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By Raffique Shah
August 28, 2024
If Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley doesn’t be careful about what he says between now and the election (which he says will be in 2025), he could become one of those political leaders who gives away the huge advantages he has before the election.
Indeed, if he makes inappropriate remarks and policy statements, the advantage that he and his colleagues have painstakingly built and maintained after nearly a decade in power in Trinidad and Tobago could be wiped out in a corrupt electoral environment.
Allow me to explain why I think Dr. Rowley’s comments are somewhat ill-advised. No doubt he is keen to seize this opportunity to bring it into mainstream music, seeking to establish it as an instrument created by Trinidadian genius.
In the pan-music circle, our Prime Minister is a long-term supporter of pan-music. More than ten years ago, I met him and talked for about an hour at the semi-finals of Panorama. That night, we discussed pan-music and other national issues.
Although I don’t remember the details, he must have said something interesting, given the amount of time I spent with him. We would occasionally meet after that, he as Minister of Agriculture and me as a farmer leader with a passion for local food production.
I never took our acquaintance for granted after he became prime minister, nor did I call him on his personal phone, even though I had one. So Dr. Rowley and I were not friends, but I always respected him as a man who cared about his country and was intelligent. Where others saw him as arrogant and rude, I saw patriotism and a black man who had something to prove in a country that was very concerned about skin color.
But I digress. I have been following this little furore that he seems to have deliberately stirred up in an attempt to make the frying pan central to cultural development. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, Dr Rowley was absolutely right to make history as Prime Minister who promoted the frying pan.
As a “pan flute player” I have long felt, spoken and written about the value of pan flute music and the instrument this small country offers the world. Pan flutes can and must contribute to national economies, whether through manufacturing and exporting instruments or promoting pan flute music in theatres around the world.
I think that if the government makes the right decisions – and I don’t claim to be an expert in marketing, music or pan-music – then there will be highly qualified and experienced people who can drive these advances, but… I think Dr. Rowley and his colleagues have to be very careful about what they say and do.
They must not be seen as favouring pan-music, which might exclude other cultural art forms, especially given the divisions in this multi-ethnic, multicultural society.
Last week, he created a “Columbus storm” by giving a speech suggesting that we should remove Columbus’s three ships from the national emblem and replace them with a frying pan, a move that has already stirred up discussions and tensions about race in society.
I have a feeling he and his cabinet will discuss removing Columbus from the national emblem, even though they know Columbus has been removed from the subject of slavery, colonialism, and so on.
The reality is that 99% of the people in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean don’t know who Columbus really was, nor do they care. Columbus is dead, and he died with huge debts from slaves and native tribes.
Any attempt to rekindle that ancient war has nothing to do with our colonial history and might hurt Dr. Raleigh and his party more than Columbus ever did.
The Prime Minister needs to understand that the darkest part of slavery was not white people. White people have long been plundering the spoils, using our natural wealth and slave labour to enrich their own domains.
What the Negro must understand, and what Dr. Rowley must tell his people, is that those among them who have climbed the ladder of success have invariably absorbed European values and used them as the criteria for success and failure.
How many of these people, who until a few years ago would have considered wearing African clothing and listening to African music to be foreign to them, would now take the time to be educated by commentators such as Dr. David Muhammad, whose show is broadcast weekly on television? I will return to this topic on another occasion.
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