Svetalana Leu

Caitlyn Kamminga

Jab Molassie: A Caribbean Adaptation of Igor Stravinksy’s L’Histoire du Soldat reviews

What originally drew me to Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat as the starting point for an adaptation, is its universal story. Underlying it is the Biblical text, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Like Shakespeare’s plays, which have been set in every country, language and age, this story is relevant in every society.

Jab Molassie is a re-working of Stravinsky’s enduring morality masterpiece. Based on an old Russian folktale and set in Europe during World War I, Charles Ramuz’ original libretto, written in 1918, is the tale of a deserting soldier who happens upon the devil and winds up selling his soul in exchange for untold wealth. Later the avaricious fighter falls in love with a beautiful princess and must suddenly deal with the consequences of his bargain.

For my Caribbean adaptation, I chose to set the work in the hills of Laventille, overlooking Trinidad’s capital city of Port of Spain. Rather than a world war, [in Laventille] we have a turf war. The main characters are the soldier aka ‘Starboy’, a young musician on the fringes of a gang; a security guard at Starboy’s school, who becomes the Midnight Robber and narrates the story; the princess, a silent dance part, a Carnival queen; and the devil who is a Jab Molassie. Unable to predict the price he will pay for the exchange of his beloved violin for Jab’s magic book, the question remains: can Starboy find his way through, or will he be lost to Jab forever?

I began my research for this project by taking a walking tour of Laventille. Perched high above the blue Caribbean Sea and looking down on the Savannah where the National Academy for the Performing Arts had recently been planted like an alien spaceship, [I felt like Laventille] might be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Dotted with charming pink and green and fading yellow houses, people relaxed on their galleries and limed on the corner.

Yet there is a darker side to Laventille. Ravaged by poverty and unemployment, in recent years harrowing stories of young men’s lives cut short are regularly splashed across the newspapers. Known in the 1940’s as the ‘Dead End Kids’, Desperados, the oldest steel band in Trinidad, are housed in a large youth facility at the top of Laventille Road. However, during the carnival season they now move down to Cadiz Road on the Savannah, as visitors are advised not to venture into Laventille after dark.

It was therefore important in setting the work in Laventille to get beyond the perception of its use as a convenient backdrop in this Faustian tale. Our task then, as Dominique Le Gendre so eloquently stated, was “to capture with just the right and concentrated combination of words, sounds and images what the world of Laventille means, but also to show that Laventille was actually everywhere, not just Trinidad.” Indeed, that Jab Molassie was a universal human story and that Starboy was Everyman.

Researching the language of Trinidad started with a conversation over a cup of coffee and later a dram of rum with the security guard at my son’s school. We would sit on the steps of the church across the street, where ‘Corporal’ had a clear view of any bacchanal that might take place. He wasn’t shirking his duties, just politely taking time out of his day to chastise me on my choice of words. “They might say that in New Orleans, Miss Caitlyn, he he…but not in Trinidad!” He had a mighty grin that wrapped around his face, his skin taught against his cheekbones. He ripped me to shreds, but always with kindness and I repaid him with doubles and pelau and the occasional bottle of rum.

I had planned to perform the work with Stravinsky’s original score. Written for violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone and percussion, the piece was heavily influenced by the in-vogue African rhythms prevalent in Europe at the time, [when] Europe was in love with Primitivism and that new form of music, jazz! With a similar line-up to an old-time calypso band--bassoon not withstanding: Stravinsky hated the sound of the saxophone and so chose the bassoon instead-- I felt the work was relevant to Trinidad. However, I had come across another adaptation by Wynton Marsallis entitled, A Fiddler’s Tale. His clarinetist, Stanley Crouch, wrote the libretto, in which a musician sells her soul to her record producer. I began thinking that my piece might be that much more powerful if it had an original score written by a Trinidadian composer.

By chance, my neighbor was related to the carnival historian Peta Bain who lived at the end of our road. One afternoon I knocked on her door and about four hours later I left with a stack of books and CDs, a notebook filled with carnival characters, which included Jab-Jab- the pretty devil, versus Jab Molassie- the terrifying molasses devil and pages of names of Trinidadian musicians living abroad that Peta felt it was important I should know about. On that list was composer Dominique Le Gendre, an Associate Artist at the Royal Opera House in London, [the city from which] I had just moved.

Dominique and I became fast friends and the decision to ask her if she would be interested in collaborating on this project was an easy one. A classically trained, successful composer living and working in London, Dominique grew up in a Trinidad that did not offer a tertiary education in the arts at the time. The combination of her roots in Trinidad, my roots in New Orleans, our exposure to African rhythms, jazz and Carnival, as well as our classical training, combined to make the perfect partnership for creating a relevant piece of musical theatre.

During a visit to Trinidad in early 2011, Dom and I were having a bite to eat with another good friend, photographer Maria Nunes, whose exquisite portraits of ole mas characters appear on magazine fronts and galleries in Trinidad and abroad. We had just met with Charlotte Elias to discuss the possibilities of her helping with a production of Jab Molassie. A goddaughter of the late Pat Bishop, a cultural icon beloved by Trinidadians for her commitment to the arts, Charlotte had been very encouraging. Sadly, she was tied up with another project and would not have time to even look at our project until much later in the year. At that point Maria rather boldly stated, “Let me see what I can do.” Not long after that, Calabash Foundation for the Arts was born. With a mission to provide funding and support systems to promote the development of the arts in Trinidad and Tobago, Calabash, with Maria Nunes at the helm, would take on Jab Molassie as its first project. Those seven little words, “Let me see what I can do,” set the project in action.

Thanks to First Citizen’s Bank, who completely underwrote the commission of Jab Molassie by Calabash, and to Neal and Massy Foundation, who underwrote the first workshop, Act 1 was presented to an audience of speciallyinvited guests on January 18, 2011 at the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s Academy for the Performing Arts. In the audience that day were representatives from our two sponsors, members of the corporate and diplomatic corps who had supported the venture, as well as members of the artistic community. Described by members of the audience as a “fabulous combination of something familiar and something fresh,” the Director of the Tallman Foundation, Michele Ayoung-Chee, went a step further and called it “the first calypso opera!”

Bolstered by the response, we entered the second series of workshops, which are so important to the creation of a new work for the stage. Included in this second workshop were apprenticeships for students studying at the APA, all of whom received a stipend for their intensive training in a professional setting. Over the full duration of rehearsals and performances, the skills and responsibilities inherent to any professional stage production were passed on, through work experience, to five understudies, as well as to the director’s apprentices, the music director, stage producer and choreographer.

We were extremely pleased to have Trinidadian singers/ actors Wendell Manwarren and Roger Roberts of 3 Canal joining us on stage, as well as soprano Natalia Dopwell, the creative director of the Classical Music Development Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago, and Martina Laird, who is well known for her roles on London stages and in the BBC series ‘Casualty’. Playing Starboy was singer-poet, Muhammad Muwakil. In addition to my colleagues at the Academy for the Performing Arts, we were joined by Etienne Charles on trumpet and Mia Gormandy on double tenor steel pan. A final presentation of the work took place at the end of the second set of workshops on June 8, 2013 at the Little Carib Theatre. A full production of the work was planned for 2014, which we hoped would include a tour around Trinidad and eventually, abroad.

Biography: Kamminga currently holds the position of Assistant Professor Double Bass at the University of Trinidad and Tobago, where she specialises in interdisciplinary studies and service learning. A regular contributor to the Teaching Artist Journal, her written works include Jab Molassie and Basses Are Loaded. Her most recent work, River of Freedom, will be featured in the 2016 Bocas Lit Fest.