Members of the University Dance Society perform during the University of the West Indies' Commemoration Concert and Pelican Awards at the Assembly Hall on Sunday. -Nathaniel Stewart/Freelance Photographer

Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, showed its creative side on Sunday night at the Assembly Hall.

The pedigree in the performing arts was displayed by those with degrees and those working towards them, as former and present students performed at the 2007 Grand Commemoration Concert and Pelican Awards, hosted by Gerry McDaniel.

The awards, to Scientific Research Council head Dr. Audia Barnett and Dr. Andre Gordon, managing director and chief executive officer of Technological Solutions Ltd., came early, after the A.Z. Preston Chorale gave the invitation to Wade In the Water to Marjorie Whylie's accompaniment on piano. And after the awards were made, the chorale went reggae with Luciano's Never Give Up My Pride and Everton Blender's Lift Up Your Head.

Reggae again

It was reggae again with the University Dance Society, the red, green and gold strips on the shoulders of the dancers swirling as they moved to Marley's Jammin' and Third World's Uptown Rebel, gathering at the rear and centre of the stage to hold a dramatic pose to applause at the end. Supreme Court Judge Roy Anderson applied his tenor to You Raise Me Up, hands expressive as he kept his body still, ending on a deeper be, steepling his fingers and bowing briefly in acknowledgement of the enthusiastic applause.

Spanish major Shari Williams spoke the language of music on the piano with Beethoven's 'Allegretto no. 5 in C Minor' and the more light-hearted Willy Waddlestrick's Walk About, before Quinton Yearde strode back and forth in performing an excerpt from his original Zombie Dada, which examined Jamaica's pervasive violence, laughter coming when his voice lifted into sketel and dipped into boom.

Deejay and poetry

Kingsley 'Ragashanti' Stewart's Enter The Dancehall was a combination of deejay and poetry with a touch of song and healthy scoopings of humour in which Shower and Comrade discussed the forthcoming general election, even as it cautioned ... when yu defen' yu party/JLP or PNP/No badda mek no war, no mek no duppy.

Their discussions made laughter, though, as one sang Trafigura, Trafigura and the other chortled tainted money, tainted money, the tinkling of tuned steel from the Concert Ensemble of the University Panoridim Steel Orchestra bringing up the break.

Mervyn Morris read a number of pointed, to the point, poems to get the concert going again, starting with Toasting A Muse, sending one To the Unknown Non-Combatant (he crawled to join a side/a bullet clapped him in the neck/of course he died) and gave a rare pre-poem background of Valley Prince (for Don D).

There was laughter at the last line of Pussycat (she would have barred him from her treasure, if she had known her mind was getting laid) as well as Peelin' Orange, quiet for The Day My Father Died and applause as Morris ended A Chant Against Death with say sun and moon/say see you soon.