By Tanya Batson-Savage, Staff Reporter AMINA BLACKWOOD-Meeks brought the magic of storytelling to the Weekenz Bar and Bistro on Tuesday night. The weekly event at the Constant Spring Road, St. Andrew venue usually features poetry and live music. As with Tuesday's event, however, other performance arts are usually allowed to share the stage.
When Blackwood-Meeks took over the microphone, the bonfire (a regular feature of the evening) blazed, seemingly trying to do its part in creating an atmosphere suited to storytelling. Accompanied by Mbala on the flute, Blackwood-Meeks started off by pointing to the value of the Tuesday evening event.
DEFENDED ANANCY
"Everytime I come here I am uplifted," she said, describing the readings as an opportunity to heal. She then announced that her project for the evening was to help in healing the "terrible public relations job" that has been conducted against Anancy.
As a result, her first tale told of why all stories, whether Anancy is in them or not, are called Anancy stories. Before beginning her round of stories she acknowledged the spirit of the story with the call and response 'Crick Crack'. The tale detailed how Anancy got the king of the jungle (Bredda Tiger) to name all the stories for him by tricking Bredda Snake.
A delightful and talented storyteller, Blackwood-Meeks filled her story with the traditional elements, including crowd participation. Despite the evidence of storytelling heritage in her tale, however, she allowed current dancehall slang and the tradition of storytelling to meet and greet, mixing them in with her stories.
The most evident example of this came through her second story, which explained why the crab has no head. The hilariously told tale explained that 'Crab Fada', the original maker of heads, made all heads but 'coke head'. However, unlike Crab Fada, who was born in the 'Before Computer' (BC) era, Crab, a child of the 'Afta Dat' (AD) era, believed in specialisation. As such he never learnt to make heads and so when his father died, the tradition died with him.
The moral at the core of the tale, however, really spoke to some of the ills of today's generation. By weaving in the term 'mad, sick, head no good' which refers to the behaviour wreaking havoc on today's generation, Meeks pointed out that a part of what remains the problem, the real madness, is that the older traditions have not been passed on.
GLOBALIZATION
Her third tale spoke of another problem facing today's society, globalization. Meeks explained that she gets many of her stories from either 'Miss Lady' or 'Jing Bang', the major narrators of her stories. On Tuesday night, she ended with one of the tales that had been brought to her by Jing Bang.
As she pointed out, the problem with Jing Bang is that she is a very honest person. This time, Jing Bang spoke of the disastrous effects of globalization on agriculture and tourism in this
country.
The story moulds itself from 'This is the house that Jack Built'. Instead of a house, however, it is a road, but the tourists are afraid to walk on the road.
What Jing Bang then goes on to describe is how the relationships between agricultural trade, debt and high taxes lead to social unrest, which leads to the fall-off of tourism. Interestingly, what Jing Bang described was quite similar to the flare-up in Flankers, St. James this week.
The evening's poets included Latoya Saunders, Marsha Hall and Atibo. Daddigon leant his vocals and guitar to the night's musical element. Mutabaruka selected poetry and music between the performances.
