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caribean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town, Guyana.
DAJICE '.ILL IaGHLIGHT EAJAJI ART AT C'ARIF3STA
by
OLIVER HUTER
BARBADOS "Little England" brings to CARIFESTA touches of creole
elements blended with heavy shades of the "English" through the rippling move-
ments and rhythms of the island's National Dance Theatre Company.
Like the writing of Brlthwaite and paintings of Broodhagen, two lead-
ing Barbadian artists, this versatile Dance Company captures the spirit and
spicy ethos of the "Bajan" working his farm in fertile Black Rock, "sagaboying",
eating flying fish, sea e&r7s and lambi...tll:king his almost music-like brogue
and loving the last grain of sand on his precious Island.
The dance "Awakening" as portrayed by the National Dance Theatre
Company is a thinc.. to be seen.
It puts life into the cosmos with air, fire, water, earth and man.
In this dance "imagination changes the scale of everything and makes
a thousand patterns of the woof of nature, without disturbing a single thread...
it turns to music what was only strain, as if the universal vibration, suddenly
ashamed of having been so long silent and useless, had burst into tears and
laughter at its own folly and in so doing had became wise".
The dancers also portray "Proj:hesy" a sad prediction confronting
Bnrb-ados and the world.
In the "Hag" all the eerie nuances of the Old Higue world comes to
life in frenzied dance movements, as choreographed by Rosemary Wilkinson.
The "Hag"...... 2/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
caribbean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park Thomas Lands, G'town,Guyana.
2 -
The "HEa" is a beautiful and graceful woman by day but a blood-
sucking vwmpire by night,
In the dance, which is felt to be one of the best coming out of
irb.dos, the "Hag" becomes aware of her double personality for the first time.
A B TR)YAJL
The T"Yarico" dance captures images of the Arawaks who were first on
the Island.
According to the legend, "Inckle, the English adventurer is saved
by Yarico, an Amerindian princess.
7e professes his love for her but upon his return to Barb-.dos he is
unable to withstand the opposition of social ycsition. Incile forsakes Yarico
who drowns herself after the betrayal.
The dance "Islands" is really the setting of four of Edward Brathwaite's
poems to dance.
Indeed only unbelievably beautiful dance rhythms can give meaning to
the Barbadian verse as written by their leAding poet who is coming to CARIFESTA
when he speaks of Islands:
Looking.....3/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
caribbean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town,Guyana.
-3-
Lokin through a map
Of the Antilles, you see how time
Its humble servants here.
Descendants of the slave do not
Lie in the lap
Of the more fortunate
Gods. The rat
In the warehouse is as much king
As the sugar he plunders.
But if your eyes
Are kinder, you will observe
Butterflies
How they fly higher
And higher before their hope dries
With endeavour
And they hll among flies.
Looking through a map
Of the islands, you see
Th.t history teaches
That when hope
S.linters, when the pieces
Of broken glass lie
In the sunlight,
When only lust rules
The nic:ht, when the dust
Is not swept out
Of the houses,
When men make noises
Louder than the sea's
Voices; then the rope
Will never unravel
Its knots, the bran-din,
Ironts travelling flame that teaches
Us pain, will never be
btir ruisihed. The Islands' jewels:
Saba, Barbuda, dry flattened
Antigua, will remain rocks,
dots on the sky-blue fr-.'e
Of the map.
The Cassava Baters...4/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
caribbean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town,Guyana.
4 -
-4-
'T'LE CASSAVA EATEaRS
To understand the physicrTicnny of the Bnrbrdiran cultural scene, we must
trace its evolutionary process.
First were the Arawaks or "cassava eaters", who the Spaniards found
on the Island in the 1490'is.
Strangely thcu-h, when the P.'rt.u.eOe came to the Island 40 years later,
these indigenous peoples had completely vanished leaving behind only their clay
utensils etc. and burial urns.
It is felt that there must have been a drought during; the period,
and since Barbados has no big rivers the Indians were forced to leave.
Rernius of these people can be found at two of their old village sites
near Archer's Bry.
Z,:GLLE CUSTOMS
From 1625, when Ca-trin John C-anbell landed with a party of advent-
urous Enlishmen, he cut a be-rl&c fig tree made a cross and erected it on the
Island with the irscrii.tion, "James K of En--'nJ and of this Island", to 1966
Barbados has always been under the British fl :.;
This accounts for the strong English customs, found nowhere else in
the Caribbean with such profusion.
It has been...5/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
II
caribbean fesOival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town,Guyana.
-5-
It has been said that the only thing that is not British about the
Isle is its Iberian name "Parbudo:." which it got from the Portuguese when they
landed in 1536.
But there were other things that moulded the people, their folk
culture, their art ant :.intintg and sculpture, music and dance, that is coming
to C..RIFESTA.
Maybe the strongest force came through the plantation svsytem and the
form it took on the Island.
First came the indentured labourers along with white prisoners trans-
ported overseas to do forced labour on the plantations.
There was quite a bit of mixing between these people and the slaves
who cane after front West Africa bring -in- with them their mauby, camels, woolless
shooep and Guinea corn.
In fact, the clrves so absorbed the English customs that within a
century of their arrival on the Island they had completely forgotten the
culture that they had brought frcrn Africa. .hence todry in Barbados there is not
nuch drumming heard in the little villages.,.drumming thiLt is heard in Brazilian
2.-i'lomble g+therin.:1, Haitian Voodoo, Guyana Comfa, Trinidad Shango and Jamaican
Cumina, and Cuban Toruba and Congo festivals.
Plot Revealed....6/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
caribbean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town, Guyana.
6 -
PLOT REVEALED
In short, out of the Barbados pot-pourri came a new breed of Caribbean
Ian.
Barbadian
However the 1675 incident in the Island made many feel that the
slave was not completed "Antlicised and docile" as it was normally felt.
For then the slaves conspired to kill every white person on the Island.
The plot was eventually discovered throu h the aid of a 'faithful'
slave.
Some of the revolutionaries were beheaded, some burnt alive and their
bodies dragged throu *h the streets as a means of driving fear into the hearts
of their fellows.
Although in speech and lifestyle the Barbadian uniqueness stands out
in the Caribbean, he is still like many other West Indian peoples celebrating
his Christmas in that special way, loving his steelband, calypso, limbo, nancy
stories and spirit houses and having enough faith in the obeahman.
Many folks around Christ Church, scene of the famous 19th Century
".rbrt dos Coffin Mystery in which coffins were switched around, stood on ends
and disturbed in a number of other incredible ways inside a vault to which
no one had access, feel that a famous obeatnan had a hand in the jumbie story
which is now part of the island'ss folk legend.
The ghastly.,.7/
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank Pilgrim Telephone: 65907
caribbean festival of creative arts 1972
National History and Arts Council, National Park,Thomas Lands, G'town,Guyana.
7 -
The ghastly affair is said to have put the whole Island in a frenzy
and forced the then Governor to bury the coffin elsewhere.
Folk tales of hr. ; opnin'"s in the past like that of Sam Lord's Castle
which still stands today as a tall memorial of colonial times and the buccaneers
ijolp to enrich the present day Bajan cultural arena.
The folk still speak of Sam Lord, a buccaneer, who lived on the
Island's Wilr Atlantic Conat and lured ships to their death on dangerous shoals
near his Castle with the aid of a lantern.
.hen the ships ran aground on the shoals San Lord and his slaves
took possession of the cargo and killed the few sailors who escaped a milder
death by drowning.
A BIT OF DRAMA
Sam Lord is now a legend woven into Barbados folk.
Come Auiust 25 and B:arbados comes to CARIFESTA "rin,-in,. their "New
Season's" dances choreographed by Virginia Seeley; Barbados Monolo-ucos by
Alfred Prgnell and the original Quavers Quartet singing folk songs of
B rbr.doE.
They will also brin.- a bit of drama and will participate in the
literary, art and other aspects of the Festival.
o000o
Director: Lynette Dolphin Commissioner: Frank PIIg,ir, Telephone: 65907
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