2004 Conference Report
This year, the Society for Caribbean Studies was very pleased to announce Dr Olive Lewin as the 2004 recipient of the Bridget Jones Travel Bursary for arts practitioners and researchers based in the Caribbean.
For many, Dr Lewin will require no introduction. An accomplished pianist and violinist, she is well known for founding three organisations: the Jamaican Folk Singers, the Memory Bank, and the Jamaica Youth Orchestra. The Memory Bank has played a crucial role in documenting Jamaica's rich musical heritage for present and future generations, and the Folk Singers have helped to bring much of this to life. Dr Lewin has toured across the world with the Jamaican Folk Singers, bringing their music to audiences as far apart as Argentina, Britain, Canada, the Caribbean, Germany, South Africa and the US.
Through the youth orchestra, Dr Lewin has demonstrated her belief in the vital and positive role of music in shaping the future. Indeed, whilst demonstrating its unique power to improve and humanise people's experiences during slavery, Dr Lewin has also displayed a staunch belief in the ongoing positive power of music, bringing folk songs to hospitals, prisons and schools. She stands alongside figures such as Louise Bennett as a promoter of traditional Jamaican culture whose work has helped to lift and liberate the national psyche. The Order of Jamaica and a Gold Musgrave Medal are just two of Dr Lewin's many awards and honours.
Dr Lewin is the author of a wide range of books and articles, including collections of Jamaican folk songs and Rock it Come Over: The Folk Music of Jamaica. Having also lectured and held workshops both locally and internationally, and having attended several UNESCO cultural conferences as a delegate, she has earned the reputation of being a leading authority in her field.
Dr Lewin addressed the Society on Jamaican folk music from the 16th to the 20th centuries, in a presentation that allowed us to appreciate her wealth of knowledge in this field, her first-hand experience as a gatherer and performer of folk music, not to mention her beautiful singing voice. Enslaved and free worker ancestors of Jamaicans of African descent created this music, and as Dr Lewin explained in her talk, this musical tradition performed a number of roles for those who developed it. It was beyond the reach of traders and masters, always available regardless of space and time, could establish links with home, bonded individuals together into a society, minimised physical and psychological pain, and refuted the value systems of the oppressors. At times calling on the audience (which included many Jamaicans) for their assistance and articipation in her performance of specific folk songs, Dr Lewin showed the redemptive power of music to build lines of communication and sharing between people, 'promoting peace, productivity, and ultimately one world'.
THE SOCIETY FOR CARIBBEAN STUDIES (UK) ANNUAL CONFERENCE PAPERS, VOLUME 5, 2004, makes available selected papers from this conference. See 'Conference Papers 2000 - present'.