National Gallery pulls in patrons with performances

The senior curator of the National Gallery, Oneil Lawrence, is happy with the institution’s “cunning strategy” (his phrase) of attracting patrons to its fine arts exhibitions. For years, the gallery’s ‘Last Sundays’ performing arts presentations (involving dance, drama and music) have proved enticing.

After the shows, audiences move from the performance space on the ground floor to view the artwork in other spaces. Then, six years ago, the annual Christmastime visits of the choral ensemble Nexus began and the strategy took a new twist.

As Lawrence explained to The Gleaner after Sunday’s concert, National Gallery patrons have been benefiting from the fact that the founder and artistic director of Nexus, Hugh Douse, is also a fine arts aficionado. So he has been able to entertain them with commentary on the artwork and, along with the choir, sing related songs.

Having followed Douse around the gallery to view 20 or so paintings and one sculpture and listen to the songs he linked to the art, Sunday’s visitors almost certainly have a new appreciation of those pieces – which may well influence any artwork they see from now on.

The sole sculpture referenced by Douse was Edna Manley’s 1943 mahogany carving Moon. Nexus gathered around it to sing two songs, one the well-known folk song Moonshine Tonight. The other was Evening Time by Louise Bennett-Coverley and Barbara Ferland, which was sung in the1949-1950 Little Theatre Movement pantomime.

Musical variety

Those songs were just two examples of the variety of the music that Nexus offered. They started off with the sombre Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Rastaman Chant then moved on into dancehall, which Douse said he liked because “It turns things upside down.” With that Nexus sang Chronixx’s Dweet fi di Love in an “upside down” way – with counterpoint singing and four-part harmony. It was unusual, and it worked.

Standing beside a set of Marley portraits, Douse told his listeners that the singer’s music speaks to the whole world, in a modern way, about the importance of people respecting one another. “We (Jamaicans) are everyone, and when we disrespect others, we disrespect ourselves,” he said.

He then joined the group in a medley of Marley songs, including Who the Cap Fits, Redemption Song, No Woman Nuh Cry and One Love.

Osmond Watson’s oil on canvas painting Horse Head Masquerade moved Douse to introduce the topic of African spirituality and the establishment in Jamaica of the African-based form of worship Revival. He connected this up with “banton”, a form of coded speech which Jamaican slaves used in the presence of overseers to disguise what they were saying. The song Chi-Chi Bud Oh, which Nexus sang, was a form of banton, Douse said.

Another Watson painting, The Lawd is My Shepherd, led to the singing of the Lord’s Prayer. Peter Tosh’s song-prayer Jah is My Keeper followed soon after.

Other paintings which evoked songs were ones by Eugene Hyde and Colin Garland. The latter’s Kore and In the Beautiful Caribbean, a triptych, which feature cherubs, led to the song Adam in de Garden Hiding.

Douse closed the concert with a poignant, Revival-style song, May You Have Everlasting Life, which he said he and the group wrote in tribute to the recently deceased Jamaican composer Noel Dexter.

Lawrence’s statement that NG patrons generally look forward to the Nexus performance was borne out on Sunday.

The turnout was both large and enthusiastic, with lots of singing-along, dancing, laughter and applause. And Lawrence assured The Gleaner that Nexus would be invited back next December.