Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

“It is important for a nation, in creating an identity, to celebrate our unique heritage, and not be limited in scope.” Natalia Dopwell, Creative Director of the Classical Music Development Foundation of T&T (CMDFTT), says it is for this reason the Foundation has commissioned “Songs of the Islands”, an albums of songs derived from music and poetry of the Caribbean and reinterpreted for classical performers. The album will be premiered for the first time on July 9 during the T&T Opera Festival 2016. 

Dopwell said the idea for the collection came from her personal experience as a Trinidadian studying in New York and missing out on opportunities to perform because there was no suitable music from her home country. “Although we have a lot of music in this country, not very much of it was written down in a way where you could hand sheet music to a pianist and perform it. We have two collections of folk songs, one by Edwin Carter and the other by La Petite Musicale that were written down, which are actually quite difficult to get your hands on. However, the folk songs were never intended to be performed by solo performers in a concert setting, they’re more meant for large groups and choirs with a lot of movement and repeats and drums to make it interesting. For a solo performer, they don’t do anything vocally challenging and they tend to fall very flat so that’s why you don’t hear solo performers performing them very often. I just kept thinking it shouldn’t be so hard for Trinidadian singers to get their hands on music from our own country to perform in this way.”
Dopwell said she heard of Dominique LeGendre, a UK-based, Trinidad-born composer, while performing in a web-cast concert. LeGendre had composed a full-length opera, called “Bird of Night,” based on the Soucouyant, for the Royal Opera House, (ROH2) Covent Garden, in 2004. They began corresponding via email and LeGendre asked Dopwell with rapso group 3Canal and singer Nickolai Salcedo to sing in the workshop performance of “Jab Molassie,” a new music-theatre work commissioned by Calabash Foundation for the Arts, in 2014.
Based on this relationship, the CMDFTT commissioned LeGendre to compose the album using sources from T&T and the Caribbean. Dopwell said the three main sources are traditional spirituals, folk songs and poems from Caribbean poets like Claude McKay and Derek Walcott. “The folk songs are very light and fun to perform, and then she’s got some that are more like ballads and then you’ve got these spirituals that are more contemplative. There’s everything from spirituals to patois to folk songs to Call of the Rosebud which is a Jamaican patois poem, then some contemporary Caribbean writers. It’s all written for solo or duet voice and piano.”
The performers will include Dopwell, Eddie Cumberbatch, Danielle Williams, Leandra Head, Jude Balthazar, Rory Wallace and visiting Canadian husband and wife, Justin Welsh and Cara Adams. The two pianists, Dr. Jeffrey Middleton and Byron Burford, flew in from New York for the Opera Festival.
Dopwell said all but two of the song had never been performed before “with the exception of two from Derek Walcott that were debuted last year in three places: they were sung at the Bocas Literary Festival in Trinidad, and I also sang them in both Poland and London last year.”
Dopwell said one of the performers was blown away to hear about the collection. “He said when he heard we were doing/actually had some music written for Caribbean performers, he said he was blown away and so happy because he could finally say, maybe at the next recital he performs at, alongside Mozart and some spirituals, he could perform something from his own country in a concert hall and really stand up there and say “This is from my country.” I’m just happy to be able to have had the opportunity to create something new for classical singers from the Caribbean region, of which there are many, we have a long history of Caribbean classical singers that goes largely unnoticed and that history I think is important and I’m glad to be able to have created, to have allowed this collection to be created.”
She is happy that the collection has been created. “It was very difficult for me to have those opportunities be missed just because no-one had ever taken the opportunity to invest in this genre. It’s important for me because I know there are many other talented singers coming behind me that are going to face the same problem. I’m just happy to have had the opportunity to create something new for classical singers from the Caribbean region, of which there are many. We have a long history of Caribbean classical singers that goes largely unnoticed and that history is important.”