Deb­bie Ja­cob

Mu­si­cal Youth byJoanne C Hill­huse

Caribbean Reads Pub­lish­ing, 2014

Za­hara is a lone­ly teenag­er try­ing to nav­i­gate her way through life af­ter her moth­er dies in a car ac­ci­dent. She feels like a both­er to her icy Granny Lin­da, who keeps all of her feel­ings bot­tled up in­side. In­stead of mop­ing around, Za­hara finds so­lace in mu­sic. No one talks about Za­hara's ab­sen­tee fa­ther or her moth­er so Za­hara is left with that sink­ing feel­ing that emo­tions should be buried deep in­side.

Za­hara's life takes a new and ex­cit­ing turn when a boy who calls him­self Sha­ka en­ters the pic­ture. To­geth­er, Sha­ka and Za­hara form a spe­cial bond bridged by mu­sic in Joanne C Hill­house's Young Adult (YA) nov­el Mu­si­cal Youth. Win­ner of the sec­ond-place prize in the in­au­gur­al Burt Award for Young Adult Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Mu­si­cal Youth suc­ceeds in cap­tur­ing teenage angst in a com­pelling and cred­i­ble way.

Al­though the nov­el is set on the Caribbean is­land of An­tigua, the themes of alien­ation, colour con­scious­ness, lone­li­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tran­scend Caribbean cul­ture and ap­peal to any teenag­er who deals with the chal­lenges of be­ing be­tween child­hood and adult­hood. It is a sen­su­al nov­el that is age-ap­pro­pri­ate.

Good YA lit­er­a­ture–like Mu­si­cal Youth–ap­peals to all read­ers and not just the YA age range which usu­al­ly spans 14-22.

All-in-all Mu­si­cal Youth is an en­ter­tain­ing read that re­minds teenagers that they will sur­vive their trou­bles. The writ­ing is vivid; the char­ac­ters are cred­i­ble; the idea of us­ing mu­sic as a thread to tie the char­ac­ters to­geth­er is bril­liant.

Hill­house cap­tures the angst of teenage love with­out be­ing sap­py or con­de­scend­ing. The nov­el fea­tures an un­spo­ken mes­sage about the im­por­tance of be­ing ex­posed to all types of mu­sic. Mu­sic is like read­ing: the more you know of dif­fer­ent gen­res, the more you ex­pe­ri­ence about life.

Za­hara ex­pands her world as well as her re­la­tion­ship with peo­ple by learn­ing about dif­fer­ent mu­sic. She loves Bu­ju Ban­ton and Bob Mar­ley's mu­sic. Her priest Fr El­lie teach­es Za­hara about jazz. Sha­ka likes hip hop, and his band, the Li­on Crew, turn many pop­u­lar songs in­to rock­ers. There is al­ways some­thing to dis­cov­er in mu­sic and that be­comes a metaphor for dis­cov­er­ing what is new and ex­cit­ing in life.

Mu­sic be­comes an in­ter­est­ing mo­tif on which to build both re­la­tion­ships and con­flict. It is the bond be­tween Sha­ka and Za­hara, but it al­so be­comes a source of ten­sion as the two teens must face the chal­lenges of com­ing out of their com­fort zone per­son­al­ly and mu­si­cal­ly. Mu­sic dri­ves a wedge be­tween the two teens when Za­hara sug­gests that Sha­ka could dig deep­er in­to his mu­sic.

The teens' tal­ent helps them to face the world, but it does not give them un­shake­able self-con­fi­dence. Hill­house ex­plores this para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tion with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and in­sight show­ing how even the most tal­ent­ed teens can strug­gle with self-con­fi­dence.

On an­oth­er lev­el, Hill­house ex­plores the con­cept of beau­ty and colour, all in a nat­ur­al way that will help teens deal with these con­cepts and is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly in a Caribbean set­ting.

Mu­si­cal Youth is a com­pelling read be­cause Hill­house has man­aged to make read­ers re­al­ly care about the char­ac­ters and their strug­gles. It is a de­serv­ing, prize-win­ning book that now com­fort­ably claims its place in Caribbean Young Adult lit­er­a­ture.