A museum to fill the world with happiness

THE EDITOR: Many Trinis would agree wholeheartedly with TUCO’s recent call for a calypso museum. But let us go a step further and magnify that call to one for a national museum of musical cultural heritage of TT.

A museum is a nurturing and inspirational tool which holds heritage. Heritage can provide people with a sense of the past to comprehend the current and to speculate on a future. Our music spreads in the diversity of who we are. This museum can motivate us to reflect together on how disparate identities can exist to maintain a national identity.

Today, our music is a conglomeration of melodies, rhythms and performances, reflecting its uniqueness. These have been influenced continuously by creolised and ethnic-based genres, along with those which are pure creations. All Trini music needs a home for preservation, protection and admiration to harmonise our notion of a national identity; and to fulfil Dr Winston McGarland Bailey’s (Mighty Shadow’s) philosophy, “Music fills the world with happiness/ Plenty sweetness and togetherness…”

YVONNE BOBB-SMITH via e-mail