Commentary
Marina Salandy-Brown
As we prepare to celebrate 60 years since the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of our red, white and black flag on that momentous and symbolic day of August 31, 1962, we reflect on the transition from colonial territory to post-colonial nation, independent.
In many ways, it has been a difficult journey and there are many criticisms we can make of our leaders and ourselves for failing to realize the dream and promise of independence.
However, since we must try to cheer ourselves up before we disappear into a pit of our own making, we must remember some key points. Among them are the cultural achievements of Trinidad and Tobago in the intervening six decades.
It’s hard to imagine a time before independence when our forms of cultural expression were as narrow as one of the Bocas passes, but the now-ubiquitous steel and calypso were once taboo. It was a brave middle-class boy who dared to win the desire to play pan. Parents would admonish that child that he has no self-respect, and no “good” person would dream of entering a kindergarten, even if they knew where they were. Of course, no “respectable” woman would be caught dead next to one.
Now the sheer ingenuity of those who discovered the potential secrets of an empty oil drum is widely celebrated. Thousands of non-native players exist internationally and the steel pants repertoire is constantly growing and changing.
The steel pan is perhaps our greatest cultural gift to the world, and it grew directly out of the impulse to create a national instrument, just as we created a flag, an anthem and unique symbols.
Our carnivals became our biggest source of tourism income and our calypso has taken many new forms, although its influence cannot be compared to that of Jamaican reggae, which also celebrates 60 years of independence this August .
Chutney soca, tassa drumming and other forms of cultural expression originating in India have been enjoyed across the TT since 1962, none of them by accident. These were conscious acts of nation building.
The list of cultural achievements is long and we must include the success of our writers who have captured the attention of readers and the interest of publishers around the world. The importance of our written story escaped the full treatment of “national culture,” but it is flourishing.
Other forms of cultural expression must come out of decline and claim their own space, not least because they help us remember.
Overall, the next decade will be tougher than the last for everyone, and the hardships experienced in the TT over the past 60 years will be compounded. We are living through the breakdown of an international world order that brought peace to most, if not all, of us in the eight decades since the end of World War II.
On February 24, Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, unprovoked, apparently to restore a lost empire. Meanwhile, other backward-looking supranational leaders are returning, almost irresistibly, tearing up the rule book and threatening the peace and freedoms on which prosperity, human freedom, and happiness depend.
The UN and international bodies like WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF and others that have helped make the world a better place for all the ever-increasing struggle for legitimacy, which is not promised if people like Donald Trump achieve or return to political power. The world is changing radically around us and we are witnessing frightening evidence of accelerating climate change and the natural disasters that accompany it.
At the same time, TT’s energy reserves are dwindling and the wealth we have enjoyed since the 1970s is declining. Perversely, the Russia-Ukraine war and rising gas costs have pumped money into our national coffers, but only temporarily and with many downsides, such as inflation, increased poverty and insufficient supply of goods. At least the extra revenue helps offset the cost of the pandemic, but it’s not a pretty sight, as the educational and social cost of Covid will be felt for decades to come and is still incalculable.
We stand on the brink as we contemplate the future. But it need not be a moment of despair. We felt optimism in 1962 as we looked into an uncertain future because the father of our nation shared his bold vision of what ours could be. We felt that we were building our own future, each one of us.
We need to reclaim some of that sense of creating the future, and not let it happen to us. The relatively recent revolution in communication technology catapulted us into an era for which we were and still are unprepared, and artificial intelligence is upon us, profoundly changing the way we work and are. We need our leaders today to put us on the path of national renewal and redefine the mission of how to win the future and make it our own.
My prayer is that the soft side of those developments – our culture, in the broadest sense of the word – should be a part of it, as it was in 1962 when we were strengthening our nation.
