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Speaker:The Honourable Basdeo Panday, Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Date: January 23, 2000
Occasion: Address at the Launch of the Pan Company and the Pan Trinbago Development Fund
My Dear Friends:
Oma and I are delighted that you are here with us this morning.
We are happy to have this opportunity to meet in the most pleasant of circumstances with so many of you at the start of the new millennium, if that is what it is. We trust that you have all been having a good time. I am sure you are all familiar with the saying that, "There is no free Lunch". After this function, you will all be aware that there is no such thing as a FREE BRUNCH.
We are all here as lovers of pan. We are all steelband aficionados. Over the next few weeks, we will all be carried along on the wave of euphoria that only the steelband can create.
We all know what Pan can do to us as revellers at Carnival. We all know what Pan can do for us music lovers during the National Steelband Music Festivals. We all know what Pan has done to transform the war cries of angry young gang members into the most astonishing, the most irresistible and the most memorable musical experience, bar none.
We all know what Pan has done to channel and transform the anger and the energy of the alienated in the society into the most extraordinary, the most triumphal declaration of self-identity and self-worth that has been known to come from within any Caribbean society. I say this with due regard to West Indies cricket; when we were invincible. I also say this with the greatest respect to the music and the memory of Bob Marley.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I had the privilege of delivering the keynote address to open the Conference on the Caribbean in the 21st Century, last October. The Conference was organised by the University of the West Indies. It took place at UWI's Mona Campus in Jamaica. The theme of my address at the Conference on the Caribbean in the 21st Century was "The Creative Imagination of the Caribbean People".
My thesis was that the creative imagination of the people of the Caribbean was the means through which the Caribbean region had made the greatest impact on world thought and the consciences of other peoples, in the 21st Century. In putting forth that thesis, I drew reference to the Steelband and to Bob Marley.
I feel entitled to take some satisfaction from that fact that, at least, in respect of Bob Marley, Time Magazine has validated my proposition in the power of the genius of the people of the Caribbean. In naming Bob Marley's album "Exodus", as "The Album of the Century", Time Magazine may well have set the stage for us to make the 21st Century the Century of the Steelband. All of this brings us to the reason that brings us here today, Ladies and Gentlemen.
We know what Pan can do for us. We know what Pan has done for just about every Caribbean country, and for a goodly number individuals, organisations, institutions, communities and countries in other parts of the world. The question that I now put to you is, what can we do for Pan? What will you do for Pan?
Perhaps, Ladies and Gentlemen, I should, for the rest of my remarks, use the expression "Steelband" instead of "Pan". As you would know, I run the risk of being reported as promoting myself whenever I speak of pan, as in "PANDAY" some might be tempted to suggest.
So the question is, what can you do, what will you do for the steelband?
When I last had the pleasure of speaking at a PanTrinbago event, not too long ago, I challenged PanTrinbago to put out a business proposition to the Prime Minister and to the Government. Pan Trinbago has done precisely that, hence this launching this morning of "The Pan Company" and "The Pan Development Fund". This is a most ambitious undertaking. The plan is for a self-sustaining steelband industry that will provide meaningful economic returns to Pan practitioners as well as to the national economy. I see this as an eminently achievable objective.
That is why we have invited you here, to be God Parents, as it were, of this new effort to propel the steelband to the heights that Pan should occupy as a matter of right; and in perpetuity. It is not for me to deliver a detailed prospectus on the perspectives of Pan and the Steelband Music Festivals. That sort of information will be provided by the officers of the Pan Company and the Pan Trinbago Development Fund. I will simply say that while many in this gathering are already patrons of the Steelband movement, and that includes the media, I would hope that after today, you will all become strategic partners in the programme to make this century the Century of the Steelband.
Sponsorship has played historically a pivotal role in the development of Pan.
Pan Am, with North Stars. Carib, with Tokyo. Catelli, with All Stars. Solo, with Harmonites. Shell, with Invaders; and now BWIA with Invaders. WITCO, with Desperados. De Lima, with Blue Diamonds. AMOCO, with Renegades.
Some may even remember, with gratitude and pride, Kirpalani's and the "Pan is Beautiful" National Steelband Music Festival Company of the early eighties in the Jean Pierre Complex; and ISCOTT Casablanca with that incredible performance of the 1812 Overture, which must have made old Tchaikovsky stand up in his grave and applaud.
The kind of strategic alliance that had developed between Kirpalani's and Pan Trinbago is a model that can well be replicated in various phases of the strategic plans that have been formulated for the Pan Company and the Pan Trinbago Development Fund.
The Government will definitely be a partner in that alliance, if only by way of the special incentives which the Ministry of Finance will provide to participants in the programmes that we launch today.
TIDCO will provide strong and ongoing support for these programmes. There are opportunities for strategic alliances in the research and development of manufacturing technology. Similar opportunities exist in music education and training. It is my view, however, that the greatest potential for Pan, as for any musical milieu, is in the management and marketing of artistes and their repertoire. We have only to look at the Bob Marley experience and the Bob Marley legacy.
Eddie Grant, the co-promoter of the Tobago RingBang event, bid up to $50 million for Bob Marley's music. That's $50 million US, ladies and gentlemen. We are looking at somewhere in the region of $650 million TT dollars.
That, you will agree, is substantially more than mere pittance, for intellectual property and for any other property. The greatest value in music and entertainment is not the manufacture of the hardware. The greatest value is in intellectual property, in the creative assets. This means that our creative talent, our performers, our composers, must be uncovered, nutured and mass marketed to the mass markets of the world. It is held that media and entertainment have become the driving wheel of the global economy.
We thus have to come to terms with the realities of the global entertainment economy in which popular culture is vital in marketing everything, from financial institutions to soft drinks to luxury automobiles. The options, the opportunities are without limits. But to compete in any major market, in any industry, we have to develop strong branding.
And we have to develop affinities to young markets. We have to make the fullest use of our unique and varied creative genius in branding the intellectual property evolving from Pan music as a Trinidad and Tobago product. We must therefore go boldly where no other country on Earth can even contemplate going. We must for instance, engage the genius of Pat Bishop, Peter Minshall and Machel Montano and Senelle Dempster and 3 Canal and David Rudder in a fusion with pan that will capture the young people of our nation and the young people of the world.
These are the horizons, these are among the goals I invite you to target. Look at any entertainment phenomenon. We have all wanted "To be like Mike". The current phenomenon is Latin Superstar, Ricky Martin. That's the league to which we should move to take Pan. We must make Pan an economic powerhouse. We have invented what we like to call the only new musical instrument of the 20th Century. Let us now work together to ensure that our panists are celebrated as the new musical phenomenon of the 21st Century.
To those who may harbour the thought that we may be over-reaching in this pursuit, let me remind you of the editorial column that appeared in the Express on Friday the 31st of December 1999. Under the heading, "Less Room for Gloom and Doom", the Express Editorial read in part, and I quote:
"The whole aim of practical politics", wrote the journalist H.L. Mencken,"is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hoboglobins, all of them imaginary.
"In Trinidad and Tobago, we have seen this technique applied ad nauseum by demagogues in every institution. And, unfortunately, fear and pessimism often result in self- fulfilling prophesies."
I continue to quote from the Express Opinion of December 31st.
"The real question facing us in the new millennium, then, is this: will we believe these doom sayers, or will we use our hard won rationality, technological power, economic growth, social concern and political efficacy to stabilise and accelerate our progress."
"The choice simply is ours".
That was the opinion expressed by the Express, 3 weeks ago. If the author of that salutary column might well have had this steelband project in mind. The choice is ours.
The challenge is ours. We can and must. I, myself will personally invest in the Pan Company, in the name of my children. I will personally contribute financially to the Pan Development Fund, no matter how modest that contribution might be. I give the guarantee that the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago will be a committed partner in this bold plan to make the 21st Century the Century of the Steelband.
I am confident that every one of you will make a similar commitment.
Thank You.
And May God Bless Pan.
And may God Bless You All.