Gillian Moore

Che Lovelace is known for art­work that takes on Caribbean spaces, forms and ex­pres­sions-es­pe­cial­ly Car­ni­val. Now, he's en­tered the world of pub­lish­ing as his paint­ings bring to life a Tri­ni retelling of the clas­sic chil­dren's tale, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood.

The new in­ter­pre­ta­tion, in which the hero­ine is a lit­tle girl in a vil­lage in Trinidad and the Big Bad Wolf takes the form of a jab mo­lassie, was writ­ten by UK mu­si­cian Adam Wal­ters. The book, pub­lished by In­fin­i­ty Pub­lish­ing, is ac­com­pa­nied by a CD, fea­tur­ing mu­sic by the Ibis En­sem­ble.

Wal­ters, who stud­ied mu­sic at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the Roy­al Col­lege of Mu­sic and now lives in Port-of-Spain, spoke about the mu­si­cal as­pect of the project at a launch at The Read­er's Book Shop in St James on Oc­to­ber 19. He said he had in­cor­po­rat­ed el­e­ments of T&T cul­ture in cre­at­ing the sound­scape.

The disc starts out with the sound of a pitch-oil tin be­ing beat­en, and winds, strings and per­cus­sion lend dra­ma to the nar­ra­tion. The Ibis En­sem­ble is led by Cait­lyn Kam­min­ga, who is orig­i­nal­ly from New Or­leans, USA, and is al­so the founder of the Caribbean Net­work for Arts and Ed­u­ca­tion Foun­da­tion (CANOAE) String En­sem­ble. CANOAE is an NGO that of­fers schol­ar­ships to fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged, tal­ent­ed young mu­si­cians for pri­vate and group in­struc­tion.

Kam­min­ga said 50 per cent of the rev­enue from sales of the new book will go to CANOAE. She said it had been a priv­i­lege to work with such a "fan­tas­tic artist" as Lovelace, and to be part of a project "en­cour­ag­ing mu­sic, art and lit­er­a­ture in the Caribbean." The launch was a live­ly af­fair, as many guests brought their chil­dren along.

Lovelace said he had en­joyed the col­lab­o­ra­tive na­ture of the book project. He felt it was im­por­tant for artists to look out­ward as well as with­in. His colour­ful paint­ings adorn every page of the book, the lay­out for which was done by Ka­ri­na Jef­frey.

Judy Ray­mond, Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief, is quot­ed on the jack­et: "The il­lus­tra­tions and the spe­cial­ly com­posed mu­sic bring fresh­ness and depth to this trop­i­cal retelling of a chil­dren's clas­sic."

On the CD, the nar­ra­tion is done by Aiden Cham­ber­lain, as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of Trom­bone at the Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go; and Deb­o­ra Sun­ya Moore, al­so of the US, who is an as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of per­cus­sion and serves

as an arts ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment spe­cial­ist at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Moore called the chil­dren to­geth­er and per­formed a charm­ing but brief read­ing, urg­ing her lis­ten­ers to buy the book to find out how the sto­ry ends.