By Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter
Seretse Small delivers Billie Holliday's tale. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
TWO OF the most famous women in African American history, Maya Angelou and Billie Holliday were the subject of the stories told by Griot Music at the Phillip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts (PSCCA), at the University of the West Indies (UWI), on Monday night. This month's installment of the storytelling series was titled Phenomenal Woman: Two Roads to the Blues.
Seretse Small told the audience that the storytelling series is intended to be somewhat experimental and as such different media will be selected to tell the tales. Much in keeping with this, the night's offering included music, poetry and prose readings. The performers included Seretse Small on guitar, Jean Small reading both prose and poetry, Christine Fisher with vocals and Alex Martin Blanken on keyboards.
Phenomenal Woman: Two Roads to the Blues also included a skit performed by Afolashade and Dawnette Hinds-Furzer of The Women's Media Watch. The skit focused on the negative impact of overtly sexual and often faceless images of women in the media. With all this, the night's fare was nothing if not varied.
The title was an excellent choice for a presentation that dealt with two women who overcame phenomenal odds and often lived the blues. The night was segmented into three parts -- The Lady Sings The Blues, All God's Children and The Phenomenon of Woman.
Phenomenal Woman began with Christine Fisher singing Billie Holiday's Good Morning Heartache. The soul-touching piece was a great leg on which to begin a night about the blues. It was followed by Hush Don't Explain. Jean Small then read My Life Has Turned Blue, after giving an introduction to Maya Angelou's life. It was once again Christine Fisher's turn to take to the microphone and she crooned Willow Weep for Me.
The All God's Children section began with a reading from Maya Angelou's In All Ways a Woman. This was followed by the presentation from The Women's Media Watch, which integrated a skit and a documentary. To finish it off, Christine Fisher performed Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit and God Bless The Child.
Strange Fruit is a very thought-provoking piece about lynching in the southern parts of the United States. Even so, no other performances could touch Ms. Fisher's rendition of God Bless the Child. While her performance had been good all night, this piece seemed to have taken it up a notch. The audience's enthusiastic response suggested that they truly enjoyed the song.
The final segment, which was shorter than the previous two, featured three of Maya Angelou's poems -- Aging, Ships and Still I Rise. As soon as Still I Rise was announced, it received applause. The final Billie Holiday piece, Ain't Nobody's Bizness, was used to begin the segment. Ms. Fisher delivered with all the requisite sass.
Not surprisingly, the final piece performed for the night was Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman, from which the presentation received its name. However, instead of being read, it was sung by Christine Fisher. The accompanying music was arranged by Seretse Small and Carl Davis.
