Cultural Icon - Olive Lewin

An immensely accomplished, unlikely historian who left a large footprint in the Arts and Culture portion of Jamaican society.

Transcript

Jamaican intellectualism is a little-known part of the Jamaican culture due to the narrative endorsed to the world at large; yet it is palpable on the island.  This intellectualism is the impetus behind our efforts in cultural preservation and academic admiration which starts as early as grade school.  The result is a sort of reverence for brainpower and information.  All that is to say, Jamaican culture has an unexpected nerdiness to it.

 Welcome to Small Excellence where I discuss various nations around the world.  I'm your host Ngai.  If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe and share.  Also take a look at the Small Excellence website at www.smallexcellence.com; that address again is www. S m a l l e x c e l l e n c e .com.  This season we are speaking about my homeland, Jamaica.  In this episode, I will be discussing a cultural icon, Dr. Olive Lewin.

 Dr. Olive Lewin is a scholar who embodies everything mentioned in the beginning of the episode, she is a Jamaican academic, social anthropologist, musicologist, folksinger and teacher.    Olive Lewin was born September 28, 1927 in Vere, Clarendon, Jamaica.  Both her parents were teachers, which subsequently set her on an intellectual path.  She would later follow in her parents’ footsteps by choosing teaching as her first profession and it is teaching that would inform all the other hats she wore.

What kind of person possesses this level of dedication?  According to a 2008 Jamaican Observer article Lewin is described as having “a sassy and lively personality, a spunk which reverberates in her ability to propel Jamaican culture and history, through song, all over the world.”  Outside of her work not much is known about Ms. Lewin’s life.  She was partly educated in London, England where she studied music and ethnomusicology as a Fellow of Trinity College London and an Associate of the Royal School of Music, the oldest conservatoire in the United Kingdom.

 After returning to Jamaica Dr. Lewin held various positions related to the Arts and Culture, all the while advocating that respect be given to Jamaican folk music.  According to her only child, Joanna Lewin, "she wanted us (Jamaicans) to appreciate and understand our culture and the far-reaching impact it had, which should bring us pride rather than us looking to other people's culture because ours is very rich and varied…  She was committed to helping to create a better, [more] accurate understanding of ourselves based on the knowledge of who we truly are as a people." (https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/art-leisure/20150927/olive-lewin-worked-tirelessly-preserve-spirit-jamaica).  This undertaking, the collecting of folksongs and folk stories was an act of preservation, it was labor intensive involving thousands of hours spent traveling throughout the island, speaking to an unbelievable number of people to get the songs and the stories behind them.   Lewin herself acknowledged “life on the road was hard,…but the excitement of new places, meeting new people, learning the different dance moves, work songs, and so on took the edge off the physically demanding task” (https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/art-leisure/20150927/olive-lewin-worked-tirelessly-preserve-spirit-jamaica).  Her journey of collecting, recording and cataloging these songs remind me very much of the film Songcatcher.  Among the traditions she recorded were those of the Jamaican Maroons, Buru, Kumina, Ettu and Tambu groups, Dinkie Minnie, work songs, and pagwah and divili among Indo-Jamaican music (https://festival.si.edu/blog/2013/olive-lewin-1927-2013-a-life-of-service/).

 Although Dr. Lewin is known for her advocacy work, she is also known for the founding of three major organizations – the Jamaican Folk Singers, the Jamaica Youth Orchestra, and the Memory Bank Project which all highlight Jamaican culture and folk music.  The Jamaican Folk Singers were formed in 1967 for the purpose of bringing the songs she collected to life via live performance.  I had the pleasure of seeing them live once.  She toured the United States, Africa, and Europe with the Jamaican Folk Singers.  One of her greatest delights was the group’s performance at Westminster Abbey in London.  “The Memory Bank Project began in 1981 with the support of the Honorable Edward Seaga, [the] then…Prime Minister of Jamaica. It built upon and added to over twenty years of work that Dr. Lewin had already done in collecting songs and oral histories around the island. Presently, the African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica holds more than 1,500 audio recordings of traditional Jamaican songs she made from 1966 through the term of the Memory Bank Project” (https://festival.si.edu/blog/2013/olive-lewin-1927-2013-a-life-of-service/).

Despite her busy schedule Lewin managed to participate in several endeavors.  She was the Director of Arts and Culture at the office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica, and the Director of the Jamaica Institute of Folk Culture.  She was also the director of the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth. 

Her accolades include the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica, was honored by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, as well as the French Government for the excellent work she has done throughout her life in the field of the arts. 

 Although she achieved so much, and received so many commendations, her greatest desire was arranging, directing, presenting, and performing her own collection of Jamaican traditional folk songs in concerts and recordings. Lewin also wrote eight books and many articles speaking on Jamaican folk life. She was involved in the management of many organizations at the national, regional, and international level. Dr. Lewin sat on the board of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, the Social Development Commission, Jamaica School of Speech and Drama, the Council of the Institute of Jamaica, and many other boards.

 In her later years Ms. Lewin’s memory began to fail.  Dr. Olive Lewin died in Kingston, April 11, 2013, at the age of 85 years old.  “She was given a State funeral at the University Chapel in St Andrew on Saturday, [April 27,] 2013.  [She is buried]… in the churchyard of the St James Anglican Church in Hayes, Clarendon.  In October 2013 Lewin was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit by the Jamaican government” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Lewin).

 After learning more about Dr. Lewin in preparation for this episode it is my belief that she is one of our country’s unsung heroes.  Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga articulated it best at her funeral "she goes to her grave only partly covered in the glory she deserves.”  Olive Lewin was charged with paying homage to Jamaican heritage and gifted Jamaicans a way of loving their own culture.  She accepted the responsibility graciously and with joy.

 I hope that you have garnered some knowledge from this episode.  Walk good, my friends.