JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore says she re­mains stead­fast in her sup­port of the Sil­ver Stars Steel Or­ches­tra play­ers who were ar­rest­ed on Sun­day fol­low­ing a scuf­fle with po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing the TRIBE band launch.

Ram­sey-Moore joined the band’s lead­er­ship, play­ers and their fam­i­lies as the play­ers were re­leased yes­ter­day evening.

Ram­sey-Moore said she con­tin­ues to close­ly mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and is seek­ing an­swers from the po­lice, while reaf­firm­ing Pan Trin­ba­go’s com­mit­ment to stand­ing with its mem­ber bands, safe­guard­ing the wel­fare of its play­ers and ad­vo­cat­ing for the dig­ni­ty and re­spect of the na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment and all those who per­form it.

It was re­port­ed that the play­ers and po­lice were in a scuf­fle af­ter TRIBE’s band launch around 2 am on Sun­day. The pan side had been hired to close the fes­tiv­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that the pan side was ap­proached by plain-clothes of­fi­cers, who told them to stop play­ing. The sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed when one of the of­fi­cers al­leged­ly grabbed the sticks from a drum­mer and threw down the drums, lead­ing to a scuf­fle. The in­ci­dent re­port­ed­ly un­fold­ed in the North Stand, next to the VIP area.

Ram­sey-Moore said the en­tire in­ci­dent seems to have been aimed at pit­ting pan­men against po­lice, rem­i­nis­cent of days gone by when po­lice and pan play­ers were at odds with each oth­er.

“I am re­al­ly call­ing on the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to in­ter­vene to en­sure trans­paren­cy and to en­sure that the process is fair. It is trou­bling; it is in­deed trou­bling. We are re­silient peo­ple, you know where we came from.

“Lis­ten, who­ev­er is try­ing to push us back to those days, it will not hap­pen. We have fought long and hard; we stand up­on the blood, sweat and tears of our an­ces­tors, and we will not go back to those dark days.”

In a me­dia re­lease, mas band Berke­ley Car­ni­val Rev­o­lu­tion said it stood firm with the play­ers.

“We un­equiv­o­cal­ly con­demn the un­nec­es­sary use of force in a mat­ter that could have been han­dled with di­a­logue, mu­tu­al re­spect and the prop­er chan­nels. There is no place for vi­o­lence against the very peo­ple who ded­i­cate them­selves to pre­serv­ing and ad­vanc­ing our na­tion­al cul­ture.”

The re­lease added, “It is both heart­break­ing and un­ac­cept­able that in 2026, we are still wit­ness­ing ac­tions that evoke the painful his­to­ry of cul­tur­al op­pres­sion. More than a cen­tu­ry af­ter Cap­tain Bak­er sought to si­lence the peo­ple of Trinidad through the sup­pres­sion of Can­boulay, we should know bet­ter as a na­tion.”

It added that Car­ni­val was born from re­sis­tance, with steel­pan emerg­ing from re­silience. It said pan was not just sim­ply tra­di­tions or en­ter­tain­ment but sym­bols of the coun­try’s iden­ti­ty, free­dom and col­lec­tive spir­it.