Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

This Fri­day at 6 pm at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Port-of-Spain, friends and prot�g�es of the late Geral­dine Con­nor will gath­er to com­mem­o­rate her life and work. Con­nor passed away in Oc­to­ber, 2011, and there has al­ready been a memo­r­i­al for her at Queen's Hall, which took place one month af­ter her death. How­ev­er, the Geral­dine Con­nor Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, co-chaired by her good friend Anne Fridal, has opt­ed to do an­oth­er memo­r­i­al–this one al­so cel­e­brat­ing what was per­haps her best-known work, Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah. With no apolo­gies, I stand by the over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive re­view of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah I wrote in the Guardian when the mu­si­cal de­buted here some nine years ago. Though Pe­ter Min­shall fa­mous­ly went on to say rather un­flat­ter­ing things about the pro­duc­tion, I main­tain that it was–and is–a bril­liant com­bi­na­tion of high Eu­ro­pean tra­di­tion and in­dige­nous Caribbean tra­di­tion. It was spec­tac­u­lar, a kind of big, glitzy vi­sion of our Car­ni­val, with su­pe­ri­or per­for­mances, cos­tum­ing and chore­og­ra­phy that, more than mere­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing our his­to­ry of cul­tur­al syn­cretism, cel­e­brat­ed it. I don't think I ever met Geral­dine Con­nor. I don't know any of her work be­yond Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah. But I do know that piece of work is a spe­cial gift to our coun­try, and for this rea­son I em­braced the op­por­tu­ni­ty when Con­nor's close friend Fridal called for peo­ple to walk in the pro­ces­sion at Fri­day's event, called Geri's Jour­ney.

My daugh­ter, The La­dy and two school friends of hers will join me in the pro­ces­sion. It's an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to do some­thing be­yond the rou­tines of teenage life– school, the mall, text af­ter text af­ter text etc–and I hope they en­joy it. I'm con­fi­dent they will; Atak­lan, Ray­mond Ed­wards, Mar­vin Smith, Mavis John, and Anne her­self will per­form at Fri­day's event, a trib­ute to the wide in­flu­ence Con­nor had in her life as an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist with a ca­reer that spanned Trinidad and the UK. A press re­lease from the com­mit­tee says, "Geri, as she was known, was re­spon­si­ble for such works as Blues in the Night, Vodou Na­tion, and, of course, Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah.? She was a past pupil of and a teacher at Diego Mar­tin Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School. She al­so taught at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege. She taught pan and mu­sic to the na­tion via her tele­vi­sion pro­gramme in the 80s, and was a part of the UWI Ex­tra-Mur­al Va­ca­tion Class pro­gramme where she taught choral skills and con­duct­ing." The cel­e­bra­tion of Con­nor's life con­tin­ues on Sun­day when the com­mit­tee will hold a jazz par­ty at Le Caf� Opera, Cipri­ani Boule­vard. (Called Jazz it for Geri, it is a fund-rais­er and tick­ets cost $100.) As I'm writ­ing this, I'm look­ing at Trinida­di­an-born tenor Ronald Samm singing Re­deemer in a YouTube video record­ed at the 2007 stag­ing of Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah at Hare­wood House, Leeds. The ethe­re­al tones of the ko­ra, a West African stringed in­stru­ment, un­der­pin a gospel-style ren­di­tion of the Baroque Han­del or­a­to­rio piece, while Alyson Browne swoops around the stage in 20-foot tall white silken wings. When I saw this scene at Queen's Hall so many years ago, I cried. It was one of the high­lights of the show.

Samm sings a touch­ing, sim­ple ver­sion of a clas­si­cal work, and Con­nor makes the clas­sic im­me­di­ate and ac­ces­si­ble by stag­ing that takes in Africa, the Caribbean and Eu­rope. I go back to YouTube to find a tra­di­tion­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion of I Know that My Re­deemer Liveth, and there's a clas­si­cal singer per­form­ing it with an or­ches­tra. It's al­so beau­ti­ful, but the Car­ni­val Mes­si­ah in­ter­pre­ta­tion is a whole oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence. With­out a doubt, Geral­dine Con­nor has cre­at­ed some- thing new from this mu­sic, some­thing pow­er­ful, deeply mov­ing and unique. This is the lega­cy I will cel­e­brate on Fri­day when I walk with the girls down the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral cen­tre aisle. Fri­day's event is free and open to the pub­lic. I in­vite all of you to come and share in the cel­e­bra­tion of the life of this woman who has touched so many peo­ple. Do it for your­self, too, be­cause when we cel­e­brate the ac­com­plish­ments of T&T's cit­i­zens, we cel­e­brate our­selves. Geri's Jour­ney will take place at the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day, from 6 pm. It is open to the pub­lic and en­try is free; a col­lec­tion will be tak­en. Jazz it for Geri, a fund-rais­er, will take place on Sun­day, at Le Caf� Opera, Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain. Tick­ets are $100 and avail­able from the fol­low­ing mem­bers of the Geral­dine Con­nor Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee: Anne–766-9300, Mar­vin–763-8681, Don­na Mae– 497-2085.