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My last topic was the cancellation of the Independence Day military parade, which was yet another issue over which there was polarisation, partly driven by the partisan political zealots.
Currently, some of the reactions to the United States’ naval presence in Caribbean waters are intended superficially to spin a potentially major international confrontation into the narrow, parochial gayelle of yellow versus red politics.
A fundamental question to which I will return is: over what do we realistically have sovereignty?
I worry that we frequently polarise ourselves because we readily succumb to the pressures to think only in terms of “for or against” or “agree or disagree” and miss the nuances of a situation.
With this polluting “us or dem” mindset, some persons tried to spin the presence of the reportedly huge crowd at Pan on D Avenue on Independence night as a show of disagreement with the Government’s cancellation of the military parade. However, there are things that the spin doctors do not understand.
Photo: Pan Trinbago.
The first is that Pan on D Avenue is an enduring community thing in the enlightened hands of the Woodbrook/St James Community Organization.
The event was created by a now deceased former councillor for the Woodbrook area of Port of Spain, Cleveland Garcia, with the support of his family and some enlightened fellow citizens.
His family has managed to carry it on, but there have been times in the past where lack of financial support put the continuation of the event in peril. Their work is not known for carrying the infection of partisan politics.
I was delighted to see a picture of the Garcia family in the Trinidad Express newspaper, without the intrusion of the grandstanders, under the headline ‘Pan draws thousands on the Avenue’.
I appreciate that the support of the Ministry of Culture and Community Development is required but please do not interfere with the organization that the Garcias have built and with how the event has unfolded.
Happily, there are no admission gates to be manipulated and we do not want to see an excessive number of persons with clipboards telling us where and when to chip. Hands off the people. Let the spontaneity flow.
Pan on D Avenue has always been a pure expression of pan music, unpolluted by competition or ropes between followers and the bands. It is even more compelling than the track on Panorama Saturday night because of the stunning variety of tunes played along the route. It is usually well attended.
The day after my attendance at Brooklyn Panorama this year, I had a brief fantasy of being beamed up from New York, Star Trek-style, and dropped on Ariapita Avenue to set up our base at Murray Street corner for Pan on D Avenue, as we have done so many times in the past.
I recalled vividly on one occasion how many younger persons suddenly burst into the street near that corner lustily singing I feel like Hulk when a band began playing Blaxx’s hit song.
As to the reported crowd size at the event, there is a current surge of support for pan unrelated to political squabbles, including amongst younger persons.
In the course of a recent conversation with some of our significant younger pan persons, we discussed the surge of interest and it was readily attributed to the national pride that welled up since the 2023 United Nations declaration of 11 August as annual World Steelpan Day.
The surge has been particularly apparent since then and was evident in the pan parade of the Laventille Steel Foundation (LSF), the 11 August celebrations and Pan and Powder as well as Pan on D Avenue. There is a cultural tourism product which can be fashioned out of these August events.
Photo: TTPS.
Recently a female Venezuelan engineer, now a documented resident elsewhere in the Caribbean, was discussing with me in her adoptive island, what she missed about her home country. She described it as “a way of being”.
That is what Pan on D Avenue, the LSF parade and Pan and Powder are. Those evenings breathe authenticity.
The pan music, which drives togetherness across many barriers, is surviving in a society where “we living in jail”. That is a cause for gratitude and meaningful investment.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
