DAL­TON NAR­INE

Pan is like a man who pass­es much of his time look­ing back at him­self in the mir­ror. And Kim John­son has mined just about every ref­er­ence of such nar­cis­sism dur­ing ten years of re­search for his ar­rest­ing book about the steel band. The Il­lus­trat­ed Sto­ry of Pan (288 pages) is a lav­ish­ly de­pict­ed ren­der­ing of the move­ment, so pay at­ten­tion, you'll cer­tain­ly learn a lot. John­son brings a col­lec­tive mem­o­ry and con­struc­tive me­men­to of pan's na­tiv­i­ty, near death, re­sus­ci­ta­tion, and emo­tion­al and ma­te­r­i­al sus­te­nance that have in­formed the in­stru­ment's rich cul­ture of 70 years. Though the sto­ry of pan has long un­cov­ered a trove of fas­ci­nat­ing stuff about a rare mu­sic as well as its vi­o­lent up­bring­ing in so­ci­ety's un­der­bel­ly, much of it has been con­tra­dic­to­ry and un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed by the very na­ture of the steel band's tough, coarse his­to­ry.

Like the Bible, sev­er­al pub­lished ac­counts over the years have been left to in­ter­pre­ta­tion, even in­dif­fer­ence. As long as there re­main those who think life is about pan, or who con­tin­ue to cop an at­ti­tude of "it's we ting" so they could be­labour ar­gu­ments about facts or fac­tion, such par­ti­san war­fare on­ly clouds the de­bate, not clear the air. John­son's com­pre­hen­sive work aims to tell it like it re­al­ly was ever since the colo­nial­ist ban on African drums led to the most ex­ot­ic and in­tox­i­cat­ing in­stru­ment of mod­ern time. John­son boils the pe­ri­od down to its essence: Who's talk­ing, who's the au­thor­i­ty of the nar­ra­tive, where does it come from and why. And John­son em­bell­ish­es the hard­cov­er with pho­tographs, sketch­es and draw­ings. True to its sub­ject mat­ter, the book pro­vokes mag­ic re­al­ism-a kind of trib­al sur­re­al­ism in which the mys­tery of pan comes alive through the jux­ta­po­si­tion of im­ages and words.

John­son paints the birth of a rev­o­lu­tion like a free-form artist, drift­ing in­ward and in­vent­ing here and there; in a sense shad­ow­ing pan's ear­li­est ex­pres­sions and ded­i­cat­ing the work to giv­ing the big pic­ture. That is the art. To knock you in­to the un­con­scious, where art and think­ing are deep-sunk. It comes to you raw and hon­est and un­cen­sored. In a way, just like pan-though John­son's art doesn't trace the arc of pan's be­hav­iour in con­text as much as he lays it out so it could in­dex it­self. It's up to the read­er, then, to cher­ry pick the won­der­ful bal­ance of im­ages and sto­ries that ac­com­pa­ny John­son's own nar­ra­tive. And that is the sin­gu­lar beau­ty of his book. This land­mark ad­ven­ture of pan and its mir­ror ef­fect on the in­stru­ment's sub­con­scious.

To wit, con­sid­er these im­ages: the edgy sur­re­al­ism of boys load­ing drums on a lor­ry with a bald tire while young men stand around in­ex­plic­a­bly, as though wait­ing on in­struc­tions, or for the next load; "in­fantry­men" at ease in front of a par­lour un­til their band gets the or­der to move out in­to the mas; fas­tid­i­ous on­look­ers in fash­ion­able hats scop­ing out Des­per­a­does play­ing crabs in fan­cy sailor; strip­per May­field Camps, a Trinidad All Stars hang­er-on, shar­ing com­pa­ny with Tripoli's trend-set­ter Hugh Bor­de, Sil­ver Stars' mild-man­nered Ju­nior Pouchet and Casablan­ca tough guy Carl­ton "Zig­ilee" Con­stan­tine in a group shot of pan pi­o­neers; the bride of a Trinidad Mae­stros mem­ber beam­ing amidst play­ers ser­e­nad­ing the cou­ple on their pans; a two-page spread of Sil­ver Stars'1963 Band of the Year win­ner, Gul­liv­er's Trav­els, de­sign­er Rus­sell Char­ter ex­pa­ti­at­ing about the his­toric pre­sen­ta­tion.

The pa­rade al­so takes in fan­ci­ful clocks and watch­es worn on the heads of sailors dis­play­ing the good times in Jo­han­nes­burg Fas­ci­na­tors, Gon­za­les Rhythm Mak­ers boop boop boop­ing out pan's ear­li­est sounds on bis­cuit drums, Ari­ma An­gel Harps at Panora­ma in a strik­ing pho­to­graph by Jef­frey Chock, who em­ploys a bank of stage lights, the San Fer­nan­do hills and a set­ting sun as out­lines for fram­ing a side view of the band, five racks of bass­es ful­ly ex­posed, Amer­i­can sailors club­bing on Park Street with a pret­ty woman, a bu­gler ush­er­ing in Tripoli's boom bass­es at the Sa­van­nah, a British flag com­mem­o­rat­ing VE-Day as Big Head Hamil of Hell Yard leads his band of paint pan­ners and bis­cuit drum­mers.

The pas­tiche of im­ages puts you wher­ev­er the sound of pan trav­els: the si­lence of the pans-ser­ried rows of met­al chairs in North Stand evok­ing a hushed yet joy­less pres­ence on a Panora­ma fi­nals night in 1979 when steel bands stage a qui­et re­bel­lion in the pan yard, Red Army, decked out in red, dis­play­ing Russ­ian dic­ta­tor Josef Stal­in's pic­ture on its ban­ner five years af­ter his troops beat back in­vad­ing Ger­man forces in 1943, Star­dust of Point Cumana, re­sent­ful of the Amer­i­can pres­ence at near­by Ch­aguara­mas, flies the Nazi flag to ac­cen­tu­ate its por­tray­al of Gestapo Mas, a tram­car, a sailor band, four mount­ed po­lice­men and five au­to­mo­biles hold­ing strain-down­town mas on Ma­rine Square frozen in time, cir­ca 1939, and a Shango band bring­ing to the stage on Car­ni­val Tues­day a shekere gourd as per­cus­sion.

Hear John­son on the African el­e­ment in pan: "The im­pulse to cre­ate rhythms was found most im­por­tant­ly in the au­r­al es­thet­ic of Africans. The African taste in sound de­ter­mined what mu­sic should sound like, de­ter­mined how they would make it. Mu­sic with­out a steady pulse was, to the Africans in the New World, like food with­out sea­son­ing, be­cause the drums were in­dis­pens­able." Yet, Roy Harp­er of Sun Val­ley notes that the im­pulse to mass with crude­ly tuned uten­sils on the road would al­ways arouse the beast in the po­lice (not un­like the beast in the soul of the fledg­ling move­ment): "They didn't car­ry you in court, but lock you up in the sta­tion. They give you a cut-tail and send you home. Or you get a wood across your back, or a bull pis­tle. It come more like a joke to run from the po­lice."

When Harp­er speaks, you hear the lash­ing of the rain of licks, feel the tamarind whip cut deep in­to the waist and smell the bad blood on the stro­ker's hands. For that mat­ter, watch­ing-as though through a jew­el­er's mag­ni­fy­ing loupe-a 1946 pho­to­graph of San Fer­nan­do's Broad­way Syn­co­pa­tors parad­ing on J'Ou­vert, you're drawn to the men beat­ing out ec­cen­tric rhythms on the one-hand ping pong, du-dup, bis­cuit drum and iron or brake drum (prob­a­bly the most in­no­v­a­tive idea of all the in­stru­ments in a steel band), yet you can't help but catch the chip, chip, chip of two women dressed in Sun­day best as if com­ing from Mass and find­ing a band to take them home. In his re­lent­less pur­suit of the truth, John­son tracks down an ar­ray of pan­nists. Ray Hol­man lets on that Spar­row and oth­er ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were miffed over his com­po­si­tions for pan, which be­gan in 1961 with "Ray's Saga" when he was 16 as a play­er in In­vaders.

Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, who arranged songs on the sly in Hol­man's Star­lift, opt­ed out of that band to help form Phase II Rhythm Band, a jazzy pre­cur­sor to Phase II Pan Groove. Prince Bat­son: "I was the first spon­sor of Trinidad All Stars. My mon­ey use to run the band since about 1947. The fel­lows on the port used to call me All Stars. Many nights I work­ing in the shed, do­ing what­ev­er it calls for to get our pans to go out. I have noth­ing to buy with. I steal. You know how much of the wharf ma­te­r­i­al I steal? We need racks, all kin­da thing: length of pipe-I cut it up, thread it." A tiff be­tween Trinidad All Stars' cap­tain and arranger Neville Jules and Vic­tor "Suf­fer­er" Her­cules of Cross­fire over a per­ceived mu­si­cal clash J'Ou­vert 1957 on Prince Street. "When we hit them with An­oth­er Night Like This, they clap when we done," Her­cules re­calls. "That was our glo­ry, the first time we ever get that kind of recog­ni­tion."

Jules: "Cross­fire pass us play­ing An­oth­er Night Like This. No­body wasn't tak­ing them on at all. They play­ing their best tune, we were play­ing our sec­ond or third best tune. So every­body start to jump: 'Oh Gawd, Cross­fire blah blah blah! Cross­fire!' (The fol­low­ing year) we wait for them on Duke Street. We hit them Min­uet in G. That was the end of them." And the first sal­vo of the Bomb, clas­si­cal mu­sic played up-tem­po. Bertie Mar­shall, High­landers cap­tain, tuner and arranger, and self-pro­claimed in­ven­tor of the mod­ern-day steel band: "When I hear In­vaders and All Stars have the sweet­est pan, I used to say 'Them pan ou­ta tune.' They say: 'Don't talk too loud-they go buss your face.' I used to play har­mon­i­ca and I hear the har­mon­ics. I couldn't take pan in them days, it was a noisy in­stru­ment. So I de­cide to ex­per­i­ment on pan with har­mon­ics."

Edgar "Ju­nior" Pouchet, orig­i­nal leader of Sil­ver Stars, renowned for ar­rang­ing and record­ing Bombs (In 1986, younger broth­er, Ed­win, re­vived the band, de­funct for ten years, and won large-band Panora­ma ti­tles in 2009 and 2010): "South­ern Sym­pho­ny read from mu­si­cal arrange­ments in the 1950s. No­body else was play­ing sheet mu­sic." Pouchet's ob­ser­va­tion clear­ly serves as metaphor for The Il­lus­trat­ed Sto­ry of Pan. Notwith­stand­ing an er­ror or two, this is a com­pelling en­cy­clo­pe­dia that could bring one to the last page wish­ing for an­oth­er se­cret cache of sto­ries. Pic­ture that!