The Plot :

October 2000. An elderly explorer, John Blashford-Snell, ex-army, ex-Royal Engineers officer, with the help of a suitably gung-ho team led by a sergeant of the Royal Engineers, takes a grand piano on an almost impossibly difficult journey deep into the Guyana hinterland. His team's mission is "to fulfil the dreams" of a remote ( but well-researched and photogenic ) community of Guyanese Amerindians who have apparently requested the gift of the piano during the colonel's previous visit. The Wai Wai, we learn, are the legendary 'white Indians' first 'discovered' by European explorers in the South American jungle. ( In fact, the words "Wai Wai" are associated with cassava or manioc, which, grated into a white flour, is widely used in Wai Wai communities for cooking and baking. This, not skin colour, was probably what earned them the misleading nickname.)

Early in the film we see the colonel being fitted-out with bespoke jungle attire at his Saville Row tailor's establishment, checking that the cord of his whistle is exactly the right length for easy access. We next see him at the army-style briefing of his team in the Raleigh suite of a Georgetown heritage hotel where tasks are delegated. The Royal Engineers sergeant in command , Paul Busek, cheerily assures the cameraman that "my work is going to be organising the Waiwai and shouting at them. "

A succession of difficulties follows : problems with air transportation, with the terrain, with the sheer weight of the crated piano and its ingeniously devised, but inappropriate wooden sled , with their lack of intelligence about their Amerindian hosts and their jungle environment. Exhausted, sweat-soaked and blowing like whales, they finally arrive at the village thanks to the good humour and help of the Amerindians who literally have to bear their benefactor's 800 pound gift on their backs for part of the journey.

The crated piano is frog-marched into the benab where it will be housed, and the film ends with the ceremony of uncrating and presenting the instrument to the native hosts by the victorious British team. ( The piano subsequently remained for nearly 2 years deteriorating in splendid isolation on the dusty earthen floor of the Wai Wai's church building ). The film is presented as a tribute to British eccentricity, courage, persistence and benificent cultural influence in the darker and more primitive regions of the globe. The Wai Wai hardly feature at all except as a bemused, hard-working, friendly but rather shy aboriginal community.

This 'grand adventure' was the brainchild of the eccentric Blashford-Snell ( "mad as a fish" is the affectionate description 'Blashers' friends appear to favour ), and the SES has an impressive record as a modern day exploration society "following in the tradition of Raleigh and Drake". But Blashford-Snell is, fortunately, no Fitzcarraldo, and his team did ( as it has done on previous visits ) bring some much-needed medical and hands-on assistance to the grateful Wai Wai who are attempting, against huge odds, to build a tourist centre ( the Macushi in Surama are doing the same, with some success ). It is the aftermath of this story that is somewhat disquieting.

In November 2002, the colonel revisited the scene of his previous filmed expedition of 2000 with a team which included three piano tuners who were determined to meet the challenge of trying to "make the piano playable" again, since they assumed that it would have been lying unused and exposed to the ravages of humidity , dust and insects since the day they'd brought it in two years ago. On 13th December 2002, the Guardian Arts magazine carried a report of that new 2002 Wai Wai expedition, written by one of the three piano tuners, which makes no mention whatever of the servicing, repair and tuning of the piano accomplished quietly and professionally just 7 months before by the Toronto-based Guyanese piano tuner and technician, Remington Ally as a member of a Caribbean film team. The team included Trinidadian Chris Laird ( Banyan television ), Guyanese film-maker Michael Gilkes as director/producer and professor of music Ray Luck, Guyanese concert pianist. They went in to the village of Masakinyari, with the agreement of the Wai Wai and with guidance and a preliminary briefing by Stephanie Huelster, an American anthropologist living within the Wai Wai community, to organise and film a joint "concert in the rainforest" with them. It was as if that visit by the 'locals' had never happened. This in spite of the fact that 'Blashers' had been made aware of that prior visit before his team went in and knew of the reconditioning of the piano and the filming of the event. But then, why undercut a thrilling and exotic British-made adventure story ? The writer may well have 'milked' the story from the expedition and sent it to the Guardian's Arts editor without the colonel's approval; for what was really unfortunate about this often fanciful, exaggerated and self-aggrandising report was its thinly-veiled condescension to the SES's gentle hosts, our fellow Guyanese, the Wai Wai. Here are some of the writer's jejune, "boys' annual" reflections as he looks back on the SES's 'civilising mission' in the jungle and his own excited part in it:

On their accommodation :

"The visitor's huts, called by us Roach Hall' and `Tarantula Terrace', housed a host of multicoloured cockroaches, and hairy spiders squatted (sic ) in their roofs of woven palm leaves. The pink-toed tarantulas were as big as a man's hand and you could hear them when they ran along the ceiling. "

On the Wai Wais' relationship with their piano :

" [It is ] their most cherished possession [but]why is it so important to the Waiwai ? ... Tania [ one of the three tuners ] said that the piano was cheap and nasty when it was made, and wondered sometimes why the donor had presented the Waiwai with something quite so clapped-out " [ The report goes on to say that the piano was in an advanced state of decay, filthy and infested with roaches and most of the felt gone from the hammers. Seven months previously it was in excellent condition, tuned to concert pitch, the felts so thick ( after nearly two years, remember ) they had to be filed down to brighten the instrument's tone. The Guyanese/Trinidadian made film shows this in some detail ]. "No one", the report complains with some irritation, "could tell us how often the piano had been used in its two years among the Waiwai." [ The Wai Wai may have been mystified by the question, since they must have assumed (quite correctly) that 'Blashers' and the SES knew that they had recently participated in a concert with an international recitalist, Guyanese professor Ray Luck, performing on their piano and teaching the young men of the village how to play it. They had also been practising regularly during that week and probably went on doing so for some time afterwards.

On the intelligence of their hosts :

"The Waiwai had been given ( on a previous visit by the SES ) some laminated sheets showing simple exercises, but we got the feeling that they had never quite got their heads round them " As for the children, in spite of the "simple, rhythmic music-making skills " they were shown, "I was amazed that we could teach something so fundamental, yet our lessons had the children wrinkle-browed in concentration". All was well in the end, however.

The team had discerned from the Wai Wais ' "happy-clappy Sunday services " that they possessed at least a rudimentary form of musical talent, so the SES 's cultural and musical efforts were a complete success. The report triumphantly affirms this in its final sentence :