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Cover Story - Dr. Olive Lewin: Growing with music A life dedicated to music.
Avia Ustanny, Freelance Writer
TODAY, THE burnished tones of piano displace the silence in the home of musicologist Dr. Olive Lewin and, for a few minutes, we share what fewer and fewer Jamaicans hear. The teacher and researcher currently prefers to present her students in performance. The listening is a pleasure. This week we visit with this woman who has 'under her belt' a lifetime of teaching and celebration in local music. Most recently, she was listed among those who will receive, in October, the prestigious Order of Jamaica award for her work in arts and culture. We invite you to listen her life's story, and share her perspectives on folk forms in music locally. It is a journey worth taking. The musicologist holds a Ph.D., in Social Anthropology/Ethno-musicology from Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has also been the recipient of Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of the West Indies, and is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (London). She is a Fellow of Trinity College (London) and a Licentiate of Trinity College (London) Piano performing. She is a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (London) (Piano teaching, Violin teaching and Harmony, counterpoint and composition). Her work in teaching, research and workshop presentation spans 50 years and was done both at the local and international levels. She has been the guests of many governments on cultural projects, has lectured extensively at universities and music schools abroad, and has attended several UNESCO cultural conferences as an expert in her field. Dr. Lewin has been involved in the researching, arranging and directing Jamaican traditional music for schools, church and theatre performances by the Jamaican Folk Singers and other groups. She continues to work with the Jamaica Folk Singers, a group which she founded in 1966. The group performs traditional Jamaican songs and music in Europe, the Caribbean, North and South America and South Africa. The folk singers have earned acclaim at home and abroad, and have won several awards, including the OAS plaque for gaining first place in the Festival of Folk Music, Cosquin, Argentina in 1972. In conjunction with this, she has published numerous articles as well as recording. Between 1966 to 1980, Dr. Lewin was responsible for music in Correctional Institutions and Music Therapy at Bellevue Hospital for the Mentally Disturbed. She has been involved at the level of management in several organisations, boards, and committees, at the national, regional and international level. These include the Inter-American Committee on Culture (CIDEC) of the OAS. International Institute of Communications; Council of the Institute of Jamaica; Council for Inter-Cultural Research, Trinidad, and the International Council for Traditional Music (formerly International Folk Music Council). She sits on the Board of the then Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, the Social Development Commission, Munro and Dickenson Educational Trust, Vere Free School Trust, Jamaica School of Speech and Drama and the Council of the Institute of Jamaica. The mother of one child, Joanna Elizabeth, and grandmother of 2, Dr. Lewin now enjoys most of all her work with the young. She is currently a violin tutor for the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth, which she founded in 1983. This summary of her activities and achievements, by no means exhaustive, gives us a glimpse of the measure of the woman.
OLIVE LEWIN was a sickly child, something that she soon outgrew and which did not stop her from singing and dancing. "I was a very thin, meagre child. (But) When I went to see my grandparents in Frankfield, my grandmother would place me on the table and say sing." She was born in a home where there was a piano, and from a very young age all the children were taught to play. "We were not allowed to bang. I just loved music. Growing up I felt the same way," she now recalls. Right after high school, Olive headed for the Royal Academy of Music in London, having won a scholarship to that institution. She was not deterred by a new headmistress at Hampton ("English, who thought she had come to civilise us") who forced her to change subjects, in a bid to make her choose between medicine and music. It did not work. In London, she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being away from home, meeting people of all nationalities, and stretching herself, talent-wise. Her main study was piano and the second, violin. She also took composition. She was very busy, never satisfied with her progress, always wanting to do more. Olive had her mind set on teaching. She now explains this: "I liked performing, but I don't think the world has lost anything because I chose to teach instead. I thought it was more important to pass on what I knew. The great composers were not just that (composers); they were the product of their history and heritage which almost dictated what they were going to do. They were very knowledgeable about their own background. I realised that, here in Jamaica, we really did no know anything about our background. I decided that I was going to do something about it." The simple declarative statement obscures what a fearful task 'doing something about it' became. Folk music, which she soon embraced in teaching and research, was thought then (she entered the classroom in '49) to be common, and was even described as "dirty'. Uphill journey "It was quite an uphill journey. Many of the schools almost resented letting the children know about their own music. Even after I started the Jamaican Folk Singers and took them to lunch-hour concerts, some of the principals would not let the children out to hear. But the children loved it, so I never minded." Dr. Lewin recalls. Lewin was described by one bystander, after a concert as 'mad' and yet another described the group as 'middle-class, middle-aged people trying to sing and they sound as if they were gargling perfume." Lewin says that for years the audience of the folk singers were expatriates who knew how to appreciate culture, and grassroots people who knew the music as their own. Middle-class Jamaicans, then, stayed away. Attempting to sell a friend a ticket, this was the reply "I will not come to listen to those dirty songs." Dr. Lewin now comments, "The years of self negation and low self-esteem had dug deep. I still believe that this is one of our biggest problems. We have not faced who we are." The work of the folk singers, including the performance of many compositions, created by Dr. Lewin herself, was to play its role in liberating the national psyche, as much as the work of Louise Bennett did. "I felt centred. I knew that I was not strong, but nobody could put me down. Doing folk music research, I realised that many people really did not have a clue, and really did not want to." But, it 'strengthened her hand' to see how seriously other Caribbean islands took their culture. The Jamaica Folk Singers first performed at the Barn Theatre to an enthusiastic audience and then moved on to the Little Theatre. "We have travelled quite a lot," Dr. Lewin states modestly.
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