TALLAWAH- Keeping mento music alive

Mento is one of Jamaica’s oldest music genres and it still remains popular, thanks to small bands like the Florida based Tallawah Mento Band.

Some members of Tallawah Mento Band jamming in leader Smith's backyard

Tallawah leader, Colin Smith, is a successful businessman, accomplished artist and musician, who plays the guitar, banjo, piano and keyboard.

However, the band he now leads, started quite by accident almost 20 years ago.

According to him, he and two friends, Vincent Allen guitarist and Errol Smith on drums, were jamming, 

Errol with the rumba box

playing some popular Mento tunes in a music room at a church in Miami, when Vincent advised that he had brought a rumba box from Jamaican but had no idea how to play it. This instrument is shaped like a box and provides the bass sound. The player sits on it while playing.

Mento music typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, congo drums, rumba box and a wind instrument (fife/clarinet/flute).

 Fortunately, Colin had built a rumba box while living in Jamaica so he was able to teach his friend Errol how to play it. He has been playing it with them ever since.

While they jammed, playing the mento music, some ladies who were listening nearby commented on how good they sounded and asked them to play at an event for them. That event turned out to be a Jamaican Independence Dinner which was scheduled to be held the following week!

Although they demurred as they had not considered playing formally as a group and did not even have a name for their group, the ladies insisted.

The legendary Keith Studdard with other guitarists Eugene and Phillip

Quickly they recruited a drummer/percussionist Val Darby. At the event, the MC was so impressed with their performance that when he asked the name of the band and they told him, 'just call us the little Mento Band,' he commented “oono likkle but oono tallawah.”

They played as The Little Mento Band for a while, but as they grew in popularity and the band expanded, Mrs Norma Darby then director of “The Jamaican Folk Revue” suggested the band be named Tallawah Mento Band, and so it was. 

They have been joined by other guitarists, saxophonist and such greats as Keith Stoddard, and have grown from strength to strength.

Flutist Tresha

While most mento bands in and outside of Jamaica tend to have mainly men, the band was  fortunate to have briefly, Jennifer Grant on the accordion and Angela Campbell, percussionist, dancer and archivist. However, some sixteen years ago they were lucky enough to find an outstanding flutist, Tresha Powell, who is a nurse by profession. 

She is now an integral and irreplaceable member of this Tallawah band.

For the benefit of the young, Mento Music is the first recorded folk music in Jamaica. It has greatly influenced the emergence of Ska and Reggae. 

Mento itself is mainly based on African rhythms and was extremely popular from the 1920’s up to its hey day during the 1940`s and 1950’s.

While it has been overrun somewhat by reggae and dancehall, it is still popular at cultural events. It is therefore a staple with groups like Jamaica Folk Singers, University Singers, Carifolk Singers and hotels on the north coast of Jamaica.

“Mento is Jamaica`s indigenous dance, song ,and instrumental style. The music is relatively slow in quadruple time, and its most characteristic feature is the accent in or on the last beat of each bar”, says  Dr Olive Lewin from her book Rock It Come Over”.  

Tallawah at North Beach

Dr Lewin went on to explain the rudiments of a Mento band as follows:

1)Melody: Fife, piccolo, harmonica, saxophone, clarinet, piano or electronic keyboard;

Available at Amazon.com

2)Harmony: guitar and banjo, which also play melodically, rhumba box or double bass on the bass line;

3)Rhythm: drums, maracas, grater and nail, sticks, and variety of improvised instruments and body sounds.

It is also impossible to find events honoring icons like Miss Lou, Olive Lewin or Rex Nettleford which do not feature the best of our mento music. Our Independence and Emancipation celebrations at home and abroad also give Mento Music pride of place.

In action at the launch of "Looking 
Back"

At school of Music at the Edna Manley College of Visual and performing Arts, there has been such renewed interest in this music genre, that in 2017, leader Smith was invited there to be a guest presenter to the master class students. He also gave similar lecture demonstrations  at the Norton Museum in Boca Raton Florida and The Auburn Research Library in association with the National Black arts festival 2012 in recognition of  Caribbean American Culture Heritage Month. At this festival Tallawah performed & presented “Jah Music: A Celebration of Traditional Jamaican Music”,

 

I was honored to have Tallawah at the launch of my autobiography “Looking Back, the struggle to preserve our freedoms” at the Pembroke Pines Library in Florida in 2017.

OTHER PICS FROM THE BACKYARD JAM

169) Joan Williams, author - YouTube

https://youtu.be/kBuMICI-gBE

Miss Lou; Drama Queen Extraordinaire

In early September 2019, Jamaicans all over the world got together to celebrate the 100th anniversary  of the birth of our most revered cultural icon  Rt. Hon Dr. Louise Bennett-Coverly, lovingly  known as Miss Lou.

Guests mingle at the cocktail reception

Not to be left out, The Louise Bennet-Coverly Cultural Heritage Council in Broward County,  Florida, which is itself chaired by a cultural icon, Colin Smith, artist, musician, and dramatist, put on a magnificent show.

 It was dubbed 'Full hundred' and part proceeds from the event, are to be donated to the Edna Manley School of the Arts, in Jamaica,  so our culture can continue to wow the world.

Before the entertainment begun, the mood was set at a small cocktail reception but after that, it was pure niceness all the way.

The cultural show which followed was chaired by a well-known folklorist, Joan Andrea Hutchinson, OD-(the bumpy head gal) who, has demonstrated so far that she is indeed Miss Lou's natural successor.

The main two-hour entertainment package which was immensely enjoyed by the  full house at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts, was professionally delivered (as usual!) by the Jamaica Folk Singers with masterful backing from the versatile Tallawah Mento Band, led by Colin Smith himself. 

Jamaica Folk singers in action

The opening segment appropriately called "Come mek we dance an' sing"  thrilled the audience with popular  Jamaican folk songs like "Long gal mi nevva si yu" made famous by Miss Lou herself.

Their performance was interspersed with contributions from  well known dub poet Malacai Smith and Maxine Osborne.

It was a great night memorializing the invaluable cultural awakening that this celebrated giant  has left for us and that event at Coral Sprigs will be remembered by all who attended, for years to come.

Even I, for Miss Lou's anniversary, wrote a tiny tribute about the influence that she has had  had on all our lives.

It is; "When Louise Bennett-Coverley affectionately known as Miss Lou, was born in Kingston on September 7^th 1919, her parents could never have imagined what an outstanding, poet, teacher, social commentator, actress, comedienne, expert on Jamaican language/culture and television star they were bringing into to the world of that fateful day. Neither could they have expected that she would be dubbed the “first lady of Jamaican comedy” and receive honors ranging from O.M., O.J., M.B.E., to Hon. D. Litt., in her short lifetime.

Members of Tallawah Mento Band at extreme right

However, from as early as age ten, her slew of talents began to emerge when she started to pen poems. By age fourteen, she staged her first paid stage performance.  It is not insignificant though that her extraordinary literary talent was initially discovered by Eric Coverley, who accidentally ran into a copy of one of her hand-written poems in his friend’s car. Instantly impressed, he invited her to perform it at a concert.

He eventually became her best friend and her loving husband.

In explaining her early immense interest in language and culture, in an interview entitled “Miss Lou and the early Jamaican Theatre” produced by the National Library, she explained that it was her exposure to women from all walks of life from an early age, which stoked her passion. For her mother had been a dress-maker with clients ranging from the wives of governors and other “top a naris people” to those from the humblest circumstances. To her mom though, everyone was a lady from, “coal lady” to “governor wife lady.”

What she observed early from their interaction with her mom and each other, was how important humor was to conversation and most importantly, how everybody was speaking the language of the common people when they became comfortable.

At the time, our own Jamaican language was not considered “acceptable “and was not widely used by those who had arrived, but clearly it was what everyone spoke once they relaxed!

This is what convinced the young Louise taking it all, that our language should indeed become nationally accepted and be brought out of the closet, so to speak.

When she was taken to the country to attend a Dinky Minnie which lasted eight days, there was no turning back for the young talent who had this burning desire to write.

Her creative drive - combined with her love for the folk songs her mom sung everyday which were popular in her birth parish of St. Mary but totally unacceptable in the schools where only English could be used - cemented the young poet’s desire to change it all.

Her first book of poetry published in 1942 was “Jamaica Labrish” and she was never too shy to perform on stage anywhere.  As her fame increased and her talents became recognized, she was awarded a scholarship to go to London to hone her acting skills at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. But even when she was given her own cultural program in London on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio, it could not salve her longing to return to her homeland where she was determined to shake up the cultural norms.

It was the pantomime being put on by expatriates in Kingston and which was being performed in the queen’s English, which became her first target for change. So, in 1948, she wrote in patois and acted in, Bluebeard. It totally revolutionized the theatre landscape in Jamaica.

In the ensuing years, Miss Lou kept us entertained with programs such as the “Lou and Ranny” show on radio and finally, delighted her audience while educating children in the performing arts, with “Ring Ding” on Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC TV).

Despite all her other achievements, I opine that her most impactful work is her influential publication “Aunty Roachy Seh” where our social consciousness as a nation is awakened, through her inimitable humor.

This is the 100 th anniversary of the birth of this great Jamaican lady whose influence on our language, social norms, culture and theatre can never be allowed to fade. So, it is incumbent on all of us to keep her flag flying while we never fail to say “Tenk yu Miss Lou.”

CAROLING IN LAURISTAN, ST. CATHERINE

I have heard about people going around caroling at Christmas from I was a child but the first time I have ever seen it done or participated was in 2010 when the president of the Lauristan citizens association, Audley Nain J.P invited me to join them. I had such a wonderful time then that when the invitation was again extended this year, I had no difficulty setting out from Kingston at 5.30 am with friends Richard and Sharon to derive over to join up with them.

Yes, I know, when some people hear of Lauristan, that area off the Sligoville road in St. Catherine, the farthest thing from their mind is carol singing. This is because this community was the scene of a widely reported and  most horrific murder on July 20, 2011 which shocked the nation. For it was there while Charmaine Cover-Rattray and her daughter were asleep at their home   that men kicked off their door, entered murdered them, then cut off their heads and dumped them some distance away.

Off they went caroling in the early morning

Reality though, like so many communities in Jamaica, there are two sections. In the case of Lauristan there is the residential community where returning residents and professionals have made their homes and there they maintain a strong, active citizens' association.

Then then there is a section nearby which borders the Rio Cobre river where squatters have made their home and you do not have to guess who have given the community a bad name! Anyway I have never been fearful of visiting Lauristan even when that bloody news was being reported.

Whereas only a few of us set out in the dark on Christmas morning 2014, having a whale of a time belting out carols and waking up the neighborhood, by the time we got to the community centre the number had grown significantly.

At the community centre, the pots were already boiling preparing the green, bananas and dumplins and hot chocolate while the breadfruits were roasted nearby. How this annual Christmas breakfast is organised is that those who are good cooks bring their specialty while others prefer to donate funds towards having the breakfast prepared on site.

Some of the delicious breakfast being prepared on site

So all during the morning too, people were pouring in with pots and other containers filled with delicious ackee and codfish, curried chicken, roti, turned cornmeal, friend johnnycakes and even hominy porridge. So there was food galore and delicious to boot.

This community centre is located on land that they leased and using a 40 foot container, converted it into  a real utility centre, fully furnished with benches and tables made by residents themselves.

While we waited for the rest of the community to gather and the food to be prepared, president Nain who is in his own right one of Jamaica’s most outstanding tenors and a former member of Jamaica Folk singers, led everyone in more caroling  while real country hot chocolate was served to stave off the creeping hunger.

                                                                         

                                                                                                                             

  A sumptuous breakfast indeed

Then the Rev Simmonds who had journeyed from old Harbour, delivered  a sermon based on the story of the good Samaritan…..love thy neighbor as you love yourself.

By breakfast time just before 9am, the crowd had swelled significantly and it was interesting to see it was the young people who came filing in last as despite our efforts to wake them up with our loud caroling, they had obviously had difficulty getting out of bed after at night out at grand market and other Christmas eve events.

                                                                                                                        

Rev. Simmonds (left) waits his turn while president Audley welcomes the citizens 

But it was a great get together culminating with an absolutely wonderful breakfast and every single person getting a Christmas present from under the tree. And guess what? The grounds were as clean as a whistle when it was all over!

I swear if more communities adopted the spirit of the residents of Lauristan in 2015, this would indeed be one of the cleanest and greatest places on the face of the earth to live for indeed Lauristan is nothing like the picture painted by the bad publicity some years ago but indeed a model Jamaican community.

                                               Citizens wait patiently to be served     

https://youtu.be/L3sgIci5ffs