Jab Molassie: A vision of ourselves Simon Lee Published: Monday, November 10, 2014 Starboy (Nicolai Salcedo), centre, thinks he has the edge in a confrontation with the Jab Molassies (Roger Roberts and Natalia Dopwell). A dead-end starboy from behind the bridge and over the hills was busy with his fiddle bow on a rain-beaten night, see-sawing between this hell and the next, the plenitude of love and the emptiness of a world without music; gambling for bling or nothing, fortune or family, wrestling with the shame of hollow fame. In the space of one dark hour, Starboy encountered our own Creole Lord of Darkness, Jab Molassie, pitchforker of souls and his attendant Blue Demons, descended from the heights of Paramin and drunk away his soul’s debt, throwing his cards on a J’Ouvert rumshop’s sodden floor, finding the courage to retrieve his fiddle and the bow and love of his life in the fallen carnival queen at his feet. Temporarily at least, the sound of a new music, silenced demonic screams, rose over the slumbering suburb of Woodbrook and the roofscape of Laventille alike. On Thursday night, this simple creolisation of the Faust legend and world premiere of the global-music drama piece Jab Molassie raised the ceiling for all the performing arts in T&T, at their spiritual and creative home, the Little Carib Theatre. At a gala performance dedicated to the memory of Margaret Walcott—who, like McBurnie, never surrendered to the jumbies and imps of cultural imperialism and commercial mediocrity—the entire cast, creative and production team emphatically demonstrated that while some are content to fiddle, they are burning, as the Haitians would say, but with the kind of fire which illuminates and rekindles, rather than merely turning to bitter ashes. Music, especially in the Caribbean, has never been simply the food of love; more like the bread of life. Air and water may help sustain the body, but the soul craves music for this dance of life. It’s a liberating fact that everything has its own vibration, from people to places, and when these vibrations resonate with their own unique sound, the musical possibilities are endless. Sadly we are deafened with noise of development, or are too busy with the gridlock of our own lives’ traffic, to listen to ourselves, or our environment. The din of the present drowns out the subtle melodies and rhythms of the past; we consume the insipid offerings of globalised mass culture, much like Starboy exchanging his violin for Jab’s book of fortune. Pull up selector and turn your lamps down low, Jab Molassie is here, acutely re-attuning our ear and eye to what we’ve forgotten how to hear and see. And none of it emanates from the recording studios of LA, or the opera houses of Milan, Paris and London, although don’t be surprised if these same places are soon scrambling for a piece of Jab. If librettist Caitlyn Kamminga’s script gave us a postmodern Trinidad (stamped effectively on three walls by Benny Gomes’ abstract roofscape lighting) suffused with the living legacy of a J’Ouvert folklore forged from the historical experience of this place, then Dominique Le Gendre’s score perfectly complemented the spirit of the stage action. A musical ensemble reminiscent of the Venezuelan string band (violin, double bass, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, percussion) recalled our earliest recorded Carnival music, but with resonances of the formal European dances of the earliest carnivals. The addition of 20th-century instrument—Seion Gomez’s double seconds pan—voiced symbolically and literally the musical soundscape T&T has inherited but neglected: kalenda and J’Ouvert rhythms: Orisha and Baptist chants, as well as newer sounds soaked in these roots, from soca to rapso. Although the refurbished Little Carib’s acoustic capabilities required the musicians to moderate their volume, it was a little disappointing not to hear some of the bottle-and-spoon percussion which had been prominent in pre-production workshops and rehearsal, but this is a petty quibble given the fluid range Le Gendre’s score encompassed. From the raucous trumpeting and syncopated chip shuffle of J’Ouvert, to the almost baroque lyricism of the strings, which accompanied Starboy’s courtship dance with his Carnival queen, Le Gendre re-created this particular environment, catching vibrations now encoded in T&T’s collective aural DNA. With a light feminine deftness, Le Gendre playfully, fleetingly, sometimes humorously, and rigorously when necessary, makes the kind of magic which Jab can only envy but never buy. In the same way that Nigel Rojas’ few bars of flamenco guitar made everyone all hear the possibilities of soca in Bunji’s Differentology, Le Gendre’s score re-opens the own music box from which the jewels, which have been languishing, gathering dust, are retrieved to shine more brightly under present light. Her own musical genealogy (which includes Martiniquan grandparents) mirrors Trinidad’s, so that the bele, mazurka, waltz, contredanse, beguine and Antillean jazz) also feature in her soundscape. Kathryn Chan’s minimal set design (wooden pomitan—like the traditional centre pole in an Orisha palais—stage left, sloping extended bench stage right, see-through screen backstage, rudimentary seesaw in front of backdrop screen) and stylish modern costuming reflected both the contemporary and timeless intentions of the stage action. Pat Cumper, renowned Jamaican and black British theatre director/writer/producer, must have enjoyed her directing as much as her eclectic cast, whose undoubted talents were deployed in entirely new guises. Starboy, Nickolai Salcedo, found a new role beyond Gyazette frontman, mixing brash naivete with bling assurance but upstaged by Jab Roger Roberts, who leaves his 3Canal persona behind to play pimping gangsta, aided and abetted by Natalia Dopwell (replete with red braid horns), who also shed her dulcet opera star image for bacchanalian jamette. It was interesting to see another 3Canal warrior, Wendell Manwarren, in a supporting, narrator-style role, rather than in the usual spotlight. Manwarren’s male and Germaine Wilson’s female corporal effectively commented on and directed Starboy’s internal struggle. Given that the gala was a premiere, there were occasional problems, which may need addressing before the production goes international. Movement director Dave Williams was mostly inspired (particularly with the seesaw and the behind-the-screen silhouetted J’Ouvert leggo) but Starboy’s courtship dance with Carnival queen Dominique Doyle proved a narrative hiatus, which might be shortened. In terms of the finale, the audience may be left wondering why the Faust motif is abandoned for an open-ended ambiguity. Having reclaimed his violin, soul, life and found new love, is it credible Starboy is going to risk returning to Laventille, where Jab awaits his revenge, because his girl begs to go meet his mother? The choice the corporals point up is not entirely clear. But then no one who sees future productions will want to see Starboy dead and maybe several performances will clarify what this reviewer has missed. What is abundantly clear is that T&T has created a performance which explores some of its unlimited potential, that draws on the unique Trinidadian and Caribbean heritages past and present, in the same mode as the Haitian musical Vodou Nation did in 2006. We can all be proud of Jab Molassie, for letting us hear ourselves, and presenting our reality to a world audience. Entertainment
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:52:14 +0000
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