Mhat possible connection could there be between a theatrical work "to be read, played, and danced" based on the Faust legend, written by Russian modernist composer Igor Stravinsky at the end of the First World War, and the hills of our much maligned ghetto-for-all-seasons, Laventille?
Maybe it takes an outsider, like Caitlyn Kamminga, assistant professor of double bass at UTT, to transpose Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale to our capital of poverty, in the script she wrote for Jab Molassie, "a staged music theatre piece" commissioned by Calabash Foundation for the Arts, which makes its world premiere at the Little Carib Theatre on November 6.
If you talk to the Trinidadian composer of the piece, Dominique Le Gendre, who after meeting Kamminga was thrilled at the prospect of collaborating on Jab, she's adamant that the adaptation is "a wonderful device, a moral tale at a time when the country seems to have made a pact with the devil, is in danger of losing its soul."
If all art is theft and nothing is original, then adaptation and innovation from tradition in a contemporary context, defines truly new art and Jab meets these criteria and fulfils the major objective of Calabash, to enable "the creation of new outstanding works of T&T origin which will be performed on local and international stages."
In several senses, Jab continues the dynamic creolisation tradition, which has characterised post-Columbian Caribbean culture. At its best, Creole culture is adept at transculturation–taking Amerindian, European, African and Asian forms and reworking them into the fluid rhythms of lived Caribbean experience.
"This piece is not about entertainment, it's not a concert piece," Le Gendre continues passionately. "What's important for me is to tell stories reflecting the times in which we live; to open people's eyes (and ears) to things beyond themselves; to the traditions they've forgotten and the possibilities of what we can do if we listen to ourselves, without blindly following."
In follow-fashion Trinidad, Le Gendre's words are as refreshing and inspiring as her music, which remains true to the advice given her by her Spanish classical guitar teacher, years ago in Paris: "You're a Caribbean person, don't try to be European. Come to the music as you are."
So while she's been based in London, after studies in Paris, her soundscape remains rooted both in Trinidad's musical traditions (from kalenda, Orisha and Shouter Baptist, to parang, pan, early kaiso music and the spontaneous percussion of J'Ouvert), and those of her grandparents' Martinique (bele, beguine, mazurka, waltz and the distinctive Antillean jazz these genres influenced).
The ensemble, which accompanies the stage action, deliberately utilises the Venezuelan string band format, which provided much of Trinidad's early recorded carnival music, with violin, double bass, clarinets, trumpet, trombone joined by distinctly Creole instruments: double second pans, and percussion which includes bottle and spoon.
Arguably it's her Creole ear, along with a disregard for irrelevant barriers erected by purists and defenders of ossified tradition, which has led to her success at such bastions of the western classical music tradition as London's Royal Opera House in Convent Garden. Ignoring those distinctions which purist apologists for the western classical music tradition make, between high and low or popular culture, in typical Creole fashion, Le Gendre moves easily between folk, traditional, indigenous sacred, jazz, popular and supposed classical genres.
This is a process which characterises music production in the Caribbean, from the formal European quadrille dance, which has spawned so many island variations, creolised by Afro rhythms and percussion, to Martinique's beguine or Trinidad's kaiso jazz.
Kamminga's choice of the Stravinsky original is another example of transnational and temporal innovation, as Stravinsky's score was created from folktale, legend, dreams (particularly his dream of a gypsy woman playing violin to her child) and such diverse musical sources as the tango, the Hispanic pasadoble and early jazz (imagined by Stravinsky from imported American scores).
Kamminga has tapped into local folklore, socio-economic history and Carnival traditions by switching French writer Ramuz's deserter for Starboy, the gifted Laventille musician who unwittingly sells his soul/violin to Jab in exchange for the unlimited material gains offered by Jab's magic book of gambling tips.
The team
After several years of workshopping and fund-raising, Calabash fulfils its own brief by bringing Jab to the Little Carib, spiritual home of Creole performing arts in T&T.
The entire production team is a holistic mix of new and established talent, members of the UTT music department and their students, who have gained invaluable hands and feet-on learning experience as understudies to the principals.
Besides librettist Kamminga and composer Le Gendre, the creative team includes Jamaican director Pat Cumper, a veteran playwright and producer, and luminary of both Jamaican and Black British theatre. Cumper emerged as a powerful contemporary playwright in Jamaica with her 1978 play The Rapist and her work with the women's theatre collective Sistren, before relocating to the UK, where her Fallen Angel and the Devil's Concubine was presented at London's prestigious Almeida Theatre in 1989.
Besides her own work, Cumper has adapted that of other black writers for stage or radio: Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Andrea Levy, Alice Walker (The Colour Purple) and most recently Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God for the BBC. After five years as artistic director of the UK's leading black theatre company, Talawa, Cumper has now joined forces with Le Gendre in their own StrongBack theatre company.
Musical director Ian Shaw has collaborated with Le Gendre on several of her previous productions, including her 2007 The Burial at Thebes. With experience in cathedral music, theatre music, ballet and opera, he was most recently repetiteur for the world premiere of Philip Glass's The Trial, a co-production with the Royal Opera House and Music Theatre Wales.
The complement of the creative team is all home-grown, with considerable international experience. Movement director is renowned dancer/choreographer Dave Williams; set and costume designer Kathryn Chan draws on her eclectic experience as visual artist, mas designer with Minshall's Callaloo Company and folklore ethnographer; lighting designer Benny Gomes can include Walcott premieres and US President Barack Obama's inaugural ceremony in his credits, while sound designer Robin Foster is known throughout the region, America and the UK not only for his superb ear but his encyclopaedic knowledge of calypso.
In the final analysis, a creative team is only as strong as the final product, the stage performance, which must be brought to life by the performers. The cast is a mix of familiar faces, some in new guises. Nicolai Salcedo, whom Alternative Music aficionados will know as the leader of the band Gyazette, is Starboy self; rapso warriors Wendell Manwarren and Roger Roberts bring their J'Ouvert and 3Canal stage show experience to the respective roles of Corporal and Jab; while their female counterparts are played by gifted theatre arts performer Germaine Wilson and young opera star Annette Dopwell. Young dancer Dominique Doyle, a member of the Noble Douglas Dance Company and veteran of the 3Canal annual show, gets her international break, dancing the Carnival Queen.
�2 If you want to know what transpires between Starboy and Jab, or you simply want to be present as cultural history is made right here in T&T, don't miss this story of our time and place at the Little Carib from November 6 - 9.
�2 For ticketing and other information about Jab Molassie, visit the Web site at jabmolassie.com. Tickets are available a the Little Carib Box Office.
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Jab Molassie is one of the performances presented as part of the programme in the International Symposium on Concert Music from the Caribbean organised by UTT, focusing on Traditions, Influences, New Frontiers. Presentations on musical traditions specific to Trinidad will be followed by talks from regional composers writing "art music" for concert performance today. The symposium runs at UTT campus, NAPA from November 8 - 11.