SOUTH FLORIDA – The Olive Lewin Heritage Foundation will host its First Anniversary Symposium on Saturday, July 11th, 2015 at 4:00 pm at the Broward Southwest Regional Library Auditorium 16835 Sheridan Street, Pembroke Pines, FL 33331.
The featured guest speaker for the evening will be Jamaica’s Former Minister of Culture, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, along with other participants, Maj. Johanna Lewin (retired), Steve Higgins, Easton Lee, Colin Smith, South Florida Caribbean Chorale, The Jamaican Folk Revue, and Sierra Norwood Choral Ensemble.
The free event will also feature Jamaican Folk Culture, Songs, Video Clips and Music highlighting Dr. The Honourable Olive W.M. Lewin.
Jamaica’s treasure of folk music and some of our oral history would have largely remained unknown and buried in the deep recesses of rural Jamaican rural culture, was it not for Olive Lewin.
The Hon. Olive Lewin, OJ – renowned musicologist, folklorist, singer, actress, author, composer, musician, teacher, researcher & community servant was commissioned by the minister of Welfare & Culture (Edward Seaga) in the 1960s to collect all Jamaican folk music (not yet recorded) in order to preserve and document this vital part of Jamaica’s culture.
For much of her lifetime, she travelled to the deep rural villages, towns and communities all over Jamaica, attending events featuring Jamaican folk music late into the nights; she sat by the feet of the elders in some of the most remote areas, learning from them our history and culture , ensuring that she respectfully probed thoroughly their musical memories. She tape-recorded our songs and history from the source –our tradition bearers from our Jamaican grass-roots; she transcribed the songs onto manuscript and gave birth to our Memory Bank project – now the treasure house of our oral history.
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