Speech by Her Excellency at “Celebrating 50 in Steel – Our Music. Our Nation. Our Moments” Steelpan Concert

Sep 27, 2026

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, good evening.

Before we begin, there is a loss our nation must acknowledge. Today, Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean learned, with profound sorrow, of the death of Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow.

We have lost not merely a great calypsonian, but one of the great interpreters of Caribbean life. Known as the Calypso King of the World, Sparrow was, for Trinidad and Tobago, something even more: one of the voices by which we came to know ourselves. For more than seven decades, he gave melody and language to our joys, our contradictions, our humour and our conscience. His wit could delight and unsettle; his music could move our feet while stirring our minds. He carried calypso to the world, and carried the character of our people with it.

By a poignancy none of us could have foreseen, tonight’s programme already includes a Sparrow Medley. Those familiar songs will now reach us differently. They will carry our grief, our gratitude and our recognition that, although a singular national voice has fallen silent, the music he gave us will continue to speak.

On behalf of the nation, I offer his family and all who loved him our deepest condolences. And tonight, with full hearts, we dedicate Celebrating 50 in Steel to the life and work of Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, and to the incomparable contribution he made to our nation’s culture and identity.

Even as we mourn, tonight’s concert celebrates fifty years of our Republic and one hundred and fifty years since The President’s House was completed. It is fitting that we do so through the steelpan, an instrument born of our people’s ingenuity and now recognised around the world.

The programme is itself a portrait of our nation: pan in conversation with African drums and tassa; calypso, classical and popular music; Exodus and Exocubs carrying one tradition across generations. It reminds us that the inheritances of our multi-religious and multicultural society need not compete. Heard with respect, each deepens the music we make together.

At its heart is Republic Bank Exodus Steel Orchestra, this year’s National Panorama Large Conventional Band champions. Exodus conceived and assembled tonight’s concert, bringing together the guest artistes, musicians, service providers, and the backstage and technical teams on whom an occasion of this scale depends.

I offer particular thanks to Mr Ainsworth Mohammed, Manager of Exodus Steel Orchestra, whose vision, planning and patient coordination brought all these elements together. We honour what happens beneath the lights, and the devoted work beyond their glow.

This evening offers more than entertainment. A steel orchestra does not achieve harmony by making every instrument sound alike. Its power comes from distinct voices, disciplined in their craft, attentive to one another and answerable to the whole. So too with a Republic. Unity is not sameness; it is the work of making room for difference while refusing division.

Tonight, as pan takes up Sparrow’s melodies, may we hear not an ending, but an inheritance: the voice of an incomparable artist passing into the permanent memory of his people.

May Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, rest in peace. May his music live on.

Happy Republic Day, Trinidad and Tobago!

Let the music begin.

See full album of event below:

Facebook Feed

Cover for The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

Page likes: 49,039

(opens in a new tab)

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

(opens in a new tab)

The official Facebook Page of The Office of the President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

13 hours ago

#AsItHappensHer Excellency Christine Carla Kangaloo ORTT, President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago delivered the feature address at the International Women’s Forum of Trinidad and Tobago’s (IWFTT) Inspirational Women Awards Gala 2026 earlier this evening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.Under the theme, "The Power of Possibility: Celebrating Five Years of Women Who Inspire Change," the President reflected on women in leadership, the possibilities their achievements create for others, and the importance of remaining true to oneself in positions of authority.The fifth annual Gala honoured Ms. Roberta Clarke, who received the Inspirational Champion of Women Award; Dr. Christine Carrington, who received the Inspirational Advocate Award; and Dr. Diva Amon, who received the Inspirational Emerging Leader Award.𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰:Good evening.It is a pleasure and a privilege to join you once again at the International Women’s Forum of Trinidad and Tobago’s Inspirational Women Awards Gala. I congratulate IWFTT on the fifth anniversary of this important celebration, and I thank you for the invitation to share this evening with you.When I addressed you last year, I spoke about the importance of bringing women’s achievements into the light: doing so ensures that their contributions are seen, remembered and made available as examples to others. Tonight, I would like to consider a related question. What happens after a woman steps into that light - after she crosses the threshold into leadership, assumes authority, and discovers that reaching the destination was only the beginning?This year’s theme, ‘The Power of Possibility: Celebrating Five Years of Women Who Inspire Change’, invites us to celebrate what women can achieve. But, just as importantly, it also invites us to ask what women can change: not only in the fields in which they work, but in the ways in which power itself is understood and exercised.In the company of the three extraordinary women whom we honour tonight, I confess to considerable hesitation in speaking about my own journey in leadership. I do not offer my experience as a model to be followed; nor do I presume to place myself among those whom IWFTT has chosen so deservedly to recognize. I offer it simply as the experience of one woman who, having consented to have the glare of public light bear down upon her in her journey of leadership, continues to learn what it is that leadership asks of us women - especially when remaining true to ourselves becomes the hardest part of leading.Roberta Clarke, Professor Christine Carrington and Dr. Diva Amon have travelled very different paths. One has devoted her life to justice and human dignity; one has transformed scientific knowledge into national and regional capacity; and one has taken us into the deepest reaches of our ocean, while insisting that discovery must be joined to stewardship. Each has demonstrated what true leadership is; true leadership lies in expanding the range of what our society can imagine; and this is what each of them has done. I will return to each of them before I close.We often speak of possibility as a destination: the office attained, the barrier crossed, the discovery made. But possibility has another dimension. It is also the freedom - and the responsibility - to decide what kind of leader we will be, once the barrier has been crossed.At my inauguration in 2023, I said that there was too much shouting in our country. I said that, as President, my words did not need also to be shouted in the public square. I promised, instead, to lead by being calmer and more reflective. I said that my way would be to serve as the country’s “Diplomat-In-Chief, making the case for a better Trinidad and Tobago firmly, but without acrimony or bitterness.” Three years later, the shouting has not diminished. If anything, our public language has grown harsher, coarser and more inflammatory. That should concern us - especially when such language comes from those entrusted with public authority: because leadership gives language both reach and permission. In our current combative and fractious environment, insult too readily substitutes for argument; provocation for persuasion; and division, for the patient work of bringing people together. That environment makes the discipline that I promised more difficult. But it also makes it more necessary. Mine was not a ceremonial aspiration. It was, and remains, a promise about how I will use the authority entrusted to me.I once walked the road of active politics. I know its rhythms, its reflexes, and its temptations. I know how readily criticism can invite counter-criticism, and how natural it can feel to answer every charge, correct every distortion, and return every blow. I also know that a Presidency cannot be conducted as a continuation of party politics by other means.As President, I have therefore had repeatedly to choose not to answer every allegation, caricature, or unkindness that has been directed at me or at my Office. That choice is not made because there is no answer. It is made because a Presidency consumed by replying to every provocation would soon lose sight of the work it was established to do.In an age in which accusation travels faster than verification, silence is easily mistaken for admission; calm, for weakness; and courtesy for a lack of courage. But not every silence is surrender, and not every act of restraint, is fear. There are moments in leadership when one must choose between immediate vindication, and remaining faithful to what one represents.This can be an especially difficult choice for women. Women in authority are too often offered a false alternative: remain agreeable and risk being considered weak; or demonstrate strength by adopting the harshest habits traditionally associated with power. I do not accept that choice. A woman does not have to become coarse in order to be convincing; or hardened in order to be strong. Authority does not acquire weight, merely because it is exercised loudly. Another test comes when others seek to tell a woman how to do her job, or lead her down a path which, after careful consideration, she knows is not hers to take. She must listen, take proper advice, and examine her responsibilities with care. But she must also retain her judgment, and decline – calmly and firmly – any path which the lawful execution of her duty does not permit.Restraint, however, is quite a different animal from indifference. And I do accept that there are occasions when silence would fail the very institution one has a duty to protect. Earlier this year, an online headline alleged that the Office of the President had been ‘prostituted’ in connection with a financial transaction. I will be candid: I found that word exceptionally offensive. It was not merely severe criticism, or an allegation of institutional abuse. Whatever may have been intended, it took a word bound up with the sexual exploitation and degradation of women, and placed that imagery upon an Office headed by a woman. Its effect was to make my womanhood the instrument by which both my authority, and the dignity of the Office, were diminished. On that occasion, the Office responded. The word, however, was not withdrawn. It remained in the headline and was repeated in the body of the article, qualified there only by “possibly”, while an editorial postscript was added, stating that the article made no assertion that I had acted improperly. That response did not meet the objection; it in fact served only to sharpen it. For, if no impropriety was being attributed to the President, then the sexualized label was plainly unnecessary to any legitimate examination of the transaction. Neither a qualification nor a later disclaimer could undo the degradation carried by the language itself.I mention that episode not to reopen it, but because the boundary it revealed matters. Public office must withstand scrutiny; indeed, scrutiny is indispensable to democracy. Sexualized degradation, however, is not scrutiny. It neither tests conduct, nor engages ideas. It reduces a woman to her sex, and makes gender the ground upon which her authority is judged. When such language is normalized, it does not wound only the woman at whom it is directed. Rather, it enlarges the licence to attack other women in the same way. On that occasion, the response was not about shielding a President from criticism. It was about refusing to allow gendered abuse to masquerade as public accountability. Discretion and acquiescence are not the same. True leadership requires us to know the difference.At this moment in our history, Trinidad and Tobago has a woman as President, a woman as Prime Minister and a woman as Leader of the Opposition. That is significant, and it deserves to be celebrated. But, while representation certainly is progress, we must at the same time recognize that it is not yet transformation. Women can occupy the highest offices in the land, while assumptions about women’s authority remain stubbornly embedded in the culture around them.Roberta Clarke once spoke with me about what can confront a woman who goes to a police station to report gender violence. At the very moment when she seeks protection, she may encounter suspicion, judgment or humiliation. Her first trauma can then be compounded by the institution to which she has turned for help. A right to lay a complaint means nothing, if the person seeking to exercise it must first surrender her dignity at the door.That experience reminds us that the power of possibility must reach beyond exceptional women and prominent offices. It must reach the woman without a title or a public platform; the girl still learning what she may aspire to; the employee whose competence is overlooked; and the survivor who needs to be believed, protected and treated with respect. “Possibility” means little if a woman may enter the room, but the room refuses to respect her.Earlier this month, I lost my mother, Barbara Kangaloo, at the age of ninety-eight. In preparing to be with you tonight, I have thought often of her, because she was my first and most enduring teacher in leadership.At her funeral, I recounted that she had said that she had not produced a weakling for a daughter. What she produced, was not a daughter incapable of being hurt; but one who had been taught by her that hurt need not become hatred; that pressure need not become bitterness; and that composure is not the absence of struggle, but mastery of one’s response to it.During the most difficult moments of my Presidency, I have often heard my mother’s example speaking within me: do what has to be done; do it properly; and do not surrender your values to the conduct of others. That inheritance is not mine alone. Across the faiths, cultures and communities that make up Trinidad and Tobago, generations of women have passed on strength in the quiet language of daily duty, sacrifice, conviction and care.In our beloved nation, our wonderful and varied traditions do not all speak with one voice. But they do converge upon enduring and unifying truths: that human dignity is indivisible; that knowledge carries responsibility; that power is a trust; and that what we receive should be handed on - enlarged, and not diminished. Nowhere are these truths any better embodied, than in the three women we honour tonight.Roberta Clarke has spent more than four decades insisting that justice must be lived, not merely written into law. She understands that legislation can open a door, even while a culture quietly tries to close it again. Her work reminds us that progress must be defended and extended, and that the dignity of women and girls cannot depend upon who is listening; where they seek help; or how much power they possess.Roberta’s example teaches, as well, that the work of change must continue even when progress is slow, resistance is strong, and the temptation to retreat is greatest.Professor Christine Carrington has shown us the nation-building power of disciplined knowledge. When she returned home without all the scientific resources available overseas, she did not abandon the questions that compelled her. Instead, she found another route to answering them. She trained students, built capacity and developed expertise that became indispensable when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Work that had been quiet and largely unseen, became part of our national and regional protection. Her life reminds us that preparation is itself an act of leadership, and that the Caribbean must develop the confidence and the capacity to generate its own knowledge – and not merely send its questions elsewhere for answers.Dr. Diva Amon has invited us to look beneath the surface - literally and otherwise. Her exploration of our deep ocean has revealed the extraordinary life within our waters, while her advocacy challenges the practice by which research is conducted in the Caribbean, and its knowledge is carried elsewhere. She asks us not merely to admire what is discovered, but to take responsibility for understanding, protecting and governing it. Her work joins curiosity to stewardship; and national pride to regional cooperation.What unites these three women is not simply that each has succeeded. It is that their achievements have created possibilities for others. Roberta has widened the reach of justice. Christine has built people and scientific capacity. Diva has expanded our knowledge of what belongs within our care. They have not merely risen; they have made the world around them larger.That is also why IWFTT’s work matters. Recognition is not applause alone. It is instruction. It tells the next woman that achievement has a history, that courage can take more than one form, and that she does not have to imitate anyone else’s manner of power in order to exercise her own.None of this places upon women the impossible burden of responding gracefully to every injury, or repairing society by themselves. The transformation we seek requires women and men, institutions and communities. It requires us to make disagreement possible without dehumanization; to make authority compatible with humility; and to make strength recognizable even when it does not shout.A more equal future will not arrive merely because three women currently occupy three of the highest offices in our Republic. It will be built in the police station and the boardroom, in the laboratory and the classroom, in the courtroom and the home. It will be built whenever institutions examine their habits, whenever citizens refuse the easy cruelty of ridicule, and whenever a person with power uses it to protect the dignity and enlarge the choices of another.To Roberta Clarke, Professor Christine Carrington and Dr. Diva Amon: your lives remind us that possibility is not merely the power to enter spaces once closed to women. It is the power to change what happens inside them - to make institutions more just, knowledge more widely shared, and the path less difficult for those who follow.I congratulate you. I thank IWFTT for bringing your achievements into the light. And I hope that every person gathered here leaves with a renewed determination to practice possibility, not as a slogan, but as a responsibility.I believe that the truest measure of “possibility” is not how high one woman rises, but how much the world changes because she did. That is why I return, at the end, to Roberta’s recent interview. She said that “there is no luxury in retreating into pessimism.” I have drawn strength from the conviction behind those words. I believe that her message speaks with equal force to Trinidad and Tobago today. At a time when challenges weigh heavily upon our country, we must not surrender either our hope or our agency to the difficulties of the hour. We must pull ourselves up, remind ourselves what we are about as a people, and return together to the work of building the country we know is possible. We must not give up on one another. And we must never give up on Trinidad and Tobago. Thank you.-END- ...

Photo

View on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

15 hours ago

From the rhythms of steel to the voices and sounds that have shaped generations, Sunday, September 27 brought Trinidad and Tobago together to celebrate Republic Day and 50 years of the Presidency through the music we know, love and remember.Held under the patronage of Their Excellencies Christine Carla Kangaloo, ORTT, President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Kerwyn Garcia, SC, First Gentleman, “Celebrating 50 in Steel – Our Music. Our Nation. Our Moments.” was an evening of music, memories and celebration.A special thank you to Republic Bank Exodus Steel Orchestra, our talented performers — Superblue, Kernel Roberts, KV Charles, Natalie Yorke, Malcolm Boyce, Dr. Pelham Goddard & Friends and Exocubs — and our MC, Ken Simmons, for helping to make the evening so special.And to everyone who came out and celebrated with us, thank you for being part of the celebration. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.📸🎶 Relive the celebration through the full album: flic.kr/s/aHBqjD6hDq ...

Photo

View on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

21 hours ago

Today, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, Her Excellency Christine Carla Kangaloo, ORTT, President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, received a courtesy call from Ms. Ariana Krishinghee, the Trinidad and Tobago Cancer Society’s Chairman, and Mr. Kevin Cox, General Manager.The courtesy call provided an opportunity for Her Excellency, who serves as a Patron of the Trinidad and Tobago Cancer Society, to meet with the Society’s new Chairman and exchange views on the Society’s vision going forward, while exploring opportunities to strengthen the partnership and continued collaboration between the Society and the Office of the President. Trinidad and Tobago Cancer Society ...

Photo

View on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

2 days ago

Calypso King of the World, Slinger “the Mighty Sparrow” Francisco, was one of the most influential figures in the history of calypso and one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from Trinidad and Tobago. Following his passing on Sunday, 27 September, at the age of 91, Her Excellency Christine Carla Kangaloo ORTT, President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, said, “we have lost not merely a great calypsonian, but one of the great interpreters of Caribbean life.” Sparrow was, in Her Excellency’s words, “one of the voices by which we came to know ourselves.”“For more than seven decades, he gave melody and language to our joys, our contradictions, our humour and our conscience. His wit could delight and unsettle; his music could move our feet while stirring our minds. He carried calypso to the world, and carried the character of our people with it,” Her Excellency said.For his inimitable contribution to one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most enduring musical art forms, Sparrow was awarded the Hummingbird Medal Silver in 1969, the Chaconia Medal Gold in 1993 and the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in 2014.Her Excellency extends her deepest condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of the Mighty Sparrow and joins the people of Trinidad and Tobago, the wider Caribbean and the world in mourning his passing and in celebrating the indelible mark he has left on our nation’s culture and identity. ...

Photo

View on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

3 days ago

🇹🇹 GATES ARE OPEN! 🎶There’s still time to head down to The President’s Bandstand for “Celebrating 50 in Steel”, featuring Republic Bank Exodus and special guests as we celebrate 50 years of our Republic through the music that has helped shape our nation.🥁 Concert begins at 6:00 PM🎟️ Admission is FREEBring the entire family and come be part of this special celebration of our nation’s musical heritage.We’re waiting for you! 🇹🇹 ...

Video

View on Facebook (opens in a new tab)

Speech by Her Excellency at “Celebrating 50 in Steel – Our Music. Our Nation. Our Moments” Steelpan Concert

Related Posts

Farewell to Winston “Explainer” Henry

Fatima Boys Discuss Mental Health with President Weekes

President Weekes Hosts Children of Friends of the Country (TOCO)

President Participates in Habitat for Humanity Women Build 2019

Facebook Feed

The Office of the President of the Republic of T&T

Categories