Christina Benjamin, Gleaner Writer 
"... I have always
believed that Jamaica
is blessed with
talented people, but these youths
took it to a
new level."
WHAT A CRISIS! What a trauma! What a disgrace!
I am positively ashamed to admit the surprise I felt at watching Day two of the national finals for the speech segment of the Jamaica Festival of the Arts.
I should have known better ... I never expected to see such raw, uninhibited talent displayed by these young performers. I have always believed that Jamaica is blessed with talented people, but these youths took it to a new level.
PRESENTATION
The judging in the competition was based on voice production, speech, presentation, and interpretation. There were 25 awards, and three special awards given out at the close of the day.
Campion College's Mikhail Marshall stole the show with Freedom Train, which earned him both the Best Intermediate Speech presentation award and the Best Overall Speech
presentation award.
The Class five public speaking section ended with Jomaine MacKenzie's speech on the 'right and wrong way of doing things'.
He questioned the justice shown by police who shoot criminals before a fair trial and he argued passionately that such an act is unjust. MacKenzie later took home the gold medal for best public speaking.
STORYTELLING
Nicole Williams earned the prize for best storytelling with Anancy and Chicken. Mention must be made of Andre Hinds who gave a truly entertaining performance of the poem Rum Head.
However, the star of the dub poetry section was award winner Dayon Gray who warned us to Prepare fi Weep as he gave an emotional recitation of the poem. The true test of his excellence was his ability to hush the talkative crowd which was forced into a thoughtful silence as he wailed "Parents wise up!" and "Mamma, hear di bwoy a cry, locked behind bars jus waitin' to die".
While observing MacKenzie's award winning presentation in the Public speaking segment, I noticed that although his speech was excellent, it was almost impossible to hear him over the buzz of the audience members. The woman next to me offered: "They are bored because they are not used to proper English". I considered this...the students who were competing spoke perfect English and were from the same schools as those in the audience, yet it seems, the average Jamaican public school child is not sufficiently exposed to 'correct' English and therefore may find it uninteresting.
Stephanie Khan continued with her point, insisting, "they are not comfortable with the language! The schools must encourage these students to practice public speaking. They do excellently in Dub poetry and the Dialect sections, but Standard English is not pushed!" This became even more obvious in the final Mixed Standard and Dialect Poetry/Prose section. Orville Hall, won the award for the section, performed "Pretty Woman". He spoke flawless English while he sipped red wine on a chair and talked about his inability to express his love to a beautiful woman. As if on cue, once proper English was spoken the silence was broken and a murmur came from the audience. Surprisingly, the crowd erupted into laughter and all heads, which moments before were angled towards each other, turned towards the stage. Hall had suddenly broken-out into patois saying, "I was tempted to touch, hot passion in yuh love cup, an' then I woke up".
Finally the Jamaican Dialect section came and the crowd was captivated. They chanted along with Roy Lawrence, the Best Jamaican Dialect award winner, who did three poems, and went through an impressive trio of costume changes.
POSITIVE
Class seven commenced with "Peace" by Queens high school. I was entranced by the performance. Their message was clear "we want peace. Tyad a di war inna we community." It was interesting to see how positive these poems were in comparison to the pieces performed by the younger children on Day One of the competition. Latoya Robinson and Tia-Ann Fuller, two girls in the group, remarked, "The people want peace. It wouldda nice that the people come together to sen' out this message".
The performance section of the evening came to a close with Ardenne High School Drama Club's award winning presentation of the poem "Patois Talking". The crowd loved it; they screamed as the boys exclaimed, "Mr. Pj an' Seaga mus' chat patois suh di poor people cyan understan'."
For good or bad, it seems no form of proper English could have raised that crowd like patois did. One of the judges remarked "our Jamaican dialect is loved all over the world for the beauty of it", this was defiantly shown through the reactions to the day's performances. What a day it was! Congratulations to all the award winners.
