Steelpan History
The Illustrated Story of Pan
Review by Ronald H. Lammy
“It began with a single photograph” Kim Johnson states in published remarks about his book. Then he explains how the picture of an ancestor took him on a sojourn relating to identity and creativity. The image connected him to a distant land, and it propelled him to learning more of the history of his Trinidad birth place.
Popular commentary has it that The Illustrated Story of Pan was a four-year project that used contemporary computer technology and ended in 2011. But that story, like the scores of others in the book, has more details behind it. All of them were gathered for two decades during the author’s journalist career; this time he wanted to add pictorial facts.
“I’d spent years interviewing pan pioneers without ever considering that there must have been photographs, but now [2007] I returned to them, this time with a portable scanner and my laptop.
I also asked everyone I knew if they had photographs. I asked the same of strangers. I sent out thousands of e-mails, wrote articles in the press, spoke on television and radio. Through an association of retired US soldiers, I wrote to servicemen stationed in Trinidad during and after World War II. And I asked everyone to ask people they knew.”
Authenticity is what those pictures and responses convey in this profoundly revelatory book. LenBoogsie Sharpe’s spoken word, for example, reinforces the character of genuineness. His description of boyhood days in the Starlift panyard is a case in point. It rings true on the printed page because it is Boogsie’s speaking voice – verbatim.
The book production is itself a work of art. Casually scanning through it can evoke fascination in the reader. It is large – 10 inches square and over 1 inch thick with 288 pages – and heavy. It is full: ten chapters; hundreds of pictures with at least one on every page; images as varied as the earliest ping pongs to Anthony Williams’ pan notes diagrams that have the aura of science to a calypso tent group picture of the Mighty Sparrow, King Fighter, Lord Coffee, King Cobra and Young Killer. In 2005 Kim Johnson was given a family portrait of ten individuals.
“I’d known nothing about the ancestor who’d made the trip from China.” The new knowledge gave him a sense of “roots” to learn about his great-grandmother. The revelation motivated him and thus, The Illustrated Story of Pan is “the result of 20 years working as a writer and trying to understand our history”. Pan in words and pictures.
Order your copy – $58.80
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