Nanny The Musical connecting the past to the present

Many Jamaicans believe National Heroine Nanny of the Maroons was a myth, likewise some of the stories of her exploits. However, there are records at the National Archives in Spanish Town, St Catherine to prove that she breathed air, and, after the Windward Maroons defeated the British in 1739, the government of King George II granted her and her people 500 acres of land in Portland in 1740.

Fast-forward to the future. Nanny and the matter of land will again be under the spotlight when The University Players, in association with The Indigenous and Maroon Studies Institute and The Ashe Company presents Holgate and Walters’ Nanny and The Keeper of the Abeng – A Caribbean Mythery Musical. Book, lyrics and music are by Dr Michael Holgate (director and choreographer) and C. S. Walters (musical director).

This new musical premiers on the weekend of October 2, 3 and 4, and continues the following weekend, October 9, 10 and 11, inside the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts on the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies, where tickets are available.

The musical is Dr Holgate’s latest production in which at least one of Jamaica’s national heroes is the star. The others are ‘Marcus Garvey in ‘Garvey the Musical’, Bogle and Gordon in ‘The Trial of Governor Eyre’, and Sam Sharpe, Bogle and Gordon in ‘Riot Act’. And, like for the others, the treatment is not biographical and chronological. And why not?

“Because, it doesn’t matter how well documented the story is, somebody is going to say that that is not how it goes. When you go mythological, you get the essence of the story, which is what our ancestors want us to get,” he said, “I am also not avoiding the story as is. I am using those elements of truth and facts as much as possible within the story … I am not completely fictionalising Nanny.”

“But, won’t it give credence to the beliefs in some quarters that Nanny was indeed a myth?” The Gleaner asked?

“My treatment is solidifying the truth that exists, and so there is a song that speaks to the parcel of land that King George gave Nanny. The power of the mythery is that it can bring truth into being. You can play around with the facts,” Dr Holgate replied.

He calls the treatment ‘Caribbean mythery’, a term that came out of his doctor of philosophy thesis. He told The Gleaner, “My Caribbean mythery style is to ensure that the contemporary world is referencing what could have happened if 400 years of separation (slavery) didn’t happen. It’s about who we are, who we were, and who we could have been, had it not been for slavery.

“Caribbean mythery is a modern myth-making device to create a myth and the elements of that … includes the ancestors, and so, in my stories the ancestors appear in the modern world because they have answers, they have questions, but I don’t just give them this all-knowing, all-seeing position. I allow them to be concerned, and a little bit frail, and vulnerable.”

The story is about a young woman (played by Adira Truthe or Shanice Phillips) who lives in Kofi Pen, a rural community on the fringe of a town, where gentrification is taking place. Someone comes to buy the land, which was a free village. They want the people to give them control of the community centre, which sits on acres of land, and has some good facilities. So, the conversation surrounds land, land ownership, and land grab.

The young woman, who lived with her father, returns to the community after her mother dies. She finds an abeng, a Maroon wind instrument made from a cattle’s horn, that was in her mother’s care. She blows the abeng three times and Nanny of the Maroons (played by Twila Wheelan) appears from the past. Nanny tells her that, she, Nanny, was summoned.

The young woman protests, but Nanny insists, and tells her that what she and her people are going through now, she and her people, too, had gone through. The young woman was now the keeper of the abeng, which is the connection between one generation and the other. She uses it inadvertently to summon Nanny, whose appearance is instrumental to the resolution of the land-grab problem.

“It’s that conversation between the ancestors and who we are now … in order to bring out the things that trouble us … that’s one aspect of it, the ancestral intervention. Another aspect of it, I ensure there is a conversation among the people who have held the consciousness of blackness over periods of time … but are not in conversation with each other. No convergence of thought. So, my production facilitates that convergence.”

And Dr Holgate revealed that while Nanny was definitely going to be onstage, he was not ready for her. It was Walters who insisted that it was time for Nanny to cast her spell. Dr Holgate acquiesced, at a time when so many of our young people seem to be disconnected from their history.

Holgate decided to use his Caribbean mythery style to tell the land-grab story because he wants also to appeal to people who seem to be detached from their Jamaican history, to find a way to immerse them in it, through theatre, while still allowing them to be connected to modern-day sensibilities.