- Contributed'Congo Laye', choreographed by Arsenio Andrade, is a strong NDTC piece.
Michael Reckord, Feelance Writer
(This is the first in a series of articles on Jamaica's premier dance theatre company's 40 years of performances. The other installments will follow on consecutive Sundays.)
BOOKS AND files, paintings and sculptures in the handsomely appointed office of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) reflect the incumbent's passion for education and African art. However in an interview on July 1, Professor Rex Nettleford spoke of another love - the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC), of which he is co-founder, artistic director and chief choreographer.
Because it was International Reggae Day, Nettleford began the interview on the importance of Jamaican popular music to the NDTC. "We started with Jamaican music," he said. "When people think of Jamaican music they think of reggae, but Jamaican music dates back before that, to the folk songs. The earliest popular music in modern times was mento and it merged into the ska, rocksteady, reggae and now dancehall. The NDTC came before reggae, which really emerged in the '70s, while the NDTC dates back to 1962."
The Company was 'a flowering', he said, of the dance troupes around that period 'who kept dance alive' - those of Ivy Baxter, Mme Soohih, Doris Rumsey, Fay Simpson and the Rowe sisters (Betty and Punky). Rex Nettleford saw the company as coming, too, out of the movement of the country toward self-government. He pointed out: "For the artists - writers, painters, sculptors, musicians - it was the beginning of a sense of discovery of self on one's own terms. The spirit of the Jamaican collective imagination was really what fired and fuelled the whole idea of the dance theatre," he said.
Jamaican music was a feature of this collective imagination, said Nettleford, adding that "as new Jamaican music came on the scene we would use it". He cited early works which relied on Jamaican music, such as 'Kas Kas', which "drew on the urban setting and used mento type rhythm" , and 'Street People', which featured rocksteady. The music of Revivalism and Kumina, too, he said, "have been important to the Company (and shows) it is firmly rooted in Jamaican/Caribbean psyche". He said that dancehall, which "is in its way wonderful" and has been used in company dances, had its beginnings in dinki-mini's rhythmic structure. He went on to discuss the NDTC's role in making traditional religious practices and music popular.
"The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission and the old Festival Commission, which in the beginning I was very much part and parcel of, brought things to town. Kumina, for example, became popular within the urban consciousness, and certainly in the uptown consciousness, as a result of the NDTC dance 'Kumina'." He said there were kumina dancers in West Kingston, with Queenie (Kennedy, a kumina group leader) who came from Seaforth, St Thomas, and his own early collection of kumina music was done in West Kingston.
The Company's 'Gerrehbenta' (which uses gerreh music) also came from "the interplay with what was coming to town through the Festival. There's much more interconnection than we like to admit between the street and what's in the theatre. I made sure, before mounting some of these works which were influenced by our deep roots, that the dancers were taken out on field trips. They went to Seaforth to see kumina... and St Mary to see dinkimini," Mr. Nettleford said. He mentioned Edward Seaga's encouragement of research by the NDTC into pocomania in Salt Lane, West Kingston, and laughing recalled Mr Seaga showing the dancers "a few steps."
Nettleford spoke of the strategic placement, partly by design, partly through luck, of some of the founding and early members in key positions "to mine the rich resource in the country. My own background from rural Jamaica helped considerably".
Additionally, Joyce Campbell worked with the Festival Commission and then the JCDC; Sheila Barnett and Barbara Requa were in educational institutions; and "formal research came with Cheryl Ryman who went to Ghana and did work there in dance". Nettleford said the research and mapping of the dance in Jamaica which Ms. Ryman did has been used by scholars, in cultural anthropology courses at Princeton University, for example.
He stressed the importance of this early work. "The whole thing was not simply a studio indulgence. It was conceived to be a very important institution of the new Jamaica. That is really what has guided us," Mr. Nettleford said.
In 1974, he said, came 'Tribute to Cliff' (Jimmy Cliff), the first big celebration of reggae. Later came tributes to Bob Marley ('The Court of Jah') and, in the same year (1976), a tribute to Toots and the Maytals ('Backlash'), which was about police brutality.
Nettleford admitted that "many Bob Marley aficionados thought I'd given much more care to 'Backlash', which dealt with the "real issues", whereas 'Court of Jah' seemed "decorative". Later, he said, critics "came around to it and understood it".
That understanding came, he suggested, because "Rastafarianism and commitment to royalty - His Imperial Majesty and what have you - is something deep in the psyche of many Jamaicans, (hence) the Kumina King, Kumina Queen, Bruckin Party King and Queen and, of course, the whole Carnival tradition. That's what 'Court of Jah' was about". Later came a tribute to Marcus Garvey, 'Children of Mosiah', which used music from Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. More recently there has been 'Bujurama', featuring Buju Banton's music.
(Here Nettleford introduced a vital musical component of the Company, the NDTC Singers and Orchestra, who over the years have been singing and playing all the forms of popular music). The Company's audience has spread far beyond Jamaica, Nettleford pointed out. "In the many travels we've done we realised we were saying something to a wider public - call it the African Diaspora. And increasingly we became more interested in African and American music." This means, he stressed, "the music of the Americas". He continued: "This has been the repertoire for a long time on two counts: we are a very religious people and a lot of our work reflected that spirituality from day one. But for me 'Misa Criolla' (the dance and musical work sung in Spanish by the NDTC Singers), was very important. Ariel Ramirez, the Argentinean composer, had used American rhythms as well as Native American rhythms for the mass and I found that exciting." Indicating the vast range of music utilized by the company, Nettleford mentioned the use of Negro spirituals and music from south and west Africa. In one of the documents Nettleford offered The Sunday Gleaner for background reading on the NDTC was an article by Marjorie Whylie, the company's musical director.
In it she opines that because of its rich and varied musical component, an NDTC concert could be as enjoyable to a blind person as to a sighted one.
Perhaps she could be accused of slight exaggeration.
Perhaps.
