Mark Lyn­der­say

There's a mo­ment right in the mid­dle of Pan, the new film about the na­tion­al in­stru­ment writ­ten by Kim John­son and di­rect­ed by Jerome Guiot that sum­maris­es all the hopes that the cre­ative team have for their sub­ject.

The film's lead, Re­nal­do Fred­er­ick, play­ing Gold­teeth, is walk­ing across an im­pos­si­bly beau­ti­ful for­est clear­ing, lush green as far as the eye can see, his raw, un­fin­ished in­stru­ment in a burlap sack slung over his back.

Fred­er­ick's back is to us. He is walk­ing away from a trou­bled past to a ver­dant fu­ture rich with po­ten­tial. His in­stru­ment, the source of all his hopes, just a weighty promise in its rough con­tain­er, a bur­den, by every pos­si­ble de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word.

But the ac­tor's walk is con­fi­dent and sure as he puts one foot in front of the oth­er head­ing in­to an un­known fu­ture.

It would be won­der­ful if we could con­sid­er this an at­trac­tive ar­ti­fact out of the past of the steel­band, but it's al­so a star­tling re­minder that more than a cen­tu­ry af­ter the in­stru­ment's in­ven­tion, it is still to find it­self on the oth­er side of that field, prop­er­ly po­si­tioned against and among all the mu­si­cal in­stru­ments of the world.

At least part of the rea­son for that is abun­dant­ly on show in the film, which chron­i­cles both a fic­tion­al con­den­sa­tion of the many tri­als and chal­lenges that the steel­pan had on its path to be­com­ing a main­stream mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in this coun­try and a doc­u­men­tary up­date on where the steel­band move­ment finds it­self to­day.

The weav­ing of two such wild­ly di­ver­gent sto­ries dove­tails more neat­ly that any sto­ry treat­ment might have sug­gest­ed. The chal­lenges and is­sues that served to ad­vance the ac­cep­tance and im­prove­ment of the in­stru­ment have al­so worked to cre­ate a bu­reau­cra­cy that keeps it from soar­ing even fur­ther.

John­son pays close at­ten­tion to what his doc­u­men­tary is record­ing, and deft­ly tai­lors the nar­ra­tive of his fic­tion­al his­to­ry to more smooth­ly fit in­to the flow of the re­al world footage, which fol­lows the par­al­lel sto­ries of Phase II Pan Groove, Neal and Massy All Stars and Bird­song as they pre­pare for the 2013 Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

The film­mak­ers and I crossed paths cor­dial­ly in Phase II's pa­n­yard in Jan­u­ary of that year as the band be­gan pulling its pans to­geth­er to re­hearse the com­po­si­tion by arranger Len "Boogsie" Sharpe that would even­tu­al­ly win the com­pe­ti­tion.

We both had to run the gaunt­let of the band's man­age­ment in se­cur­ing per­mis­sion to pro­ceed with our projects, my own pre­sen­ta­tion be­ing in sup­port of a pho­to es­say on the Phase II jour­ney to the big yard.

Such ex­ec­u­tive im­pri­matur did not guar­an­tee ac­cep­tance for me, how­ev­er. Pan men tend to be deeply sus­pis­cious of peo­ple with cam­eras. They are smart enough to know our lit­tle mag­ic box­es don't steal souls, but savvy enough to re­alise that they are per­fect­ly ca­pa­ble of cap­tur­ing and trans­port­ing the soul of what they do in­to medi­ums far from their con­trol.

Even­tu­al­ly, af­ter pub­li­ca­tion of my piece (http://ow.ly/Eg­N­rl), I earned some kind words from some of the band's pan­nists who had ear­li­er giv­en me the stinky eye.

I can on­ly imag­ine the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion in scale of their ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the ef­forts of Kim John­son, whose great love for the steel­band per­me­ates the film.

Faced with the chal­lenge of con­dens­ing a mono­lith­ic his­to­ry for an in­stru­ment that is so deeply root­ed in the cul­ture of T&T that it would be im­pen­e­tra­ble to all save the most com­mit­ted non-lo­cals, John­son has sim­pli­fied.

His char­ac­ters are stand-ins for mul­ti­ple per­sons, some­times dozens of them, who were all work­ing in dif­fer­ent ways to im­prove both the in­stru­ment and the lot of its mu­si­cians.

The many sto­ries of the move­ment's slow but steady drift from the fringes of so­ci­ety to its heart are im­plied quick­ly and briskly through the ex­pe­ri­ences of Gold­teeth and his broth­er, the many clash­es con­densed in­to two fights, the trou­bled re­la­tion­ship be­tween the colo­nial elite and the cit­i­zen­ry be­come a lawyer's in­ter­ven­tion with a mag­is­trate to save a young boy from jail.

The re­sult is a film that hums along briskly, skip­ping like a stone across a vast pond of his­to­ry to weave the two skeins of sto­ry­telling to­geth­er.

As John­son ar­gued at a pri­vate view­ing of the film a week ago, it is a pan film, not the pan film, just one in what he hopes will be many more that tell the re­mark­able sto­ry of the in­stru­ment and the peo­ple who shaped it.

What Pan! Our Mu­si­cal Odyssey emerges as most suc­cess­ful­ly is a first ef­fort by lo­cal tal­ents to tell one of our most re­mark­able sto­ries. The film is a heart­felt ef­fort to of­fer the sto­ry of the steel­band from our point of view, freed of the ro­mance and pa­tron­age of first world per­spec­tives.

And it is here that the film res­onates most ef­fec­tive­ly. By draw­ing in and plac­ing on cen­tre stage peo­ple who would have been treat­ed as ex­tras in a film des­tined for the tra­di­tion­al cin­e­ma cir­cuit, John­son, Guiot and pro­duc­er Jean Michel Gib­ert have of­fered up a film that rings true for even the most cyn­i­cal lo­cal mind.

You don't have to love pan to love Pan. At its best, it salutes the spir­it of in­ven­tion, the grit of qui­et de­ter­mi­na­tion and the fire of undimmed hope that has sparked the best in every sphere of prac­tice that finds T&T na­tion­als ris­ing to the top.

Pan may be the sto­ry of Gold­teeth and three steel­bands, but it is al­so the sto­ry of Chang and Vau­crosson, of Min­shall and Berke­ley, of Hase­ly Craw­ford and Ato Boldon, of Pen­ny Com­mis­siong and Wendy Fitzwilliam.

It is a sto­ry of courage in the face of stag­ger­ing odds, keep­ing faith in the face of cyn­i­cism and be­liev­ing, al­ways be­liev­ing.

�2 Pan! Our Mu­sic Odyssey is be­ing screened na­tion­wide at Movi­eTowne, Cin­e­mas 8 and Em­pire Cin­e­mas, San Fer­nan­do.