Si­mon Lee

A for­tu­nate few in­vi­tees wit­nessed the re­cent Lit­tle Carib work­shop per­for­mance of Jab Mo­lassie, a mu­sic the­atre pro­duc­tion, which is the lat­est project of the vi­sion­ary Cal­abash Foun­da­tion for the Arts.

A (sup­pos­ed­ly) ob­jec­tive re­view should be cau­tious with su­perla­tives, so while at­tempt­ing to be con­struc­tive­ly crit­i­cal in the in­ter­ests of arts jour­nal­ism, I'm con­strained to ad­mit that I can think of no per­for­mance on a Trinidad stage in the last 20 years which ex­ud­ed the elec­tri­fy­ing cre­ativ­i­ty Jab Mo­lassie brought to town.

And this is on­ly the be­gin­ning, the sec­ond work­shop of the year, which brought the small band of mu­si­cians to­geth­er with vo­cal­ists and a dancer for the first time, af­ter on­ly three three-hour re­hearsals.

The first pub­lic per­for­mance is planned for next May, yet giv­en Cal­abash's brief "to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the per­form­ing arts in T&T by en­abling the cre­ation of new in­dige­nous works which will be per­formed on lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al stages" it was ob­vi­ous to the Lit­tle Carib au­di­ence that the work they ob­served in process and progress marks a ma­jor wa­ter­shed in T&T's per­form­ing arts, and a se­ri­ous con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean and con­tem­po­rary World Mu­sic.

Jab may be a high­ly am­bi­tious project but the com­bi­na­tion of a ju­di­cious choice of li­bret­to (sto­ry­line) and per­son­nel en­sures that it is fea­si­ble and proves that work­ing with­in lim­its does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean lim­it­ed work.

The li­bret­to (an ad­ven­tur­ous first for UTT dou­ble bass in­struc­tor Cait­lyn Kam­min­ga) is a lo­cal adap­ta­tion of Stravin­sky's Sol­dier's Tale–a Russ­ian folk­tale ver­sion of the Faust leg­end, in which the Sol­dier ex­changes his vi­o­lin for a book from the Dev­il which re­alis­es all his de­sires (re­call­ing the bib­li­cal moral:

"What shall it prof­it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.")

Shift­ing the set­ting to Laven­tille ("Home of the Dead End Kids") and re­plac­ing the Sol­dier with Star­boy might cause some rip­ples among those who pro­fess con­cern over neg­a­tive per­cep­tions and stereo­typ­ing of com­mu­ni­ties (al­though Star­boy Muham­mad Muwak­il hails from Bel­mont rather than Glen­coe) but Kam­min­ga's de­ci­sion res­onates with Stravin­sky's orig­i­nal mo­ti­va­tion.

Strand­ed in Switzer­land to­wards the end of the Great War in 1918, Stravin­sky opt­ed to col­lab­o­rate with Swiss writer Ra­muz to pro­duce a short work with few char­ac­ters and in­stru­men­tal­ists, which could eas­i­ly trav­el.

So the scale of the orig­i­nal ac­cords well with Cal­abash's de­vel­op­men­tal na­ture. Mu­si­cal­ly too there are res­o­nances. Stravin­sky's score was cre­at­ed from folk­tale, leg­end, dreams (par­tic­u­lar­ly his dream of a gyp­sy woman play­ing vi­o­lin to her child) and such di­verse mu­si­cal sources as the Tan­go, the His­pan­ic Pasadoble and ear­ly Jazz (imag­ined by Stravin­sky from im­port­ed Amer­i­can scores).

It's im­pos­si­ble to fault the con­cep­tu­al frame­work Jab is build­ing on, but any artis­tic idea is on­ly as good as its im­ple­men­ta­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

Com­pos­er and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Do­minique Le Gen­dre gave lo­cals a stun­ning taste of what the Roy­al Opera House in Lon­don and the New York-based En­sem­ble du Monde have been re­cent­ly com­mis­sion­ing.

Just as the li­bret­to draws on Tri­ni Car­ni­val and J'Ou­vert cul­ture, Le Gen­dre ref­er­ences the spec­trum of T&T mu­si­cal cul­ture, opt­ing for a nine-piece en­sem­ble (com­plete with dou­ble tenor pan) which re­calls the Venezue­lan style string band ac­com­pa­ni­ment of ear­ly ca­lyp­so.

How­ev­er, there's noth­ing anachro­nis­tic about the score or in­stru­men­ta­tion–which in­cor­po­rates J'Ou­vert's foot shuf­fle chip and bot­tle and spoon in­to con­ven­tion­al per­cus­sion. It was a de­light­ful sur­prize which made per­fect sense to see Trinidad's star­boy jazz trum­peter Eti­enne Charles peek­ing puck­ish­ly from un­der his porkpie along­side his part­ner Is­mail Lumanovs­ki, the vir­tu­oso Mace­don­ian gyp­sy clar­inet­tist and clas­si­cal vi­o­lin soloist Jonathan Stor­er.

On pa­per the en­sem­ble, or "band" as Le Gen­dre refers to it, might look im­prob­a­ble to those ex­pect­ing "clas­si­cal mu­sic" but just as Stravin­sky dis­pensed with un­nec­es­sary con­ven­tions draw­ing from pop­u­lar and folk cul­ture, Le Gen­dre dips light-hand­ed­ly and some­times hu­mor­ous­ly in­to our mu­si­cal her­itage, which owes as much to kalen­da and Bap­tist chants, kaiso and rap­so, the rat­tle and roll of J'Ou­vert, as it does to re­gion­al in­flu­ences like the Cre­ole jazz in­spired by Mar­tinique's bigu­ine. From the open­ing bars to Star­boy's fran­tic vi­o­lin so­lo at the fi­nale, the mu­sic cre­at­ed all the mag­ic promised in Jab's pro­sa­ic red book.

The ini­tial melod­ic theme redo­lent with mys­tery and a hope be­yond the "Dead End" Laven­tille set­ting, rode a per­cus­sive rhythm, which I can see some au­di­ences ris­ing from their seats to do that slow wine and shuf­fle unique to Panora­ma pa­trons.

The mu­sic for Jab def­i­nite­ly re­quires the kind of at­ten­tion not pos­si­ble in a 50-minute per­for­mance, where so much else is hap­pen­ing on­stage and hope­ful­ly we can look for­ward to a CD (along with a DVD of the en­tire pro­duc­tion) with which to in­dulge our­selves.

But for now suf­fice it to note that it thrilled and se­duced, mov­ing ef­fort­less­ly from clas­si­cal to jazz to J'Ou­vert, folk and pos­ses­sion with mag­i­cal re­al­i­ty.

A beau­ti­ful touch, among so many, was Star­boy's vi­o­lin so­lo for the dancer which re­called the mu­sic of the for­mal French Cre­ole pre-Eman­ci­pa­tion car­ni­val balls.

The sto­ry car­ried by the mu­sic, vo­cal­ists and dancer re­mains open-end­ed, deny­ing the in­evitable Faus­t­ian co­da with a ques­tion: "Dere hope for him yet? Doh know how...What yuh tink 'bout Star­boy now?"

Co-opt­ing 3 Canal Rap­so vet­er­ans Wen­dell Man­war­ren and Roger Roberts along with re­al-life star­boy Muhammed Muwak­il, lo­cal opera di­va Na­talia Dop­well and lo­cal vo­cal­ist Ger­maine Wil­son, was an­oth­er stroke of Cre­olis­ing in­spi­ra­tion, mix­ing clas­si­cal and pop­u­lar voic­es. Muwak­il, who in his Mid­night Rob­ber in­car­na­tion is the spir­it of force­ful men­ace, may have to bring some of that force to fu­ture per­for­mances both to make the pow­er be­stowed by Jab's book cred­i­ble and to raise his role above that of the Rap­so­ni­ans, whose act­ing ex­pe­ri­ence showed.

While a lo­cal di­rec­tor with vast ex­pe­ri­ence of straight dra­ma and mu­si­cals voiced doubts as to whether au­di­ences would be able to fol­low the sto­ry­line and more im­por­tant­ly be­lieve in the mag­ic of Jab's book, I'm con­fi­dent that the mag­ic is there in the mu­sic.

Mag­ic, catch­ing the pow­er and pos­ses­sion through rhythm and melody are in­te­gral as­pects of Cre­ole cul­ture, all of which I felt at the Lit­tle Carib work­shop per­for­mance.

This learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, which in­volved UTT stu­dents as un­der­stud­ies, is as in­valu­able to the fi­nal tour­ing show as it was for the small first au­di­ence. While gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to dither over arts fund­ing, Cal­abash and spon­sors FCB and Neal & Massy must be con­grat­u­lat­ed for as­sem­bling, com­mis­sion­ing and launch­ing what has every promise of be­com­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess, root­ed in T&T.