Evening time/Panfest

 It's almost the eve of the Tallawah Mento Band and the Jamaican Folk Review's  historic trip to Ghana to compete in Panafest 2025. 

The taste they gave attendees at the Lauderdale Performing Arts Center was more like a bellyful.

A bellyful of music, laughs, dance,  kumina and happinesses!

Panafest (the Pan African Festival of Arts and Culture), is a biennial event established in Ghana in 1992 to unite Africans in the diaspora and on the continent and celebrate their resilience and African identity. 

Colin Smith, founder of Tallawah Mento Band and a cultural icon in his own right, explains the concept.

Kumina time

The talented cast

Panafest was the brainchild of the late, great Pan Africanist play right/author,  Efua Sutherland.

It has become a landmark festival in Ghana that gives Africans an opportunity to learn from each other wherever they are .

 This years theme is "Ensuring the African Kinship: Our Essence, Our Well-being, Our Prosperity."

Significantly, this is the first time a folkloric Jamaican entry will be involved in this auspicious,  two weeks event. 

 It took the Louise Bennett Coverly Heritage Council to make it happen.

If the taste we in Florida got is anything to go by, our entry will make a huge impact on the minds of Africans at home and abroad. It traces our progress through music and dance, from emancipation to victory.

 The performance also highlighted the contribution of world renowned artists such as Peter Tosh. Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and the foot stomping energy of kumina music and dance, in uplifting the souls of the once downtrodden people. 

We look forward to our particants  returning home with many medals for this creative, entertaining and educational performance.

Although the crowd of attendees was enthusiastic and participated in song and dance, in my book the numbers fell short of expectation for this important fund-raising event, especially in Florida where so many Jamaicans reside.

Ps. Follow the link below for an excellent review of their performance in Ghana.

https://wiredja.com/index.php/categories/newsberg/culture/africa-the-jamaican-folk-revue-and-tallawah-mento-band-performs-at-cape-coast-castle-ghana-the-heritage-preserved

Juneteenth

Juneteenth is a holiday celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, enslaved people were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.

Every year we have an event at a Tamarac park to mark the day and 2025 wasn't any different.

This year the celebration took place on the 14th June at the Tamarac sports complex.

 There was a big difference this year though. 

It was in terms of the attendees.

I have never seen so few at this event and can only assume that this is as a result of how much ICE is harassing non-white people.😡

For their modus operandi is to harass, arrest and even assault anyone that is not white under the guise that they are " criminal undocumented immigrants". 

That's totally disgusting.

Despite the clear dangers, those of us who ignored the possibility of an ICE raid and the ensuing inconvenience, turned out and had a good time.

Music, poetry, dance and a nice variety of food trucks.

Hampton Old Girls

I will never become a member of the Hampton old girls association, although I attended that high school. You see I have no intention of ever getting 0ld so I stridently refuse to be involved with anything so named. 

However, my neighbour Verleeta is an activist with that organisation so sometimes I am browbeaten into attending some of their functions.

 So yesterday I had to give up my healthy ride to Hermitage, to attend their carol service and brunch. 

The service was held at the Jamaica College chapel and it was OK with most of the carols, thank God, being those jazzy "relevant to Jamaica" ones created by father Ho Lung. 

Brunch was at St. Andrew high school. (Hampton is located in the country at Malvern in St. Elizabeth. It was a bit badly organised as the caterer came without serving staff. However the "old" girls jumped in and after an inordinately long wait we finally got fed. As they say, good things are worth waiting for and it was good. 

 During the after meal chat, I was called on to say something about the late Millicent Knight, an old girl who later became headmistress of Westwood High School and someone about whom I had written. She should have been at that function as a special guest but she died three weeks ago. She was 98 years old and had thoroughly enjoyed her life. I would sum her up as someone who was extremely happy in her own skin. Incidentally, I was asked to provide transportation for another famous old girl from the chapel to the brunch. 

That is the great Olive Lewin, icon of Jamaican dance and music. I had never met her before and although she looked very nice, unfortunately she suffers from Alzheimer's. Terrible disease. Poor soul, I don't even think she was aware that it was her old school's function. Her life has "ended" so tragically in comparison to Miss Knight's.

 Oh the terrible hazards of old age.