The Virgin Islands Daily News :: Daniel Shea
On a cloudy evening, three high schoolers sat on the steps outside the main entrance of the St. Croix Educational Complex and strapped stilts to their legs, making sure to pad their knees sufficiently — they are still beginners, after all.
But, once up and walking, they did not seem to be in any danger of falling. Getting in a practice session looked precarious as raindrops fell intermittently, but the three were undisturbed and moved deftly on the stilts, standing in a semi-circle as they talked, casually moving with their normal mannerisms, like absurd caricatures of themselves.
Minus the normal mocko jumbie attire, they were not quite as startling as those usually seen in parades and at festivals. But it takes training to earn the colorful, striking garb that dazzles audiences.
That is exactly why the three have gathered — twice a week since March — and moved to the instruction of 19-year-old Zayd Saleem.
“They’s the fastest learning group I’ve ever been around,” Saleem said of his advanced students, Victor Poleon and Kiahn Rivera, both 17, and 14-year-old Kareem Edwards — all students at Complex.
Although Victor, Kiahn and Kareem are young, they are getting a bit of a late start on the art. Many of the mocko jumbies performing today — such as Luis Rosado, 22, who had been “up” for 14 years when he performed at the recent Christiansted Jump Up — are in their late teens or early 20s. And, there’s another generation of kids as young as 8 years old learning to perform.
The mocko jumbie training is just one effort in an array of concerted initiatives to pass on the unique culture and traditional arts of the territory to a younger generation. This did not come about organically, but it is the product of an intentional push from a variety of individuals intent on preserving the islands’ heritage by training new generations of mocko jumbies, quelbe bands, quadrille dancers and storytellers.
Just inside Complex, as mocko jumbies took giant strides around the grounds outside, a quelbe band practiced while, masqueraders and quadrille dancers fooled around before practice began.
The traditional arts program is the creation of Valrica Bryson, a music teacher at Complex — and the program’s primary benefactor. She helped start the band five years ago with the help of the quelbe band, Stanley and the 10 Sleepless Nights.
Now, when the band plays, “people think it’s Stanley playing,” Bryson said.
The quadrille dancers were 10 in number when they started and have now jumped to 32.
“They all came and said, ‘We want to join,’ ” Bryson said. “And I’m, like, I’m flabbergasted.”
In March, Bryson expanded the program to include mocko jumbies, and she hopes soon to add a course in storytelling — the art with perhaps the largest generation gap.
Similar initiatives to preserve traditional arts heritage have taken place on St. Thomas and St. John.
Two fungi bands have been formed — one at Gladys Abraham Elementary and another at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, said Glenn “Kwabena” Davis, the director of the Division of Cultural Education, and a famous storyteller and calypsonian.
Most schools have steel pan bands, and St. John has the group of students and young adults who comprise the Love City Pan Dragons.
The Division of Cultural Education was originally founded in 1981, according to its Assistant Director Gerard Emanuel. Organizers had spent more than five years combing through some of the extensive materials documenting the culture and history of the islands that had been developed over the past two decades and were ready to start implementing it in the curriculum when the division was shut down in 1987, he said.
The division was reinstated under the direction of Davis in 2007.
Davis and Emanuel expressed the same vision: to weave cultural elements into every logical aspect of the curriculum. When students are studying plant structure, instead of using stateside leaves, such as maple or oak, Davis wants students to learn using the plants that surround the children, he said.
“Down the road, what we are looking for is that type of integration in the classroom,” Davis said.
Although Emanuel and Davis support passing on culture and traditions to younger generations, the actual performances — the mocko jumbies, quadrille dancers and fungi bands — mean nothing without a knowledge of where they came from, they said.
“That’s just the expressive part of culture,” Emanuel said. “What we call culture is the end product. But it’s the mental processes that created the culture that we must pass on.”
One of the most traditional ways of preserving and passing on culture, along with the moral foundations of a society, is through storytelling, Davis said.
At the moment, there is a generational gap as far as those trained to tell the traditional tales in a traditional voice.
Many of the storytellers are of an older generation. Davis, who has been telling stories for 45 years, knows of two storytellers in their 40s. The famous Crucian Delta Dorsch is 96 years old. The territory’s primary practitioners of storytelling are between those ages, and some have realized the need to start training a younger generation to carry on the oral tradition.
“With storytelling, we’ve got an aging population of storytellers, and we need to start a whole new generation,” said Pamela Richards Samuel, with the History, Culture and Tradition Foundation.
The foundation is organizing a number of workshops to teach local trades and is trying to focus on a storytelling program for the first time, Richards Samuel said.
Davis said the generation gap in the art of storytelling is “bridgeable.” To bridge it, he puts on workshops and takes on apprentices.
“Whenever I go to do my storytelling now — when I get a private gig at night — what I do is insist that a couple of my apprentice storytellers come along to get them some experience and also to let them see the financial aspects of it.”
It can be hard to retain some students, however. After they graduate, some go to college stateside and do not have opportunities to practice, others enter the workforce and get too busy to pursue the art, Davis said.
For those going away, Davis provides an anthology of almost 30 stories to study and practice, he said.
As with storytelling, there was a similar widening of the generation gap with mocko jumbies in the early 1990s. Two of the main developers of the modern mocko jumbies were Alvin “Ali” Paul and Willard John.
The most recent Crucian wave of mocko jumbies began in 1993, when Amir Saleem, now 27, and a friend started using closet boards in their back yards, Saleem said.
They went to Ricardo Richards Elementary. An administrator caught on and contacted John to provide the youngsters with some formal training, dubbing the effort Project Self Esteem.
“It caught on real quick and, from then to now, we have at least 1,000 mocko jumbies trained over the years,” Saleem said.
Throughout the school year, mocko jumbie classes are still held every Saturday at Ricardo Richards.
Organizers support the crafts for the cultural preservation, and also because it keeps the kids busy in a community where aimlessness too often leads to dropping out of school and, sometimes, to criminal activity.
When John’s mocko jumbie group, Guardians of Culture, performs, parents and kids alike ask how they can get involved, said Charlita Schjang, who helps coordinate the group.
“They’re just amazed by it, and they’re interested in trying,” she said. “And we encourage them to do it, because it keeps them off the streets.”
Surrounding her were close to 10 mocko jumbies stretching and getting ready to perform at the Jump Up. They were seated on top of SUVs, putting on stilts and long, colorful pants as they got dressed and ready to entertain the crowd. They were all young — most between 17 and 22.
The interest almost ensures a self-perpetuating stream of mocko jumbies, with relatives and friends encouraging each other to join up.
People look up to them — literally and figuratively.
In fact, Amir Saleem is Zayd Saleem’s older brother.
And, back at the jumbie practice session at Complex, Zayd Saleem shouted out the steps to his three apprentices.
The rain held off. The practice went on uninterrupted.
The USVI Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), in partnership with the St. Croix Foundation, invites parents and education stakeholders to an important informational forum on Educational Equity and Parent Choice. The event is scheduled for Firday, Aug. 13 and Saturday, Aug. 14, and will be held in the Cardiac Care Center Conference Room at the Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital, St. Croix.
The Innovative Telephone 2010 Leadership Development Internship (LDI) Team comprised of Oswin Sewer Jr., Denelle Baptiste, Elisa Williams, Sharriann Turnbull and Gellani Latorre hosted a community service activity at the University of the Virgin Islands St. Croix Campus. Upward Bound Assistant Director Michelle Albany-Crispin said the LDI Team members have passed the torch of wisdom and the life skills needed to prepare 25 Upward Bound high school students for success in college. The team’s presentation had a great impact coming from these young Interns who are making the transition from school to the working world. Zenzile Hodge, vice president of human resources at Innovative Telephone Corporation, opened the program and Jennifer Matarangas-King, Innovative Cable TV president, shared insights into the skills necessary for success in life.
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