ished Lei­th with his skills.

Thrilling his In­di­an wife Ani­ta, she told Lei­th, “He played your na­tion­al in­stru­ment on live tele­vi­sion in In­dia,” and con­tin­ued beam­ing when he played the African drum to ac­com­pa­ny Lei­th’s pan per­for­mance.

Lei­th re­turned home on April 30. “I was pleased that MITTCO was a part of the jour­ney. Apart from B2B meet­ings, the fac­to­ry tours and high-lev­el dis­cus­sions, a field trip to the Taj Ma­hal was mag­i­cal for me.”

Re­gard­ing the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, Lei­th says he sees ma­jor po­ten­tial for both MITTCO and T&T’s broad­er man­u­fac­tur­ing land­scape.

Con­sis­tent with the mis­sion of the gov­ern­ing body for steel­pan, Pan Trin­ba­go, MITTCO seeks to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and as­sist with bring­ing pan to a wider, more mean­ing­ful glob­al reach, and to a stan­dard per­ti­nent to pre­mi­um eco­nom­ic val­ue. Last year, the MITTCO Steel En­sem­ble was launched.

On Feb­ru­ary 19 in Guyana, apart from be­ing chief judge at their Mashra­mani Panora­ma, dur­ing a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view, Lei­th spoke about T&T help­ing to deep­en Guyana’s steel­pan ap­pa­ra­tus.

On March 23, True Wor­ship­pers Evan­ge­list Cen­tre re­ceived a MITTCO bless­ing in the gift of their very first steel­pan to “en­rich and el­e­vate their praise and wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence.”

On March 29, hav­ing part­nered with au­thor and sto­ry­teller Rea Ramkissoon for the launch of her sec­ond book, Uni­ver­si­ty School’s Teigen Gabriel, 10, showed off on pan.

Lei­th said MITTCO is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing and cel­e­brat­ing not on­ly lo­cal tal­ent such as Teigen’s, but tal­ent in gen­er­al, es­pe­cial­ly when en­hanced by or de­liv­ered through steel­pan.

On April 7, Ukrain­ian-British, Lon­don-based brand ex­plor­er, con­tent cre­ator, and ed­u­ca­tor Max Kly­menko sur­prised Lei­th with a vis­it to the pan es­tab­lish­ment. It was the first time he be­came aware that pan emerged from T&T, learned of its evo­lu­tion, wit­nessed the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, and touched the in­stru­ment.

Mean­while, on April 25, Amer­i­can con­tent cre­ator—IShowSpeed, a YouTu­ber, stream­er, and rap­per—had his usu­al­ly in­tense­ly hyped de­meanour be­come placid dur­ing his maid­en ex­po­sure to pan man­u­fac­tur­ing, from the raw el­e­ment to its fi­nal stage, ex­pe­ri­enced at In­vaders pa­n­yard. The ses­sion was di­rect­ed by MITTCO’s Kha­dine Hen­ry, Sime­on Su­perville, Ju­nior Franklyn, and Kei­th Hen­ry.

The groov­ing process, which he de­scribed as “con­struc­tion”, got his un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion, and play­ing a few notes dur­ing the tun­ing process over­whelmed him. He re­marked, “So wait! An in­stru­ment came from a nor­mal drum? I need one to take with me.”

He, how­ev­er, re­sumed his usu­al char­ac­ter when he joined In­vaders for a re­al pan-play­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to the tune Bump and Wine, as­sist­ed by Girelle Forbes, In­vaders mu­sic co­or­di­na­tor De­siree My­ers, and tenor play­er Na­tal­ie Bap­tiste.

Those two pan projects saw T&T gain mil­lions of YouTube views.

“The steel­pan is an in­stru­ment of joy, ex­pres­sion and uni­ty, ca­pa­ble of up­lift­ing hearts in every space it touch­es, in­clud­ing wor­ship and thanks­giv­ing,” Lei­th ap­prised. “We be­lieve mu­sic has the pow­er to in­spire deep­er con­nec­tion. The steel­pan be­longs in every as­pect of sound where spir­it and joy meet, and where ever MITTCO can make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, they will—one note, one gift, one com­mu­ni­ty at a time.”