Women and the Future of Pan

Among the numerous unspoken lessons of the Mark Loquan/Maria Nunes collaboration on the video series ‘Women in Pan’ – the first episode of which was premiered online on September 9 – is that the world of the steelpan is immeasurably linked to economic, social, and cultural development.

Note that pan aficionado/historian, Dr Kim Johnson, makes a distinction between the ‘steelpan’ as instrument and ‘pan’ as essentially a facet of human behaviour embracing love, resilience and survival.

There is a lot more to what the author of ‘The Illustrated Story of Pan’ has offered in support of the wider meaning of pan, within the context of our developmental deficits. Get the book.

But they largely coincide with my decades’ old argument that it could have been conceivable at one stage to have elevated the pan phenomenon to the centre of social, cultural and economic development. Not through jealously jingoistic possession (that window has long opened), but through extraction of unique assets.

You would have seen me mention numerous times a 1987/88 Independence Square discussion with the late (great) Keith Smith during which I wildly asserted that, over time, oil and gas will diminish in importance and value and that pan would have to come to the rescue as an additional wing of flight.

Even back then I knew I was not alone in believing that pan was the single greatest thing we did … and still do. And that we had a key before us to unlock a different kind of future.

Now, if you are inclined to believe that this only has to do with an exotic taste in music you don’t necessarily like, or represents some kind of modulated ethnic preference, read no more. This is not for you. This will infuriate you.

If you do not detect vast economic benefits by way of the availability of specialised skills, creative and intellectual property value, and the prospects for social peace, then this is not the space for you to envisage a future that’s any different from the current futile environment.

The pan aficionados may also not all agree that the story of pan, and all it represents - as expressed by Kim and others - also presents a narrative of missed economic opportunity.

And I am not speaking about the largely ornamental declaration of ‘national instrument’ status. The only time this has any value, beyond first place in line for gratuitous state financial largesse, is when ‘pan’ begins to define the essence of the development process.

Sounds fancy. But what does it mean? I would suggest that ‘pan’ in all its facets - as a model of social organisation, as a source of IP wealth, as the fountain from which unique musical capabilities (innovation, manufacturing, tuning/blending, playing, arranging, managing) flow – has all the elements of an alternative developmental path.

Somewhere in there is where ‘Women in Pan’ enters the picture. Yuko Asada, Dr Mia Gormandy-Benjamin, Vanessa Headley, Michelle Huggins-Watts, and Natasha Joseph speak frankly about the challenges of girls and women in navigating the steelband space and, in the process, narrate prospective solutions with broader application for all of society.

I took careful note of two particularly poignant moments – though there are several others. The first was Headley’s exploration of the implicit suggestion by some that as a woman arranger, “my music has a gender.”

She is insightful enough to consider the profundity of the observation, and the notion that among the obstacles to our wider development is the marginalisation of the leadership role of women in key productive sectors.

Then Gormandy-Benjamin pinpoints panyard challenges with implications for the manner in which the poor treatment of girls and women has been normalised in wider society and considered to be simply the way we conduct our business.

Yet, the transformation of the panyard over time has provided clues into how the problem can be managed at the wider level.

I remember interviewing Texan, Emily Lemmerman, seven years ago. By then, she had found relatively comfortable space even as a young, white, non-national, woman pan tuner making an annual pilgrimage to the steelpan heartland.

It all started not at Katzenjammers, or Skiffle, or at Phase II (among others), but at an orchestral percussion class in the US where, under the late (great) Ellie Mannette, her gaze shifted from the timpani to the pan.

All of this and more converged as memory and as emotion when I viewed ‘Women in Pan’ last week. There is not enough space or time to say everything that came to mind.

All I know is that this Loquan/Nunes collaboration helps us understand so much more about what should truly be important to all of us.