Zahra Gor­don

Three years ago bassist and Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) lec­tur­er Cait­lyn Kam­min­ga be­gan work­ing on an adap­ta­tion of L'His­toire du Sol­dat (The Sol­dier's Tale) by Russ­ian com­pos­er Ig­or Stravin­sky. The Sol­dier's Tale was writ­ten near­ly 100 years ago and is based on a Russ­ian folk tale about a World War I sol­dier who trades his fid­dle with the dev­il for a book that pre­dicts the fu­ture.

Kam­min­ga's adap­ta­tion, Jab Mo­lassie, is set thou­sands of miles away in Car­ni­val in T&T, to mu­sic root­ed in the ca­lyp­so tra­di­tion. In the piece, a mu­si­cian sells his in­stru­ment, and con­se­quent­ly his soul, to a jab mo­lassie.At first glance, the two sto­ries seem a far cry from each oth­er, but dur­ing an in­ter­view last week, Kam­min­ga said there were many par­al­lels be­tween the works. One is that Stravin­sky was heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by African rhythms and jazz at the time of writ­ing.

Kam­min­ga did ex­ten­sive re­search–with mas­sive amounts of help from lo­cal his­to­ri­ans, artists and oth­ers such as the se­cu­ri­ty guard at her son's school who helped her achieve some au­then­tic­i­ty in the di­a­logue."I brought him the script and he laughed at me and said, 'They might say that in New Or­leans but they don't say that in T&T.' So I sat with him and we went through it."

The nar­ra­tor, Cor­po­ral, is named af­ter the guard.Some of Kam­min­ga's main as­sis­tance came from UK-based com­pos­er Do­minique Le Gen­dre, who is writ­ing orig­i­nal mu­sic for the piece, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Maria Nunes. Nunes' lo­gis­ti­cal as­sis­tance to both Kam­min­ga and Le Gen­dre mor­phed in­to the cre­ation of the Cal­abash Foun­da­tion for the Arts, which is fund­ing the project.

The "helpers" weren't al­ways pos­i­tive, how­ev­er. When Michelle Ay­oung Chee of the Tall­man Foun­da­tion first read the script, she found fault with the set­ting in Laven­tille. "She looked at me and said, 'Why does this have to hap­pen in Laven­tille? Why does it al­ways have to be Laven­tille?' And I said it's the truth and of course it could be set in West­moor­ings. You can set it any­where. It's a Faus­t­ian tale and that's what makes it so uni­ver­sal."

When Le Gen­dre first saw the text she was "im­me­di­ate­ly sold.""The most im­por­tant part of the piece is the text. The de­scrip­tion of the La­dy Young in the open­ing scene is fan­tas­tic and it re­al­ly cap­tures what it is and it's very po­et­ic," said Le Gen­dre. 'This sto­ry is a dilem­ma'

Nunes be­lieves the Faus­t­ian as­pects of the sto­ry lend well to adap­ta­tion."I think it's im­por­tant to un­der­stand that this sto­ry is a dilem­ma. It's a piece of the­atre that will in­vite the au­di­ence to ask ques­tions. That's what makes it very rel­e­vant to us in Trinidad–the mes­sage is what you take from it; it's not try­ing to tell you what the an­swer is but al­low­ing you to ar­rive at the an­swer."

Equal­ly as im­por­tant as the text is the mu­sic. Kam­min­ga and Le Gen­dre stress the de­scrip­tion "mu­si­cal the­atre." Le Gen­dre sees the work as a re­vival of what she be­lieves was the gold­en age of the­atre in T&T dur­ing the '60s and '70s."This is a very con­scious and de­lib­er­ate move to re­con­nect with all those who played a part in shap­ing our the­atre and us as per­form­ers, so it's very much in­tact with the tra­di­tions in which I grew up where there was a mar­riage of mu­sic and the­atre. The mu­sic I'm writ­ing is root­ed in our tra­di­tions. It's melod­ic. The mu­sic has typ­i­cal bass lines and riffs and it's a wrap­around of our mu­si­cal lega­cy from the chantuelle days come right up to rap­so be­cause there's a lot of chant­ed parts," she ex­plained.

Some of the no­table peo­ple who shaped this time pe­ri­od in­clude Derek Wal­cott, Beryl McBurnie and No­ble Dou­glas. Dou­glas has been brought on board as a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er. Oth­er no­ta­bles in­volved in the project are rap­so group 3Canal (Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Stan­ton Kew­ley and Roger Roberts), spo­ken word artist Muham­mad Muwak­il, and UK-based ac­tor Mar­ti­na Laird.

For Kam­min­ga the ben­e­fits of im­mers­ing her­self in T&T cul­ture through recre­at­ing Jab Mo­lassie have been man­i­fold."It's drawn me to things that I hope and dreamed would hap­pen. When I got in­ter­est­ed in this job (as a UTT lec­tur­er) my fa­ther said, 'Why the hell would you want to leave Lon­don to go to Trinidad?' But I told him that when I see my life in Lon­don, I feel like it's in black and white and sepia. When I see it in Trinidad I see it in tech­ni­col­or. There's such a rich ta­pes­try of cul­ture here. Every lay­er you peel back you re­alise there's more and more to peel."

Cal­abash Foun­da­tion for the Arts

Jab Mo­lassie gave birth to the Cal­abash Foun­da­tion for the Arts, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion in­cor­po­rat­ed in Au­gust 2012, whose mis­sion is to pro­vide fund­ing and sup­port sys­tems to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of new cre­ative works in T&T. Af­ter its first full pro­duc­tion in May, the foun­da­tion hopes to take Jab Mo­lassie on a sec­ondary schools tour fol­lowed by an in­ter­na­tion­al tour.

Part of the Cal­abash mis­sion is al­so to sup­port young artistes, which is why the work­shop process was so im­por­tant to the de­vel­op­ment of Jab Mo­lassie.In ear­ly Jan­u­ary a week-long work­shop was held at UTT which in­clud­ed in­tense ses­sions for the com­pos­er, li­bret­tist, mu­si­cians and vo­cal per­form­ers. The work­shop al­lowed the com­pos­er and li­bret­tist to hear the work and re­fine de­tails. An im­por­tant as­pect of the work­shop are the young artistes who par­tic­i­pate. Their par­tic­i­pa­tion is as both per­form­ers and un­der­stud­ies to the cre­ative roles.

At the Jan­u­ary work­shop par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed Na­talia Dop­well, Rhi­an Guer­rero, Ger­maine Wil­son, Kendel Haynes and Muham­mad Muwak­il. The next work­shop will be held in May.