By Cynthia Wilmot, ContributorI DON'T know if you've noticed, but freeness is scarce nowadays.
That's why I'm happy to tell you that some freeness does exist. And if you are in downtown Kingston on a Thursday afternoon you may find yourself engulfed by smartly marching lines of inner-city school kids, spic and span as new pennies, washed, ironed, polished and scrubbed by mothers and grannies making their way to the old Institute of Jamaica entrance.
And you'll probably glimpse me among them along with a few other women of to put it politely a certain age, who know a good thing when we see it.
See me now. Thursday 12.15. I sit in the Institute's auditorium next to a gentleman of 10 named Kimari, listening to a trio of Japanese musicians drawing strange and haunting sound from bamboo instruments.
"It sounds like a little bird," Kimari whispers, as the music carries us upwards and then swoops down in a minor key. "The little bird must have fallen out of its nest," says Kimari.
'POOR LITTLE BIRD'
Forty-five minutes later Kimari and 300 of his contemporaries file out of the auditorium, past the few seats off to one side occupied by us octogenarians. "Poor little bird," says Kimari. "Until next time, Miss."
Free lunchtime concerts for schools began in the 1930s with that grand old man, Bob Verity, who devoted his life to the Institute, the National Library and particularly the Junior Centre.
In the 1930s Mickey (real name Gaveral) MacGowan took over. (I know looking at this pert and pretty miss you will doubt that she was even out of diapers then no doubt she has caught the fountain of youth from these youthful audiences).
The hall holds 300, but often teachers will be heard to whisper "small up yourselves" and two-in-a-seat becomes the rule. So how many kids have benefited over the years? Thirty-six concerts per year during school terms, times 70 years, times 300 you do the maths!
"We want to give the children a taste of something beyond their own lives," explains Mickey, "so that they'll see it's okay to like both Bach and reggae."
POETRY
So, on Thursday noons, the audiences have rocked with the Maurice Gordon Trio, swayed with L'Acadco and the Movements dance companies, chuckled with Oliver, listened starry-eyed to the poetry of Lorna Goodison and Mbala.
They have joined in the chorus with the Kingston College Choir and the Caribfolk Singers, clapped in time with the Alpha Boys Band, cheered for Sonny Bradshaw, Fab Five and Tony Rebel. Through the kindness of foreign embassies they have enjoyed music from distant lands.
Students from the School of Music may be followed the next week by the Panto company. And it was here that the great jazz pianist, Frankie Bonitto, gave his final performance.
