Minister of Youth and Culture, the Honourable Lisa Hanna, has officially opened the exhibition on Jamaica’s Intangible Cultural Heritage at the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank (ACIJ/JMB) offices at Kingston Mall, downtown Kingston.
The exhibition forms part of the ACIJ/JMB’s ongoing work in sensitizing the public to Jamaica’s rich cultural heritage, and the need to identify and protect (safeguard) cultural practices that may be endangered or under threat. The multimedia exhibition complements a series of workshops on community capacity development which commenced in December 2012, funded by the Japanese-Funds-In-Trust and coordinated by the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean with the assistance of the Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO. The workshops had participants from the Rastafarian, Storytelling, Revival, Kumina, Maroon, East Indian and Craft communities.
Among the objects and artifacts featured in the exhibition are items associated with those communities including jippy jappa hats, straw baskets, brooms (traditional craft); Repeater drum and flags of the Mansions of Rastafari (Rastafari); Fishpots, the Gumbeh drum from Accompong Town and the Prentin drum from Moore Town as well as abengs (Maroons); Graters, Playing Kyas and the K’bandu drums (Kumina) and a Revival table.
The display on the Maroons of Jamaica highlights the Gumbeh drum and the Prentin drum that two distinct communities utilise in the veneration of their ancestral spirits. The Prentin drum, for
example, forms a critical component in the Kromanti play, an aspect of the Musical Heritage of the Moore Town Maroons that was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003.
The Ministry of Youth & Culture launched a national community sensitization programme in November 2014 which encouraged all members of local communities to identify and document their own intangible cultural heritage elements and to store that information at the archive of ACIJ/JMB for posterity.
In her presentation, Minister Hannah deemed the exhibition an effective way in which Jamaicans should protect and remind the youth about their heritage. She recalled certain aspects of our intangible heritage such as placing rum on the forehead, drinking bush tea and other remedies for illness.
Chairman of the ACIJ/JMB Board, Mr. Jospeh Pereria, thanked the members of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Stakeholders Network for their contributions to the exhibition, while highlighting the work of the late Dr. Olive Llewin, who was a pioneer in conducting research on Jamaica’s intangible cultural heritage, particularly in the area of folk music.