Afro-Caribbean Show Addresses Issues of Diversity

Author: Yvonne Chen Staff Writer

Last week at the McCullough Social Space, Middlebury's Pan Caribbean Student Organization and Umoja came together to put on an original student performed play. This variety show, with 13 acts consisting of everything from student written and produced plays to African Jemba dancing and drumming to original poetry. It proved to be one of the more provocative and, needless to say, one of the more reassuring arts events of this semester.

This event marked the last part of a series of events in the Afro-Caribbean Symposium, which focused on Brain Drain. The topic of Brain Drain — a phenomenon in which skilled and intelligent people are "drained" from their native countries to pursue occupations in predominately Western countries — carried over into the entertainment part of the symposium in the first amateur production of the night.

A play called "Being and Belonging" portrayed one young African woman's journey of self-discovery while making the transition to an American college, assimilating to the sometimes troublesome American social life and coming to terms with the unavoidable dilemmas surrounding changing attitudes over her major and capacity to finding a career and earning money.

Although this play rang to the sound of Saturday morning television teenage drama, "Being and Belonging" brings to face broad and defying issues of emigration's mental and material effects on the developing African country. Perhaps the play was best embodied in one of Sheera's (the protagonist played by the talented Joannah Opot '05) last lines in which she declares at the end of her four years at Middlebury, "I've decided to take up the offer at Morgan and Stanley," as she lingeringly hugs the Caribbean boyfriend whom she has dumped for an American football player.

What followed was a unique collage of African and Caribbean Culture. A luxurious Afro-Cuban number accompanied by Latin jazz depicted pastoral scenes of domestic women in colorful saris cleaning and sewing, swaying their hips with the rhythm of the Caribbean beat and followed by a spontaneous throwing off of their saris to reveal glittery black mini tube tops and skirts as they danced to the sensual jazz music.

Riddim's Afro-Cuban Ngoma dance was the highlight of the night with red, black, yellow and green African dress, strong primary beats and powerful gesture-like movements that akin to pouring water, crying, sowing grain and heart beat.

Paul Opare-Addo '04 and Naima Gregory '03 wrote and performed poems on the subject of colonialism's debilitating effects on the indigenous identity. Opare's erotic poem titled "The Vulnerable" seems to speak to the Africans all over the globe. In an allegory regarding Africa's colonial experience, he describes a "poor girl" who is beautiful, divine and passionate but who nevertheless succumbs to vulnerability and rape "for without courage she lost damage."

Jamaican feminist styling let loose on the McCullough stage as visiting artist Jan'l Hastings-Robinson lip-synched to the reggae pop song "Who the Hell is Kim," in which one woman comically scolds her man for sleeping with another woman and finally teaches him the ultimate lesson by walking off with a man of her own.

Maurice Opara '04 played everything by ear and cannot read music but astonished the crowd with the minor melodic chords of piano and a trembling buttery baritone voice in "Shine." "Shine, shine like a star/ Please take me far far away from here/You are the brightest of all/Bring me wherever you are." It is a song dedicated to anyone who has ever left home, a song that moralizes the charge of one's roots despite the worldly temptations that lie in the face of loneliness in a foreign place and above all is an inspirational song that tells one to "hold on to those values and let them shine off to all those people in your life."

Sadly though, I encountered one man who sat for the first 10 minutes and rated the Afro-Caribbean production as a show for the "culturally challenged."

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. So here is mine: I tremble for the man who turns a silent ear to all things "other."

Middlebury's academic curriculum denotes the African and Caribbean among additional cultures as "other," and by far there are fewer persons of color on campus than any other group. However, this should be the minimum denouement. I'd like to believe that from the applause coming from the number of non-Afro-Caribbean performers and from the overall appearance of acceptance on campus, that most Middlebury students enjoyed the show and are equally accepting of African and Caribbean students and their cultures.

What is more, technically, like any other student produced, under-rehearsed production, this was not exactly a four star production. Emcee David Kauffman '03, who delayed his appearance by spilling milkshake on his shirt, can vouch for that much. Yet, overall, there is something about this event that lends integrity and forgiveness and labors a creative vitality to popular American culture that it might otherwise lack. If not for the quality of the entertainment, Cultural Explosion offers a unique means by which we truly can embrace the richness of African and Caribbean culture in drama, song, dance, word and legend. Luckily, as Opara informed, "This is just one of many shows. There are many more that we are willing to show. Just sit tight and keep your ears open!"