A recent debate over a political issue took place in the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament on January 12 that happens to raise some serious questions about our attitudes to our indigenous culture and culture in the Caribbean generally. It was the usual profound, dignified and highly distinguished parliamentary debate about allegations of corruption and shady practices levelled by one side of the House against the other.
The reference to culture was casual, and peripheral to the main argument, but important to the issue of attitudes to our culture. The context of the political argument was the report by the Trinidad and Tobago Attorney General Anand Ramlogan to the House that a very expensive Bosendorfer grand piano which was controversially purchased and placed in the Prime Minister’s residence while Patrick Manning was in office has disappeared. He asked what had happened to it,