Nine­ty years af­ter its birth, the time has come to ask a dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary ques­tion: What is the true state of T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment?

The steel­pan is the on­ly acoustic in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry. It is a liv­ing tes­ta­ment to the re­silience and bril­liance of a peo­ple de­nied tra­di­tion­al av­enues of ex­pres­sion. From dis­card­ed oil drums came a glob­al mar­vel, a mu­si­cal in­ven­tion that has trav­elled the world, earned aca­d­e­m­ic rev­er­ence, and stood as a sym­bol of Trin­bag­on­ian iden­ti­ty.

And yet, at home, the steel­pan of­ten feels like an af­ter­thought, ho­n­oured in rhetoric but not in re­al­i­ty.

De­spite be­ing named T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment in 1992, the steel­pan re­mains chron­i­cal­ly un­der­fund­ed and in­con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed. Pa­n­yards strug­gle for space, and ad­vance­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties are lim­it­ed out­side the Car­ni­val sea­son, with the steel­pan of­ten seem­ing like an af­ter­thought.

The an­nu­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion can­not bear the bur­den of sus­tain­ing an en­tire ecosys­tem. Car­ni­val is sea­son­al; cul­ture is not. Steel­pan can­not thrive on two months of at­ten­tion fol­lowed by ten months of ne­glect.

Cur­rent­ly, steel­pan ed­u­ca­tion is patchy at best. While there are out­stand­ing mu­sic pro­grammes in some schools, there is no na­tion­al man­date to en­sure that every child in T&T is ex­posed to it. The in­stru­ment should be em­bed­ded in the cur­ricu­lum, not sim­ply show­cased on stage.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing and ex­port po­ten­tial of pan re­mains vast­ly un­der­de­vel­oped. World-class in­stru­ments are be­ing pro­duced but of­ten with­out state sup­port, ex­port sub­si­dies, or busi­ness de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance.

There is no na­tion­al strat­e­gy for brand­ing or ex­port­ing. For­eign en­ti­ties have patent­ed as­pects of steel­pan tech­nol­o­gy, while this coun­try lacks ba­sic le­gal safe­guards for the peo­ple who cre­at­ed and con­tin­ue to sus­tain this tra­di­tion.

What is ur­gent­ly need­ed is a na­tion­al steel­pan pol­i­cy that ad­dress­es ed­u­ca­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, cul­tur­al her­itage, and dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion. The elec­tron­ic steel­pan, for in­stance, of­fers new op­por­tu­ni­ties for glob­al in­te­gra­tion and mu­sic tech in­vest­ment, but this will on­ly ma­te­ri­alise if lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions are will­ing to lead rather than fol­low.

Com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment must al­so be cen­tral to the steel­pan agen­da. Pan was born in Laven­tille and nur­tured in “hotspots” across the coun­try that are of­ten dis­missed or stig­ma­tised. These ar­eas con­tin­ue to pro­duce mu­si­cal ex­cel­lence against the odds. Imag­ine the trans­for­ma­tion that could oc­cur if pa­n­yards were ful­ly sup­port­ed as com­mu­ni­ty hubs, of­fer­ing mu­sic train­ing, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port, and en­tre­pre­neur­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties.

There are bright spots. Ini­tia­tives such as the Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val show­case the beau­ty and ver­sa­til­i­ty of the steel­pan. Vi­sion­ary pan­nists and arrangers are push­ing the mu­si­cal bound­aries.

How­ev­er, these ef­forts need to be con­nect­ed, scaled, and pro­tect­ed.

Steel­pan Month—cel­e­brat­ed every Au­gust by PanTrin­ba­go—must not be­come an ex­er­cise in emp­ty com­mem­o­ra­tion. Let us use this time to launch a na­tion­al ef­fort to craft and im­ple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive steel­pan pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy, in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety, and the di­as­po­ra. On­ly by unit­ing in ac­tion can T&T build the steel­pan econ­o­my, trans­form her­itage in­to in­no­va­tion, and en­sure the steel­pan’s fu­ture as a source of na­tion­al pride.

We can­not wait for for­eign val­i­da­tion of the trea­sure we hold. Now is the time to ho­n­our, in­vest in, and plan bold­ly for the steel­pan’s fu­ture—so that T&T’s gift to the world re­ceives the re­spect it de­serves.