Jamaican Composers in the Classical Tradition: Three Vocal Works by Dexter, Ashbourne, and Marshall
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JAMAICAN COMPOSERS IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: THREE VOCAL WORKS BY DEXTER, ASHBOURNE, AND MARSHALL BY MELISSA ANNE DAVIS THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts Music with a concentration in Performance and Literature in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Ollie Watts Davis, Chair Associate Professor Gayle Sherwood Magee, Director of Research Professor Charlotte Mattax-Moersch Assistant Professor Reynold Tharp ABSTRACT Classical music has been present in the Jamaica since the 18 tVi century. The country conquered by Britain in 1655, still bears its European influence in its current culture. With a history of many cultures sharing common ground on the island, Jamaicans have adopted a love for hybridization - the interweaving of elements from various cultures together. With the dominant influences of African and European culture in Jamaica, Jamaica’s art music composers have sought to create music that fuses the elements of each culture together in their compositions. The topic of this dissertation is an exploration of how hybridization in Jamaica has served the sociological purposes of preserving Jamaica’s rich culture, uniting the people and allowing the island’s folk culture to gain further exposure on international concert stages. Jamaican art music composers, Noel Dexter (b.1938-), Peter Ashbourne (b.1950-), and Andrew Marshall (b.1982-), have fulfilled these functions of hybridization through their works and as a result, have aided in strengthening Jamaican culture. With a plethora of cultural influences in Jamaica, and society questioning the definition of Jamaica’s true identity since the country’s independence in 1962, hybridization provides an answer to Jamaica’s obscured sense of identity in the syncretization of its cultures. This blending of cultures defines Jamaica as a country that values mixture and it is this fusion that aids in rectifying the country’s issues of the loss of its folk tradition, divisions of class and culture, and the country’s international impact. Hybridization has solved a host of social ills in Jamaica and is to be credited for being a significant factor in helping the nation to progress. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I: JAMAICAN HYBRID IDENTITY AND COLONIALISM IN JAMAICA........... 10 II: FOLK AND ART MUSIC IN JAMAICA.................................................................. 23 III: NOEL DEXTER (b. 1938-)...........................................................................................43 PSALM27...................................................................................................................... 53 IV: PETER ASHBOURNE (b.1950-)................................................................................59 FI MI LOVE HAVE LION HEART (2005; For High Voice & Piano)......................66 V: ANDREW MARSHALL (b.1982-).............................................................................85 HARDTALK...................................................................................................................88 VI: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.........................................................................98 APPENDIX A: LIST OF COMPOSERS WORKS........................................................................116 BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................................121 INTRODUCTION The Caribbean is an unbelievably rich musical area. On any island one can find music that is essentially African...Everywhere, both Europe and Africa have left their marks: in religious rites, in vocal and instrumental styles, in instruments themselves, and in the approaches to form, to material, and to function. But Africa has proved to be the catalyst, has molded and reworked European material until the music o f the whole area, despite its several languages and myriad islands, is recognizably related - not one music, certainly but one musical family.1 Jamaica is a culturally diverse nation comprised of many ethnicities, each influencing the artistic and social landscape of the country with its distinctive style. The country’s motto, “Out of many, one people”, shows both the recognition of this diversity and the country’s desire for unity, thus creating one people sharing a common ground and common experience. The Oxford Dictionary o f Geography aptly describes Jamaica’s social landscape in its definition of creolization - “The hybridization of a culture, as it absorbs and transforms forces from outside; the production of new local forms in response to globalization.” Professors of sociology Wendell Bell and Robert Robinson describe the term as a way of life differing from one’s cultural homeland: “creolization refers to the process whereby a group of people develop a way of life peculiar to the new locality in which they find themselves, as distinct from the cultures of their homelands.” 1 John Storm Roberts, Black Music of Two Worlds (New York: Praeger, 1972). 2 Susan Mayhew, A Dictionary of Geography s.y. “Jamaica” (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997). 3 Wendell Bell and Robert Robinson. European Melody, African Rhythm, or West Indian Harmony? Changing Cultural Identity Among Leaders in a New State. 1979, p. 253. This creolization was manifested in Jamaica as the country became entrenched with various cultures forging a new lifestyle. The beginnings of the trend date back to the seventeenth century when enslaved Africans of various tribes were grouped in masses and brought to Jamaica to work on plantations. The amalgamation of traditions, languages, cultures and tribal habits caused Jamaicans to value hybridization and the blending of cultural traditions became a way of co-existing and also communicating with those of a different lifestyle. Acting as a sort of meeting place for people of different cultures, the island boasts a spirit of togetherness, regardless of race, class, culture, or social status. A recent poll from the University of the West Indies notes Jamaica’s total ethnic make-up, with 76.3 percent of African descent, 15.1 percent Afro-European, 3.4 percent East Indian and Afro-East-Indian, 3.2 percent Caucasian, 1.2 percent Chinese and 424,000 of Jewish ancestry. This diversity is reflected in the Fine Arts in Jamaica, and in particular, in music. Beverley Anderson notes, “Indeed, the Caribbean is one of world’s most culturally heterogeneous areas, and the musical forms that have evolved there can be viewed as the cultural miscegenation of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.”4 With so many ethnicities represented in Jamaica, the current artistic expression in the nation may be analyzed through the lens of its historical heritage. Historically, Jamaica’s cultural landscape, originating with the aboriginal Arawak Indians, has changed significantly because of colonization efforts including Columbus’s arrival in 1492, the establishment of a Spanish colony lasting 161 years, and ultimately the arrival of the British in 1655. Out of its many faces, Jamaica’s current culture is influenced by two dominant societies - the indigenous cultures of Europe and Africa. The collision of these cultures in the seventeenth century has had a lasting effect on Jamaican culture which may be seen particularly in the arts. With the British invasion in 1655 came a lasting imprint of Western art music on 4 Beverley J. Anderson and Winston E. Langley, Music of the Caribbean (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), p.2. Jamaican culture. The creolization that occurred between the European and African cultures continues to give Jamaica a complex identity that many of Jamaica’s inhabitants have grown to embrace. Jamaica’s present creolized culture may be attributed to what Ivy Baxter, a pioneer of Jamaican pre-independence dance theater, calls “the slow interaction” of the two dominant cultures: Jamaican cultural ideas also had root in the entirely separate development of the reorganized folk culture of Afro-Jamaicans. Therefore the cultural climate of Jamaica was based, not only upon adaptations of two main traditions transplanted to this island, but was formed by the slow interaction of each upon the other, and later by synthesis of some elements from both cultures, which were themselves undergoing disintegration or renewal.5 Although the synthesis created by this collision produced a hybridized culture, folk music and classical music in their pure forms are still present on the island. While Jamaican music continues to evolve as the country acknowledges its multiculturalism, Jamaica’s hybrid musics - mento, ska, rocksteady, and reggae have survived over the years and continue to be performed by many on the island. With the historical influences of the Arawak Indian, African, Spanish and European cultures currently in existence in Jamaica, artistic expression in the nation is varied. Jamaican choreographer, dancer and scholar, Rex Nettleford comments on Jamaica’s value of diversity: Many Jamaicans do make a virtue of diversity, even at the risk of creating instability. The “natural pluralism” of Caribbean society 5 Ivy Baxter, The Arts of an Island: The Development of the Culture and of the Folk and Creative Arts in Jamaica, 1494-1962 (Independence) (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1970), p. 342. 3