I WONDER why I feel so irritated, as if I’ll break out in a rash, whenever I read or hear the words ‘steel pan’ or ‘pan’,or ‘steeldrum’ identifying the greatest and ‘onliest’ musical instrument in the world invented in Trinidad and Tobago during the 30s/40s of the 20th century.

Perhaps, for me, the word ‘pan’ resonates with the instruction of my elders: ‘Get a pan to put de dawg food in.’

During that time, the music of these bands aroused a childlike curiosity and excitement in me (even though others regarded it as noise).

It was no fault of ours that we couldn’t imagine how the future of this ragamuffin musical instrument would develop worldwide in the way it has. Perhaps we felt its class origins would always have kept it a ‘nobody’. Perhaps we didn’t realise how language shapes our thoughts and feelings (and still does).

I rushed to Google one day, when the itch took me, for names of musical instruments. Names of indigenous instruments were exotic and non-traditional.

I was guided to search traditional instrument families, which brought up percussion. I found nothing to illustrate that this band of instruments has been placed in that standard category of music. Its instruments carry names from the traditional, yes. However, as is commonly understood, its uniqueness is its derivation from scrap metal, upon which melodies can emerge.

I would place our society as indigenous/traditional, with an option to choose language as we please, given our social and musical history. Therefore, I have begun to think our trueborn unique musical instrument-orphaned, as it is, to date-must be making it difficult for Parliament to proclaim as our national instrument. As I pointed out, its name now is in line with dawg pan, bread pan, bed pan and other kinds.

Please, I am making a call that before that parliamentary procedure for proclamation, our country holds a national competition to select an original name for this ultra-unique band of instruments.

Dr Yvonne Bobb-Smith