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HomeNewsArchivesLecture, St. John Music Traditions Summit Set June 3

Lecture, St. John Music Traditions Summit Set June 3

May 30, 2004 — A free public program at the St. John School of the Arts will be presented the evening of June 3 by the Alton Augustus Adams Music Research Institute.
The current Rockefeller Resident Scholar, Dr. Kenneth Bilby, will lecture on earlier variants and aspects of John Canoe – also know as jonkonnu or junkanoo, a celebration carried on in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize. Bilby is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who specializes in music and culture in locations throughout the circum-Caribbean.
The Summit on St. John Music Traditions will follow the lecture, and Dr. Gilbert Sprauve will be master of ceremonies. This is the third Summit in a series to document tradition bearers, music and cultural practices in the Virgin Islands, with the first two presented in 2003 on St. Thomas and in March of this year on St. Croix.
Featured will be live interviews with Jimmy Boynes, Warren Smalls, Godfrey Smalls, John Sewer and Oscar James, each of whom will be inducted into the Institute's roster of tradition bearers. Other St. John musicians, including Melbourne "Mello" Thomas, Steadwin Frett, Jens Pickering, Randolph Thomas and Vernon Parsons, will be recognized. And posthumous recognition will be given to Eustace Richards, Loredon Boynes, Wilmot Blackwood, Basil Harley, Emile Jurgen, Herman Sprauve, and Ludwig Sprauve.
The event will feature performances by Rudolph "Pimpy" Thomas, The Mighty Groover, and Koko and the Sunshine Band.
The event begins at 7 p.m. at the school, located next to the Legislature Building in Cruz Bay. The St. John School of the Arts and Executive Director Sis Frank have generously provided use of their facilities, a release said. The event is supported in part with funding from the V.I. Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
AMRI was established in 2001 on St. Thomas in the ancestral home of Alton Augustus Adams Sr. It facilitates the study and documentation of black music in the Caribbean region, particularly in the Virgin Islands. In addition to the summits, AMRI also presents workshops to train residents to preserve the words and music of tradition bearers; a biannual newsletter, "Cariso!"; and maintenance of a small resource center with local and external materials available for research. Call 715-5680 Tuesday through Friday for details.
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