Cari-folk Singers concert colourful and creative

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

Colourful and creative. Energetic and euphonious. Those are some of the adjectives that could aptly describe the 38-year-old Cari-folk Singers' 2011 concert season held at The Little Theatre over the weekend.

And the audience at the matinee performance on Sunday could be described as large and enthusiastic. That latter characteristic was indicated by the frequent, often prolonged applause, and cheering.

The two hour-long show (intermission not included) was divided into seven sections. In order of presentation, they were Negro Spirituals, African Village, Plantation Life, Emancipation, Mento, Bob Marley and Kumina. The intermission came after Emancipation.

Explaining the concept behind the production, ensemble leader Daliah Reid-Thomas wrote in the printed programme's message: "In recognition of the International Year for People of African Descent, we present to you 'Ascending.' This theme embodies the journey from Africa and the evolution to our current state of 'Jamaicaness.' Although forcibly taken from our Motherland, and despite the odds, we have been able to form a new identity which merges our past with the present."

The merging of the past and present and the linking of Africa and Jamaica came by way of the United States, in whose southern region the Negro Spirituals originated. Eight were sung, one of them (Motherless Child) to an arrangement by a Jamaican musician and music teacher, Angela Elliott.

Two others were Wade in the Water, which was performed in a dramatic gospel style, and Ain't That Good News, which closed the segment with particularly lively dancing. Choreographer of the show's dynamic, sometimes intricate, movement was Carol Miller, who also provided artistic direction.

An exciting interlude

In this first segment, the Singers were on the whole, dressed in solid colours - the women in purple, orange, green, yellow, pink and maroon skirts and head ties, the men in black pants and shirts of the aforementioned colours. When they returned, after an exciting interlude of African drumming, they were in African prints which were even more colourful.

During the seven African songs sung, the characters portrayed were shown, as the programme describes it, minding their own business in their villages and "living, loving, fighting, pouring libation to God, and governing themselves and honouring the ancestors. The songs included Akwaaba (Welcome), Nyame Boame (God Help Me) and the beautiful Ishe Oluwa (God's Work is Never Done).

Ending the suite was a Jamaican folk song, A So Wi Come Ova, which customarily refers to the crossing of a river. Interestingly, however, the group interpreted it as showing the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, the infamous "Middle Passage" of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas.

The Plantation Life segment began with the Singers acting out the anguish of the captured and mistreated Africans as they recited The Slave Auction, a poem by Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. Later, violence on the plantation was portrayed with the songs Ping Wing a Jook Mi, Yu Tell a Lie and War, War, War.

A slave driver who delighted in whipping people had to flee during the rebellion referred to in the last named song.

Not surprisingly, the songs in the Emancipation section were all celebratory.They included When Augus' Mawnin Come, King Powah and Bury Mi Foot Chain.

After the intermission and another change of clothing, into bandana outfits, the Singers returned to deliver the sparkling, frequently humorous, Mento suite. It included One Soja Man, Aizuzuwa, Dip an' Fall Back, Lignum Vitae and Healing in the Balm Yard.

From the first major indigenous Jamaican music - mento, the Singers, now sporting Rastafarian colours, took the audience into the world of Bob Marley. His Buffalo Soldier was sung with the men within a "boxing ring" delineated by a length of orange cloth.

All celebratory

Thrown to the ground, that cloth came to represent a person held by a sorrowing woman who was being comforted by the singing of No Woman Nuh Cry. The final three tunes in the segment - the last named the 'Song of the year' some years ago, One Love - were all celebratory.

The equally lively Kumina segment began with several minutes of drumming by three musicians in the centre of the stage, and featured five songs. Kwale Kwale was the first.

Causing much laughter during the final one, Carry Mi Home a Mi Madda Lan, was the "wining" of one of the Singers who had apparently padded her already generous hips.

Sensitive, entertaining instrumental accompaniment to the singing - and some solo music - was provided by the musicians Jermaine Gordon, Raynor Lazarus, Phillip Cross, Angela Elliott, Stanislaus Logan, Phillip Supersad, Calvin Mitchell and the Energy Plus Mento trio.

The one complaint about the season that audiences might have is that it ran over only three days.