Jamaica Arts

Jamaica has evolved a powerful artistic and cultural expression rooted in African traditions, while quintessentially Jamaican styles have evolved across the spectrum of arts. In addition, Jamaica's crafts industry supports tens of thousands of artisans, who offer a cornucopia of leatherwork, ceramics, shell art, beadwork, and basket-weaving.

Dance & Theater

Jamaica has a rich heritage of dance and theater.

The country shuns classical Shakespearean theater, preferring farces and homilies that draw on local traditions. They're often bawdy and tend to portray the trials of the poor. Theater productions are often performed in patois (Jamaica's local dialect).

Kingston's scene is vibrant enough to sustain half a dozen or more concurrent productions, including the internationally acclaimed Little Theater Movement, the Jamaica Folk Singers, the National Chorale, the University Players, and above all the National Dance Theater Company (NDC), which is based in Kingston's Little Theater. The NDC's dancers, musicians, and singers explore African themes and forms, often in vividly imaginative costumes, through performances based on Jamaican history and daily life.

Pantomime

This stage show is a musical comedy - a blend of lively song, dance, and words that lampoon Jamaican foibles, historic events, and well-known figures in Jamaican life. During performances, the audience gets drawn in, volubly so.

The National Pantomime - a monument of folk theater and irreverent family entertainment - is staged by the Little Theater Movement and is traditionally held in Kingston's Ward Theater.

The pantomime has its roots in the British tradition, in which performances are based on childhood fairy tales and stories such as 'Cinderella' and 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' But over the years, folkloric characters such as Anancy and Tacooma (both originated in West Africa) began to appear on stage, as did adapted versions of Jamaican folktales.

Music

From hotel beach parties to the raw 'sound-system' discos of the working-class suburbs, Jamaica reverberates to the soul-riveting sounds of calypso, soca, and above all, reggae. Music is everywhere. And loud!

Reggae may have put Jamaica on the musical map, but the nation's musical heritage runs much deeper. Inspired by the country's rich African folk heritage, music spans mento (a folk calypso), ska, rocksteady, 'roots' music, and contemporary dancehall and raga. Kingston is the 'Nashville of the Third World,' with recording studios pumping out dozens of new titles each month See the Reggae 'n' Riddims special section for an in-depth description.

Jamaica also has a strong heritage in military bands, notably the Jamaica Military Band, which dates back to England's first West India Regiment in 1795 and still uses its unique Zouave (light infantry of North African origin) uniform.

Pottery & Sculpture

Jamaican ceramists have been making a name for themselves of late, led by Cecil Baugh, an octogenarian potter who uses Egyptian motifs. Munchi is an outstanding fourth-generation Afro-Caribbean potter who chooses as her creative ground the shady earth beneath the same mango tree that her mother, Ma Lou, used for inspiration. Wassi Art, in Ocho Rios, has a stable of young artists being trained to self-expression of the highest caliber. And a Montegonian, David Pinto, is another ceramist of note, working from his base at Good Hope, Falmouth.

Jamaica's foremost sculptor this century is undoubtedly Edna Manley, the multital-ented wife of ex-prime minister Norman Manley. Her works in wood, metal, and stone are displayed in a magnificent collection in the National Gallery in Kingston. In addition to fine artists, thousands of self-taught woodcarvers hew intuitive carvings.

Architecture

Most colonial-era plantation 'great houses' and government buildings built of local sandstone and limestone still stand foursquare, as do the former homes of wealthy merchants. The stones were fixed and finished by mortar and plaster containing lime produced by burning conch shells. Being thick, these massive walls became temperature sinks, keeping the building relatively cool, aided by wide jalousied windows and doorways.

Many fine clapboard houses still stand, too, graced by gingerbread fretwork in a classic Caribbean vernacular style that has enjoyed a recent renaissance, sponsored by Jamaican architect Ann Hodges.

Painting

Jamaican art has its origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, when itinerant artists roamed the plantations, recording life in a Eurocentric romanticized light that totally ignored the African heritage. Satirist William Hogarth was one of few artists to portray the hypocrisy and savagery of plantation life.

In the 1920s, artists of the so-called Jamaica School began to develop their own expressions shaped by realities of Jamaican life. The Jamaican School evolved two main groups: painters who were schooled abroad and island-themed primitives, or 'intuitives' - self-taught artists such as Bishop Mallica 'Kapo' Reynolds (1911-89) and John Dunkley (1891-1947).

'Kapo' Reynolds, a leading Revivalist cult leader (see Religion later in this chapter), is the most renowned of the intuitive artists. He painted mystical landscapes and visions. Dunkley was a Kingston barber who painted his entire shop in tangled vines, flowers, and abstract symbols. Dunkley later turned to canvas. Bars, shops, restaurants, and rum shops islandwide copy Dunkley's Jungian style (usually with vines crawling along a black wall) or display whimsical alfresco trompe 1'oeil cartoons dramatizing Jamaican life. Colloquially, the pop-style wall murals are known as 'yard art,' after the 'yards' of Kingston ghettoes, where powerful politically inspired murals are painted in big, bold colors that can be absorbed at a glance. Others are cheery, adding color and humor to otherwise depressing environments.

The Jamaican School's more international group includes contemporary Jamaican artists such as Gloria Escoffrey, Michael Escoffrey, Carl Abrahams, Ken Abendana Spencer, Barrington Watson, Osmond Watson, and Christopher Gonzalez, all of whom have earned world renown for their museum pieces. Many of these artists studied abroad in the 1960s and 1970s and returned to the island inspired by new ideas that they wedded to their nationalist spirits.

Rastafarians are common subjects, as are market higglers, animals, and religious symbols merged with the myths of Africa. The intuitive works of Everald Brown (a priest in the Ethiopian Coptic Church) and Albert Artwell especially concentrate on Rastafarian symbolism.

Jamaica has a comparatively large crop of female artists, many of them expatriates. Judy Macmillan is renowned for a Rembrandt-like use of light in her portraits. The works of Roberta Stoddart, an Australian, are pervasive with satirical humor. Elizabeth Roberts is known for her tropical murals.

Englishman Graham Davis is perhaps the best known and most influential of foreign-born male artists now resident in Jamaica.

Discuss This Article (Arts)

kEN SPENCER'S PAINTING IS BOHEMIAN i'VE HAD THE PLEASURE OF SEEING HIM AT HIS WORK AND HIS HOME AND LIVING IS CONVEYED IN HIS MAGIC

by FLEURETTE VAN GULDEN from Atlantic City NJ

I hail form the Parish of Portland, Jamaica as Mr Spencer. He was a friend. I could not afford them but I saw his finished works the town's local banks every day. I left home 16yrs ago, but I see them even now.
(609)348-0225

I have 2 Spencer watercolors

by Tammy Vaughn from Oklahoma

I have 2 great signed and dated Spencer watercolors and have not been able to find out much about value, etc.

Ken Abandena Spencer

by Maggie from Orlando, Florida

Hello,

I am interested in finding out about Ken Abendana Spencer's watercolor paintings from the 50s. Where can I find information about his delightful depictions of the life of Jamaica and its people. I can't find any images of his watercolors and the price for them. Any information is given is greatly appreciation.

Maggie