This performer portrays a market woman in the first segment of 'Uplift Jamaica'. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

YOU GET much more than song from the Jamaican Folk Singers in their 2009 concert season titled Uplift Jamaica. You also get dance, drama and great visual pleasure from colourful costumes, which are changed frequently throughout the show.

The whole package, to be enjoyed again this weekend at the Little Theatre (after opening on September 5), is as informative as it is entertaining. It takes audiences on a tour of the island, through space and time, reminding those who know them and teaching those - like youngsters and visitors - who don't, about customs, quirks, habits and more of this idiosyncratic society of ours.

Folk songs are perhaps the most accessible keepers of a people's history and traditional passions. Folk tales, their rivals for that function, lack the advantage - giving musical element of songs.

And the two-hour-long show offers folk songs aplenty. They flow from the stage into the audience continually throughout the four sections of the programme and, in fact, seem to flow continuously, like a river of sound, within the first two segments.

Those two are titled 'Market' and 'Work', and they contain the sort of songs suggested by their names. Thus, in the former section you'll hear Solas Market, which invites you to visit that long-gone market; and during 'Work', you'll hear Manuel Road, which is about breaking stones by hand.

Most of the songs in those first sections flow into each other, without breaks, but in the other two segments, 'Court of Judgement Reserved' and 'Wedding Celebrations' - the former set in a court of law and the latter at a wedding reception - the songs are interspersed with dialogue and skits.

Some 30 or so singers, including a few children, deliver the songs. Accompanying them are four or five superb musicians playing drums, flute and guitar. Between segments, the musicians continue to play, and during the 15-minute intermission, recorded Jamaican Folk Singers music plays.

Satisfied audience

This ensures entertainment from the initial opening of the theatre's large red curtain to its closing at the end of the show. No wonder the final applause was so enthusiastic; audiences have been having their fill.

When the curtain opens on the substantial set of the market scene, it is clear that dramatic theatre will be a significant component of the production. Clothing hangs in a large clothes stall at stage right, there are ground provisions on a stand up stage, and higglers sit around their baskets elsewhere.

Other scenes also have functional sets, and though his role is not specified in the souvenir programme (the ensemble is now 42 years old), theatre director Brian Heap is among those thanked for their contribution. His, as a couple of photos suggest, was probably to direct the "cast" in the skits.

Another person responsible for movement around the stage is award-winning choreographer Paula Shaw. Between Heap and Shaw - and no doubt musical director Christine MacDonald-Nevers - the activity onstage is continuous. Fluidly, single performers join and become couples, couples flow into small groups, which in turn evolve into large groups, only to break up again in never ending, but perfectly controlled action.

As the programme states, "markets are not only for buying and selling, but are places for socialising, flirting and gossiping." These, among other things, we see happening and hear about in songs like Lignum Vitae, Brown Girl, Jackass, River Ben Come Dung, Oil in My Lamp and Daniel God.

Time for 'work'

The 'Work' section shows men labouring in the fields, digging, loading bananas and also 'chatting up' women. They are seen working both at home and on the road, and they, too, occasionally leave off work to interact on another level with one another and with the men. It is easy to imagine the dramatic movement and the choreography accompanying songs in this section like Carry Banana, Day O and Dip an' Fall Back, but other songs get quite subtle interpretations, with, for example, Chi Chi Bud targeting women, not birds.

'Court of Judgement Reserved' features a judge in black robes on a platform at stage left (the audience's right), jurors in black and white up stage and spectators to the court proceedings at stage right. A number of complaints are made, and denied, and "trials" heard during the singing of 16 songs, including Not Guilty, Han Full a Ring, R-U-M, Stumblin' Block and Tell a Lie.

Clothes are changed often within segments, but the most significant change is from everyday clothes to the 'Sunday best' attire of the final section, 'Wedding Celebration'. Everyone is dressed in stylishly old fashioned clothes - originating anywhere from the 1940s to the '60s. The set comprises an arch of flowers, a table and chairs for the bride and groom and a huge cake on a stand.

Drama in speech

The songs in this section, among the 200 or so in the Jamaican Folk Singers' repertoire, include Long Time Gal, Jane and Louisa, Fi Mi Love, He's Got the Whole World and Tunda Roll. One song, Unforgettable, a well-known pop song, is sung by a boy, a guest, apparently.

Two other special guests take part in the wedding celebrations. They are renowned actress Leonie Forbes, who is a humorous toastmaster, and educator, elocutionist, singer and poet Lilith Nelson, whose first book of poems were launched on Sunday morning. She plays the 'speaky spokey' mispronouncing emcee.

Uplift Jamaica is not only meant for the theatre; it is also a travelling show. Already it has been performed in several communities - "in markets, parks, church halls and street sides," according to the programme, and in fact slides of some of those performances are shown after the intermission.

Further shows will be mounted in St Thomas (October), St Elizabeth and Manchester (November), St Mary (February), Portland (March) and Westmoreland (April). Anyone loving good music, especially folk songs, and fine theatre, should attend at least one show.

Members of the Jamaican Folk Singers perform during the concert season under the theme 'Uplift Jamaica', held at the Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Avenue, on Sunday, September 6. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer