This TED Talk features social and criminal justice advocate Marlon Peterson,

recorded live at TED Residency 2016.

She wrote, when I become famous, I will tell everyone that I knew a hero named Marlon Peterson.

Heroes rarely look like me.

In fact, I'm what garbage looks like.

Nope, not the most appealing way to open a talk or start a conversation,

and perhaps we have some questions going through

in your head about that. Why does this man say such a thing about himself? What does he mean?

How can someone view him as a hero when he sees himself as garbage? I believe we learn more

from questions than we do from answers, because when we're questioning something, we're

invested in taking

in some sort of new information or grappling with some sort of ignorance that makes us feel

uncomfortable. And that's why I'm here. To push us to question, even when it makes us uncomfortable.

So my parents are from Trinidad and Tobago, the southernmost island in the Caribbean.

Trinidad is also home to the only acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century, the steel pan.

Deriving from the African drums and evolving from the genius of one of the ghettos in Trinidad,

a city called Lavanty, and the disregard of the American military.

Well, I should tell you, America during World War II had military bases set up in Trinidad,

and when the war ended, they left the island littered with empty oil drums.

They're trash.

So people from Lavanty repurposed the all jumps left behind into the full chromatic scale,

the steel pan.

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