Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

Dr Olive Lewin, founder of the Jamaican Folk Singers. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Speaking of gold medal performances - since that topic is so much on our lips just now - you have a chance to see another one this weekend. It's not on the track, but in a theatre, Little Theatre, and the performers are the Jamaican Folk Singers.

Their two-weekend season, 'Out of Many, One', ends today. It is certainly one of the most satisfying the group has staged over their 40 years of performing. That's saying a lot, for the Singers have performed all around the world - the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, and in other Caribbean countries - and have won numerous awards. Including gold medals.

Dr Olive Lewin, founder of the group and for most of its life musical director, has passed on the baton to Christine MacDonald-Nevers, who has used her skills as an actress and her long experience with the University Singers (another internationally acclaimed Jamaican folk group) to fashion a concert, which pleases eyes and ears.

award winners

She is assisted by award winners, Paula Shaw and Franklyn 'Chappy' St Juste with choreography and lighting respectively, and by Jean Rhone with costumes. All these components are excellently executed.

Shaw's movement of the group's 30-odd singers captures the mood and heightens the drama of the different segments of the show - God With Us, Cultural Mix, Heritage, Life and Love, and Revival, as well as the 30 or so individual songs. And her placement of the performers on different levels, with some on platforms and others at different areas on the stage, ensures beautifully composed pictures at all times.

St Juste told The Sunday Gleaner that in lighting the show he tried to "do something different"; specifically he wanted a "forest effect".

The objective is achieved. Light, in various colours, hues, shapes and levels of intensity, falls on to the performers - the singers as well as the band stationed at stage left - as if filtered through leaves and branches.

The dozens of costumes, frequently changed, are appropriately sombre or colourful, depending on the particular mood to be evoked by the segment or song. As would be expected at a Jamaican Folk Singers concert most of the costumes are traditional Jamaican, but there are some from India and Scotland too, thanks to delightful dances by Shavi Tolan (who trained at the Anjali School of Indian Classical Dance) and a group from the Scottish Country Dance Society of Jamaica.

love and laughter

The superbly delivered songs evoke a mix of moods and emotions in the listener. They range from the spiritual (thanks to gospel pieces like Bahn Again, Lily of the Valley and Someday), through nostalgia (occasioned by All Dem Ole One, Fireman O and Moses, for example), to feelings of love and laughter. Hence the Life-and-Love segment contains songs like Walking Down in the Valley (featuring women walking with wedding cakes), Coconut Tree (where a proposal takes place) and Mango Tree (which neglected married women are sometimes forced to hug).

In the final segment, Revival, three 'bands' meet, each representing a different belief system, but all with elements of worship from Africa and Europe. Songs in this section include Seven Ribba, Wash an be Clean, Wrong Train, Wings of a Dove and Daniel God.

musicians

The concert's musicians, including Branwell Shepherd (guitar), Richard Williams (guitar) and Calvin Mitchell (drums) - were exciting, whether playing along or accompanying the Singers, but especially entertaining and often applauded were drummer Philip Supersad and flautist Albert Shaun Hird.

Those who are interested in history will find the printed programme useful. From it we learn about the group's beginnings. It started as a result of a government-led project implemented by Dr Lewin to research and collect the island's folk music. The programme states, "As she carried out this work, she realised the richness and significance of Jamaica's musical heritage and how little of it most of us knew. The material was being gathered from senior citizens whose days were numbered and it was recognised that if this wealth of material was not to be lost to us and future generations, that deep interest in it would have to be stirred."

Dr Lewin therefore got a group of singers together and after meeting weekly for two years there was talk of a public performance. The now-ailing Dr Lewin would be delighted with the current one.

Christine MacDonald-Nevers, musical director of the Jamaican Folk Singers. - Nathaniel Stewart/Freelance Photographer