For the Reckord | Noel Dexter: Music chose me

When I asked Noel Dexter a few years ago why he chose a career in music, his reply was, “I didn’t choose music. Music chose me.” The evidence bears this out.

I, and others attending his thanksgiving service at The University Chapel, Mona, on Monday afternoon, got some of that evidence from three friends, who gave the remembrance. They were Dr Lilieth Nelson, a former director of the University Singers; Vivian Crawford, chairman of the Institute of Jamaica; and retired Supreme Court judge Justice Roy Anderson.

As the last-named concluded his reminiscences, he stated, “Noel’s contribution to music and culture in Jamaica and the Caribbean is equal to the contribution of many persons who have been awarded the Order of Jamaica.” Referring to the fact that Dexter’s national honour was an Order of Distinction, he added that he hoped that, even posthumously, Dexter might be given the higher award.

His words were greeted by loud, prolonged applause and cheers from the audience, which was clearly convinced that Dexter’s musical career was as big as, in Anderson’s words, “a nuclear explosion”.

Self-taught musician

We learnt that Dexter set out on the road to that career when he began teaching himself to play music when his father brought home a piano. The family was musical; Noel’s mother, a pianist, taught music, and Noel’s brother and sisters were taking piano lessons.

When Noel went to his first class at 10, he was playing at grade four level. He progressed rapidly, and by the time he left Port Antonio, he was choirmaster and organist at the Port Antonio Methodist Church. Anderson said that at 14, Dexter became the pianist for the choir at his school, Titchfield High; played popular songs after school and at lunchtime; was a member of a nightclub band, the Blue Feathers Orchestra and won numerous prizes in Festival competitions in voice and piano. He founded the Port Antonio Dance Group and was a member of the Port Antonio Drama Group.

He was also a brilliant student (the only one in his class who got a grade one in the Cambridge exams) and a talented athlete (the first from Titchfield, Anderson said, to get a track scholarship), and he played hockey and football for the school. According to Crawford, a friend for some 60 years, it was because Dexter had to run three and a half miles from home to school in Norwich for a year that he developed his physical strength.

From Nelson, we heard that after leaving Port Antonio, Dexter went to Kingston and taught geography and economics and later taught music at Ardenne High School for 17 years. He played for morning worship and for the choir, which he led to numerous Festival awards. After studying at The University of the West Indies (UWI), majoring in sociology with a minor in economics, he returned to Ardenne to teach economics and music.

From Ardenne, he went to The UWI in 1977 as director of music and of the University Singers. There he remained until 2003, when he retired, though he remained a consultant until just before his death. With the Singers, he toured the Caribbean, Guyana, the United States, and Canada. With them, too, he performed for heads of state, for royalty, and at numerous university functions.

Work and awards

Nelson said that Dexter was the composer of the music of 10 theatrical productions, including seven Little Theatre Movement (LTM) pantomimes, including Banana Boy, in which he acted. He wrote extensively in the area of church music – anthems, hymns, and Masses – and has works in hymnals used all over the world.

Nelson spoke of about 20 awards that Dexter received from educational institutions, the Government and the private sector. They include an honorary doctorate from The UWI, the Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) and the Order of Distinction Officer Class from the Government of Jamaica.

Nelson also spoke of Dexter’s wry humour and candour as a music teacher and the founder of several choral groups and said that tributes from all over the world refer to him as talented, humble, creative, outstanding, and generous. She had the audience respond with, “Yes, we remember,” at various points in her talk, and Ellan Neil, one of the University Singers, led the choir in singing One Ting Lead to Annodah, a Dexter composition for a pantomime, to illustrate his own rise to greatness.

Carol Dexter-Dwyer, Dexter’s daughter, said that the great lesson he taught her was to spend time doing what she absolutely loved. That she had done, she said, adding, “I, too, have embraced the title of musician [like both parents].”

Dexter’s eclectic taste in music was reflected in the fact that about a half of the two-and-a-half-hour service was devoted to compositions of various genres – sacred, show and popular – sung and played by numerous groups and individuals. They included Dexter’s grandson Jhada’s band, 8 The Boy Band.