bearing witness: Four days in west Kingston

Housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology through October 2020

SYNOPSIS

Part art installation, part memorial, and part call to action, this new exhibition sheds light on the “Tivoli Incursion” through compelling video and audio footage featuring firsthand accounts of people directly impacted by the violence (the three stories below are a few among several others featured in the exhibit). The exhibition is co-curated by Dr. Deborah Thomas, the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn of AV Productions and Deanne M. Bell, Senior Lecturer Psychology, University of East London.

 STORIES OF  THREE PEOPLE DIRECTLY IMPACTED BY THE 2010 INCURSION

annette irving

MARJORIE WILLIAMS

SHAWN BOWEN

Three musical traditions integral to the formation of West Kingston

REVIVAL
Revival is a blend of Central and West African spiritual traditions, European missionary Protestantism, and indigenous Jamaican religions. It has been called the "spiritual backbone" of the peasant culture that emerged in the decades after the abolition of slavery in 1834.

Two drums are essential to the Revival ritual: the bass drum, and the rattler or kettle drum. The bass drum provides steady booms during the Revival table ceremony. Rattler players improvise rhythms upon the drumhead. Added to this are tambourine shakers , and lively handclaps. Simple four- or five-line choruses, mostly adapted from Christian hymns, emerge from this rhythmic framework. 

KUMINA
Members of the "Bongo Nation" in eastern Jamaica look to the Congo-Angola and Guinea Coast regions as the home of their oldest ancestors. As ritual, Kumina interweaves spiritual, linguistic, musical, and movement practices that connect the Bongo Nation to their ancestors through possession by spirits.

Percussion accompany Kumina rituals, and along with singers, dancers, and their Queen, form part of the hosting group (or "band").

NYABINGHI
Extended Nyabinghi assemblies, traditional Rastafarian gatherings, feature the ceremonial smoking of ganja, the critical conversation engagement called reasoning, and the practices of chanting, dancing, and drumming. These practices all help consolidate or "ground" a Rastafari identity.

Three drums constitute the lifeblood of Rastafarian music: the bass ("thunder"), fundeh, and repeater ("pita"). Played on its side, the bass produces deeply resonant booms that ground the musical experience and signify for some the symbolic blows of Rastafari against "Babylon," systems of percussion and oppression, past and present. The fundeh produces the "heartbeat" of the Nyabinghi rhythm, and the "pita" drummer deploys an array of timbres and rhythmic patterns to heighten musical expressivity.

PHOTOS FROM THE BEARING WITNESS OPENING AT PENN MUSEUM

THE CLOSING CEREMONY FOR BEARING WITNESS AT THE PENN MUSEUM