On Friday night while I was still in Port of Spain I was passing the Queens Park Savannah when my friend Josanne Leonard informed me that Len Boogsie Sharpe would be playing at the People’s Place and that we should make a stop to see the great man perform.

Though I was awfully tired I could not resist the opportunity to witness this great Caribbean man of pan doing what he does (in my estimation) better than anyone who has ever lived. It was a mesmerising experience watching this virtuoso improvising while eliciting some of the sweetest sounds one could ever imagine coming from the hands of a musician. Boogsie was clearly having fun and so was his audience.

Supported by the Phase 2 aggregation the maestro was in full flight coaxing calypso melodies and teasing classical sounds from the pans of steel with such effortless ease. It was one of those moments to celebrate being from the Caribbean. Yes, any region or nation should be justly proud to claim such a phenomenal talent. What an honour it is to know that Boogsie is one of us.

After he finished playing he informed me that he had strong Jamaican roots, pointing out that Barrington Levy (yes the one dubbed the canary), is his cousin. Music certainly runs in that family. I had to secure for myself Bugsie’s album of Christmas melodies.

What is sad is that not many Jamaicans are familiar with this great figure of Caribbean music though he has performed here on several occasions. This is a man whose name should be on the lips of every Caribbean national. Boogsie is the Ernie Ranglin of pan, a performer simply in a league of his very own.

It is time that we become better informed of the giants in our midst. We need to celebrate the best of ourselves and Bugsie is certainly representative of that.

It is clear from listening to the radio or by just simply moving around in Trinidad that the Jamaican cultural influence is strong. Mavado and Kartel are staples on the airwaves and the authorities are pondering how to deal with the Gaza/Gully controversy, which is beginning to spill over into the schools. Yet there is little evidence of a Jamaican presence on the supermarket shelves.

This seems to be the reverse of what obtains in Jamaica where a wide array of products from the Twin Island Republic is an integral part of the offering. One could be pardoned into thinking that cultural influence is going in one direction while commerce in goods and raw material, is moving in the other. Maybe there is something that Jamaican manufacturers could learn from our entertainers.

Controversy is raging about the construction of the National Academy of the Performing Arts, which many have likened to the Sydney Opera House. It is an imposing edifice and I thought to myself that this is a controversy, which we could have done well to have in Jamaica. Of course there are those who will suggest that this is a monument to Patrick Manning’s vanity and that the money spent on the complex could have been put to better use.

There are those who are arguing that some famous Trinidadian cultural landmarks are being closed due to lack of funding and yet the Prime Minister is spending millions on this structure, which they contend is predicated on the wrong developmental model.

These detractors argue that more could be done for Trinidadian culture if the money spent on building the concert hall had been earmarked for the development of human cultural capital. We will never definitively know the answer to these questions as history never provides alternatives.

However, there is a tendency in this region to conflate the notions of construction and development. I strongly believe that this is at the heart of the environmental degradation that we are currently experiencing in the region. If I have a choice of preserving our biodiversity, or erecting an impressive edifice, such as the Academy for the Performing Arts, I would not opt for the latter.

Those in the tourism industry should understand that our fragile ecosystem is not going to be able to sustain a continuous increase in visitor arrivals without doing considerable violence to our environment.

We will need to devise ways of encouraging each visitor to spend more. This will be a way of growing tourism in a manner, which will ensure that the sector will remain viable in the future.

Culture can play a critical role in this approach to tourism development. Good cultural offerings will entice our visitors to leave more of their money in our economy. The staging of festivals is one way of achieving this.

Very little, if any, concrete needs to be poured into the soil in order to stage a festival yet it can be an important inducement for visitors to spend their money. A region that can produce the Mighty Sparrow, Boogsie Sharep, Bob Marley, Ernie Ranglin, Eddy Grant and Billy Ocean should be earning far more revenue. We just need to recognise the true value of our culture.

Let me hasten to say that not all aspects of “our culture” should be celebrated. The practice of playing music on public passenger vehicles is deemed to be a Jamaican cultural peculiarity but would we have done better if we had no radios or sound systems on these buses? Is it fair to the man who wants to gather his thoughts while going to work to have to endure the noise which someone else deems to be entertainment? I would think not.

clyde.mckenzie @gmail.com