Nine years of literature, music

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

I believe I can claim, without being pretentious or devolving into bombast, a unique relationship with the Calabash International Literary Festival. I reported extensively on all of them, save for the last, read on the 2003 staging - the second 'rain year' - as part of the Poetry Society of Jamaica's quartet and participated in the 2007 Calabash Writers' Workshop along with nine other persons.

So my biases towards the Festival, if any, are clear.

I do not remember exactly who told me about Calabash. It may have been Janet Silvera from The Gleaner's Western Bureau or it was someone at the Kingston office who asked me to go to a literary event in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth.

However, I do know why I went. Professor Edward Baugh was on the line-up and I wanted to hear him read Truth and Consequences, one of the very few poems that I have committed to my porous memory. He read it and I was a happy man. But I was also impressed by Calabash's obvious organisation and the integration of music into literature - or it may have been the other way around. I first saw the excellent Zinc Fence Band, with Rovletta Fraser up front, there at Jakes, though I never went to any of the Calabashment beach concerts.

Unlike many who came to Calabash, Treasure Beach was not new territory to me. Twelve years before the first Calabash I had graduated from The City Set Upon a Hill (Munro College, for you heathen) and had done a couple walkathons to Treasure Beach, panting much after the Hampton girls we walked with (in vain, I woefully add) than the downhill trek to the Treasure Beach Hotel.

For the first 'Bash Herbert 'Jah Wayne' McKinnis drove between MoBay and Treasure Beach every day.

For the others, I (which quickly became 'we' as the family expanded) stayed at Golden Sands, always promising myself to go back in between festivals and never making it.

The Calabash troika quickly became clear - Channer, hey-ho-jolly-good-fellow not concealing a fierce determination and potential for savage (though controlled) fury, dismissive of mediocrity and those who would hold it up as standard; Dawes, the physically slow moving planner, pieces moving according to his plan while thinking they were acting of free will; and my favourite Calabash person ever, save for family; and Justine Henzell who, I am sure, can set up the Jamaica Urban Transit Company's schedule in between answering email and organising the University of the West Indies's timetable on the back of an envelope without turning a hair. A large one, maybe, but an envelope nonetheless.

An institution

In fact, perhaps for me the most striking Calabash moments over the years were the final Sunday gatherings of the Calabash crew, including engineer John DaCosta, onstage, when Henzell would change out of her jeans into loose-fitting full white.

Another striking presence was that of Professor Mervyn Morris in the audience, an institution in himself, always attentive, always calm. And let it not be forgotten that in addition to the regular media types, Morris also wrote on Calabash for The Observer a couple times.

I will always remember, also, Little Ochie's 'Blackie' sitting in a lounge chair and smiling for the words at that first Calabash. And Mutabaruka's bark of "no drunkenness!" at something which was happening on stage.

Calabash grew very quickly and, as happens, with that it changed. Part of that metamorphosis was in the composition of the audience.

The 'SUVers' quickly rolled into town and I was not quite sure if many of the drivers and passengers came for the literature or the lyme - or the libation. For example, I was appalled when I read about the 'Rum Tree' at last year's staging.

So yes, eventually there were persons who attended Calabash who were more into 'profiling' than poetry; those who were more into being seen than reading; those who were looking more to couple up than listen out for outstanding couplets.

Organised

And I am not so naïve as to believe that it was organised as a totally altruistic movement; but let us not forget that the famed Reggae Sunsplash, which became the model for all reggae festivals worldwide, was conceived to keep the hotels in Montego Bay busy during the slow summer months. So if Calabash was set up in part to put some visitors' treasure into Treasure Beach, so be it.

But at its core, Calabash remained committed to one thing and one thing only - literature in the written, said and sung formats.

One of the things which it never lost was the ability to provide opportunities for those who attended to have a word with those whose words they enjoyed. I will always remember guitarist Seretse Small having a word with and allowing our older daughter Amani to touch his guitar after a Sunday afternoon closing session.

Open mic gave anyone who would sign up, three minutes on the stage and there were some great performances in the allotted time, like the lady who "big up D'Angel an' har husband dem Beenie Man an' Bounty Killer".

We, who were at the first Calabash or who attended several stagings over the years, especially before it got really big (and that would be only the first two and just maybe the third edition) can be forgiven for a sense of smugness, at having been part of something special. There were those of us who had our 'special' vantage points (mine was in the shrubbery before the book store at the left of the stage), sometimes violated by ignorant 'newbies'. I guess that is how people who attended Reggae Sunsplash in the early going still feel.

Calabash brought me back to looking distance of Munro College, years before I went back on the campus for Stephen Harle's send-off and, I remember after one staging I drove past the bottom gate and told those who were in the car to be quiet, as they were on hallowed ground.

I do not know when I will be back in Treasure Beach, or how many of us 'Calabashites' will ever return on some semi-regular basis, to the little fishing and tourist village on Jamaica's south coast that once hosted the literature festival that could and did.

Maybe we will, when we are at the age where we are collecting memories to carry us over to the other side, making up as as much as we accurately recollect.

Whatever the case, I am sure that Calabash was very special. And I doubt that it can ever be imitated, much less duplicated.