Au­gust has be­come an even more sig­nif­i­cant month than it orig­i­nal­ly was for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as in ad­di­tion to car­ry­ing the cel­e­bra­tions of po­lit­i­cal In­de­pen­dence, of Eman­ci­pa­tion, and the re­cent re­moval of the Christo­pher Colum­bus stat­ue at In­de­pen­dence Square, to­day is when we have come to feel ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly proud of the Unit­ed Na­tions-de­clared World Steel­pan Day.

It’s an ac­knowl­edge­ment by the pre­mier world in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion in ho­n­our of the cre­ation of the on­ly new mu­si­cal in­stru­ment born in the last cen­tu­ry.

Dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son and on the oc­ca­sion of Panora­ma and the Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, the steel­pans and the mod­ern steel­bands are recog­nised for what they are, won­drous in­stru­ments and groups of supreme­ly tal­ent­ed mu­si­cians.

To­day is al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the con­di­tions out of which the steel­band in­ven­tors, the steel­pan and steel­band emerged. And it must sure­ly be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the whole so­ci­ety to set aside por­tions of time to say thanks in our dif­fer­ent ways and means to the steel­pan move­ment.

It is most nat­ur­al to recog­nise the true steel­pan and steel­band he­roes, but on this oc­ca­sion we should fol­low the lead of king David Rud­der, in his trib­ute song to the move­ment, ti­tled Ded­i­ca­tion, and not name one of those re­al he­roes who came from the low­est so­cio-eco­nom­ic class in the so­ci­ety of the 1930s in­to the 1940s, and who were thrown in­to prison for ex­per­i­ment­ing with their “noisy in­stru­ments.” In­stead, we should know for cer­tain that “Out of a mud­dy pond, ten thou­sand flow­ers bloom … and to hope that a once bit­ter man might just shrug and sing along,” as the world ac­knowl­edges the cre­ation of the in­stru­ment.

So too, we must con­sid­er the sons and daugh­ters of those once dis­card­ed and dis­re­gard­ed steel­bands men who, ac­cord­ing to the Mighty Spar­row, were cast­aways and treat­ed with com­plete con­tempt: “If yuh sis­ter talk to ah steel­band man, she fam­i­ly want to break she hand, put she out, lick out every teeth in she mouth…. Pass yuh out­cast.”

So, as the coun­try cel­e­brates this day, a lit­tle more than a decade away from the 100th an­niver­sary of the cre­ation of the steel­pan and steel­band, our gen­er­a­tion of cel­e­brants of this mu­si­cal in­stru­ment must come to a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of our cre­ation, its pos­si­bil­i­ties and how we should ad­vance its po­ten­tial.

As we vis­it “Hell Yard” in down­town Port-of-Spain and the “Be­hind the Bridge” ar­eas of the old city out of which the then “jamettes” and the “hooli­gan pan­men” were born and had their be­ing, we must pay trib­ute to those who fought phys­i­cal bat­tles against the colo­nial po­lice to pre­serve and de­vel­op that which they cre­at­ed, in the un­der­stand­ing that it was some­thing of val­ue for the gen­er­a­tions to come and the world in gen­er­al.

It is al­so im­por­tant to ac­knowl­edge the wis­dom with­in the Unit­ed Na­tions to have put aside this day in ho­n­our of the great val­ue of the steel­pan and in do­ing so, those as­so­ci­at­ed with its birth. Be­yond our cel­e­bra­tion of the cre­ation of the steel­pan, we, be­long­ing to this so­ci­ety, re­main in our in­fan­cy in mak­ing use of the steel­pan and band as an eco­nom­ic tool; we have been stick­ing for too long.