As yet another Carnival is consigned to the ashes of history amid the usual wailing about the state of the art and judgmental griping over the popular culture, we might pause to ponder two moments in calypso history.

One of them is especially notable this year in recording its 100th anniversary; the other is forever notable.

In June 1912, a Trinidadian group called Lovey's String Band made the first known recording of calypso. "Mango Vert", the instrumental, quite probably made its stamp on history on the phonograph cylinder before the era of the disc. Reports say it was recorded in a session at Columbia Records during Lovey's New York City tour, which, it is worth adding, was a full five years before the first recording of jazz music.

When it comes to technological firsts, history is always a bit of a blur because you never know who's been doing what, and in which backyard. But ten years ago, the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in the United States selected Lovey's recording for preservation as first in the calypso category. Lovey's didn't last with Columbia Records. Wikipedia claims that one week after recording "Mango Vert", the band moved to Victor Records where we might safely assume it went on to record such pieces as "Trinidad Paseo", "Petrol and Sara", "Mari-Juana", and "Manuelito".

The other notable moment also occurred in the United States and involves Harry Belafonte's LP album titled Calypso. Released in 1956—a dramatic year in the political life of T&T—Calypso blazed its way up the charts for 99 weeks straight, to become the first album ever to sell a million copies.

Despite its title, Calypso was really what the Americans called "island music", with the mento music of Belafonte's Jamaican childhood and the Trinidad calypso of Brown Skin Girl and Man Smart (Woman Smarter) by King Radio whose 1939 road march hit "Matilda" had given Belafonte his first big winner in 1953. The album itself was assembled with several songs by Irving Burgie (Lord Burgess), an American with a Barbadian mother who would later write the words to the Barbados national anthem.

There's much to explore in these bald footnotes of history: the role played by West Indians in America in empowering African-Americans; the value of America as a common space for a geographically fragmented Caribbean; the role of the diaspora in forging Caribbean identity; the adventurous, innovating spirit of the post-emancipation generation—so willing to embrace technology and opportunity; and the impact of World War II and the American military presence on the culture of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean.

And what about the impact on white America of the experience of living in a Caribbean of free people of all colours but mainly black, in one of the most creative and conscious periods of our history?

The role of American soldiers and sailors as fascinated vectors in transporting calypso and the pan to the US market is well-recorded. What is less studied is the role of our music and dance and art in building American fortunes and its music industry. "American Capitalism and Caribbean Culture" is work waiting for the kind of attention that Eric Williams gave to the role of West Indian sugar in fuelling the development of the Industrial Revolution in Capitalism and Slavery.

Even without the benefit of deep research, however, a relevant point to grasp is the American's quick recognition of the marketability to be exploited in the Caribbean cultural product. It is a fascination that has never stopped. Every year, a new set of tourists arrive in Trinidad to be bowled over by what they see, feel, taste, hear and touch in this place. And yet, even as our leaders, policymakers and captains of industry entertain their guests royally with pan and paratha, soca and choka, Kaiso and costume, rum and drum and wine and jam, they somehow fail to make the market connection or—as they say in marketspeak—recognise the value proposition in the culture.

Half a century later, as we curse and condemn our artistes for selling out, peddling victimhood and living for today without reference to tomorrow, it would help to explore how the lack of institutional confidence has managed to box the popular culture into a corner where it has been left with nowhere to go but to turn on itself.

Over the years, it has become ritual for the University of the West Indies to recognise our artistes with honorary degrees for outstanding and path-breaking work. However, in the absence of a core agenda for research into the substance of the depth and breadth of Caribbean culture, such recognition is nothing more than mamaguy.

The news coming out of Georgetown this week about Caricom's state of collapse and imminent extinction merely underscores the futility of the path adopted by the region in the post-Independence period. As one of Caricom's defining architects and key partners, the failure of this project should humble the UWI and send it into urgent retreat and introspection. As the region's key institutions for research, learning and training, UWI needs to stand on its own platform of self-knowledge and clarity of purpose. Who is it? And what should it be about?

Like every other institution, UWI lost its way somewhere along the road when it missed the turn off the avenue of colonial excellence in trying to get onto the highway to independent excellence. With no GPS for establishing identity and purpose, it has kept going around in circles, making "as if", living on the borrowed validation of external brand names of excellence, and covering up its doubt and fear with monuments of concrete as signifiers of significance.

The self-contempt bred by our historical circumstances has not merely reached the UWI; it is being entrenched by the UWI through a programme obsessed with proving itself to the world when what we need is one that is fascinated with us: Fascinated with knowing us and understanding us. Fascinated with the wealth of what we bring and what we promise. Fascinated with the development of appropriate technique and technology for mastering our world with the best use of everything we have. Fascinated with helping to map our conquest of the world in order to provision the future.

If we could make mas like this today, there'll be no need for repentance tomorrow.

Sunity Maharaj is the editor of the T&T Review and Director of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies

sunity.maharaj@gmail.com