Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Left: Songbird Carlene Davis is armed for the gospel.   Right: This beautifully-attired dancer performs to music from three Indian movies. - photos by Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

A strip of red carpet ran up the steps, into the lobby and back into time at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, St. Andrew, on Wednesday evening, as RBTT presented 'Through The Years: Tracing Jamaica's Cultural Evolution'.

A beaming Jennifer Small was hostess and narrator of the staged time capsule.

It began with Emancipation, the Drews Avenue Traditional Group singing "de Queen set we free", the girls' yellow headwraps bobbing in time with the boys' red tops. There was a leap to the birth of Jamaican-born music, mento and its first star, Lord Fly, Fab Five duly presenting slower and uptempo renditions of the music form.

There were huge cheers for One Third, who honoured the American R&B influence with Great Pretender, the Kathy Brown Jazz Quartet continuing the nod to those from up north, going south for jazz flourishes. Viviene Morris-Brown delivered Miss Lou's Walk Bout, while Ity and Fancy Cat represented comedic duo Bim and Bam.

The East Indian and Chinese cultures were represented through dance, Oneil Shandu swaying his hips and making graceful hand movements throughout a dance brought to Jamaica 167 years ago. A young lady brought the movement closer to present with a dance to music from three films, her delightfully detailed greed outfit shimmering below a radiant smile.

A bit of laughter

There was laughter for the Weston Haughton coordinated look at fashion from the '60s to '90s, and effectively ska to dancehall, with clothing from Quindell Ferguson, then it was all music.

Pam Hall covered the rise of reggae in the very early 1970s with Perfidia and First Cut Is The Deepest, a 'pull up' coming for No No No. The screams started early and rose for each song from Ken Boothe, through The Train Is Coming to Everything I Own. Pam Hall returned with the Kathy Brown Jazz Quartet to deliver Fever in honour of the jazz tradition, her left hand pointing to where the mercury would have risen.

It was also two times around for Morris-Brown, who put drama into Claude McKay's If We Must Die. The white undershirts of the Praise Academy of Dance team flashed to Papa San's dancehall genuflections and Carlene Davis had Jordan River rolling.

Roy Rayon honoured the festival song tradition, which started with Bam Bam, with Ba Ba Boom and his own Give Thanks and Praises, and 'Through The Years' ended with Nikeisha Barnes and One Third honouring dancehall, the latter getting really on Top A Tings to the music of Fab Five.