I didn’t know that

No matter how long ago you were born, no matter how long you live, we keep running into stuff that leaves you gaping and saying something like, “I think I know a lot of stuff, but I that’s news to me. I never knew that.”

For instance, we generally assume that the manufacturing of steel band instruments would be a Trinidad thing; not necessarily. A Trini friend of mine in Cayman, who is a maniacal steel band aficionado, sent me a note this week about a US company going full bore into that business.  It’s the typical US business approach, offering “Lowest price for high quality full size music instruments. Packages for schools, Steel pans for musicians, Steel drums for beginners, Steel pan stands, Drum Mallets, Steel band music, Steel pan cases, Lead Steel pans.” (“Drum mallets, by the way, are what we know as “pan sticks” – wooden sticks with a rubber tip that the musicians use to play the instruments.) They cover the bases, these Americans, however they are coming to the game late: The Japanese – who else – have been making steel band instruments for some time and, in fact, have been coming to Trinidad carnival in recent years as accomplished pan players taking part in Panorama and carnival fetes in the top steel bands in Trinidad, and there are now professional steel bands in Japan operating full time.  I can’t speak for you, but until recently I didn’t know that

In the same week as the pan news, I saw a release online from the international Oxfam Charity folks telling us that the super-rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. An Oxfam official reported that “the richest one percent of mankind now owns more than the other 99 percent put together”, and one would have thought the disparity was being addressed. Indeed the Oxfam report said, “We cannot continue to allow hundreds of millions of people to go hungry while resources that could be used to help them are sucked up by those at the top.” But the report went on to say that “world leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action.”