DAVID CUFFY

A sym­bol­ic hand­ing over of The Alan Lo­max and Ja­cob D El­der Col­lec­tion of Folk Record­ings to the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) took place at The­atre 1, Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day evening.

The event, A Cul­tur­al Jour­ney-An Evening of His­to­ry, Mu­sic and Dance, was in ho­n­our of par­tic­i­pants from the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca at­tend­ing the three-day 57th an­nu­al Sem­i­nar on the Ac­qui­si­tion of Latin Amer­i­can Li­brary Ma­te­ri­als (SALALM) host­ed by the UWI cam­pus li­braries, Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) and the Li­brary As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT), which be­gan at Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence on June 17.

SALALM's pri­ma­ry mis­sions are the con­trol and dis­sem­i­na­tion of bib­li­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion about all types of Latin Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tions, and the de­vel­op­ment of li­brary col­lec­tions of Latin Amer­i­ca in sup­port of ed­u­ca­tion­al re­search. This year is the 50th an­niver­sary of the field record­ings made in 1962 by Alan Lo­max, with as­sis­tance from JD El­der and ac­cord­ing to Dr Rosi­ta Sands of the Lo­max Archive, it is a sweep­ing sur­vey of the mu­sic of 12 is­lands, in­clu­sive of Grena­da, An­guil­la, St Lu­cia, St Kitts/Nevis, Car­ri­a­cou, Do­mini­ca, Mar­tinique, St Barthele­mey, Guade­loupe and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Lo­max, of Austin, Texas, who died in 2002 at age 87, was one of the great Amer­i­can col­lec­tors of folk mu­sic. He was a folk­lorist, mu­si­col­o­gist, writer and pro­duc­er who spent sev­en decades pro­mot­ing knowl­edge and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the world's folk mu­sic. A com­plete copy of his 1962 record­ings re­sides in a dig­i­tal archive at UWI's St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

Ja­cob D El­der (JD) was a To­ba­go-born schol­ar who earned a mas­ter's in so­ci­ol­o­gy, and a PhD in an­thro­pol­o­gy, and con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive field re­search in Africa, the Unit­ed States, and Caribbean re­gion, with spe­cial em­pha­sis on African re­li­gion, art, mu­sic, dance and ar­chi­tec­ture. He died in 2003 when he was 89 years old.

In 1962, the two col­lab­o­rat­ed to cap­ture record­ings on tra­di­tion­al life and folk mu­sic in the Wind­ward and Lee­ward Is­lands, but es­pe­cial­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Lo­max had de­scribed El­der as a "long-time com­rade and col­league" who in­tro­duced him to "the in­cred­i­ble cul­ture of Trinidad in two mag­ic weeks."

They al­so com­bined ef­forts to pro­duce an­oth­er pub­li­ca­tion, a mem­oir ti­tled Brown Girl In The Ring: An An­thol­o­gy of Song Games from the East­ern Caribbean. Kath­leen He­le­nese-Paul, head of the West In­di­an and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Di­vi­sion at UWI, said news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ments were used to dis­cov­er if any of the groups record­ed in 1962 were still ac­tive.

Con­fir­ma­tion was re­ceived from four-the Mount Pleas­ant Bap­tist Church Singers (To­ba­go), The Can­tique Singers (Mar­aval), Rose of Sharon Singers (Blan­chisseuse), and San Jose Ser­e­naders, all of whom de­liv­ered per­for­mances to the de­light of at­ten­dees, in ad­di­tion to the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers. Pri­or to the pro­gramme guests were en­ter­tained at a cock­tail re­cep­tion by Mun­gal Patasar and Pan­tar.