Olive Senior to present at Olive Lewin Distinguished Lecture

In ‘Celebrating a Cultural Icon’, The African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/ Jamaica Memory Bank (ACIJ/JMB) is staging the 2025 Annual Olive Lewin Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, September 11, at 10 a.m. at the ACIJ/JMB, located at 12 Ocean Boulevard, downtown Kingston. It may also be viewed through live streaming on YouTube @acijjmb. While attendance is free, participants are encouraged to register through Google at https://acij-ioj.us10.list-manage.com/track.

This year’s guest speaker is Dr Olive Senior, internationally acclaimed Jamaican author and poet, researcher, literary luminary, ‘Poet Laureate of Jamaica from 2021 to 2024’, and recipient of numerous awards and honours. She will be speaking under the theme of ‘Rethinking the Lost Book: Memory, Land, and Fugitive Processes’. The event is expected to last approximately two hours.

The lecture will be accompanied by a special exhibition mounted in honour of Dr Olive Wilhelmina Mahoney Lewin, giving patrons the opportunity to engage with her life’s work as a pioneering musicologist, folklorist, and a key figure in the establishment of the Jamaica Memory Bank.

In speaking of the significance of this year’s iteration, Dr. Kirt Henry, director of the ACIJ/JMB, said, “Dr. Olive Lewin’s contributions to the preservation of Jamaica’s cultural heritage are immeasurable. This lecture is not only a tribute to her remarkable legacy, but also a platform to inspire continued research, documentation, and celebration of our intangible cultural heritage.”

“This event offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the life and work of one of Jamaica’s cultural icons, ensuring that the legacy of Dr. The Hon. Olive Lewin is remembered and celebrated. Information,” the ACIJ/JMB says. “We look forward to welcoming everyone to this special occasion as we come together to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Olive Lewin.”

INVALUABLE CULTURAL ICON

In an online Independent article, “ Olive Lewin: Anthropologist who rescued Jamaican folklore from Eurocentrism”, published on Sunday, July 14, 2013, Chris Salewicz says, “ Olive Lewin was a Jamaican anthropologist and cultural historian who, over the last 60 years, pulled Jamaican folklore out of the shadow of Eurocentric prejudice. A striking, diminutive woman, Lewin fought against the manner in which ‘polite’ Jamaican middle-class society, with its complex prejudices, denied its background, refusing to admit the existence of patois, the everyday language of most islanders.”

The article also says, “ In 1966 she was appointed Jamaica’s Folk Music Research Officer under the auspices of Edward Seaga, minister of development and welfare, a Harvard-trained anthropologist and an ethno-musicologist. Emulating Seaga, Lewin went into the field. In 1967 she founded the Jamaican Folk Singers, dedicated to traditional songs.”

“ When Seaga became prime minister in 1980 he placed Lewin in charge of the Memory Bank Project, an archive of Jamaica’s musical heritage; she also initiated Jamaica’s National Youth Orchestra. She became a visiting scholar in 2000 at Yale. In 2001, the beautifully illustrated ‘ Rock It Come Over’ was published, the most celebrated of her eight books. Ill-health obliged her to stop work in 2007. When she died, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller described her as “an invaluable cultural icon”.

Dr Lewin was born in Vere, Clarendon in 1927 and died in Kingston on April 10, 2013. In her own book, ‘Encyclopedia of Jamaica Heritage’, Olive Senior referenced Dr Lewin several times. Lewin’s books and articles include ‘ An old man dies, a book is lost’, ‘Jamaican Folk Music’, ‘Folk Music in Jamaica – An Outline for Classification’, ‘Brown Gal in de Ring’, ‘Forty Folk Songs of Jamaica’, ‘Helena’, ‘Emancipation and Festivities’ and ‘ Traditional Jamaica Music: Mento’.

Patrons who drive are advised to park in the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) parking lot in front of the ACIJ/JMB. The UDC charges $700 for all-day parking or $200 for the first two hours. After the initial two hours, an additional charge of $200 will be incurred for each subsequent hour, up to a maximum of $1,000.