Jamaica’s voice, the power of mento: Steve Higgins seeks to preserve music’s legacy
Jamaica’s voice, the power of mento: Steve Higgins seeks to preserve music’s legacy . 
The Jamaica Observer
Steve Higgins in Japan in 2024

KINGSTON Jamaica – For centuries, the voice of the Jamaican people has been amplified through its music, the foundation of which is mento, developed on the plantations during slavery. While the genre lost its sway by the 1950s, its legacy has endured through its successors and particularly the efforts of ambassadors such as Jamaican folk singer, Steve Higgins.

“If somebody has a mother-in-law that don’t like them. There’s a song for that, you know?” Higgins told Observer Online before launching into a version of ‘Bad Madda’n Law’ to prove his point.

“You thought I was joking?” he asked before roaring with laughter.

Higgins had just landed at home in Florida after a journey from Berlin, to Amsterdam, Jamaica and then back to the US, a trip fuelled by his work as a musical ambassador, with special focus on mento.

“When the slaves were coming over from Africa to the Caribbean they did not have their encyclopedias, or their iPhones or iPads or computers. They came with their skin on their back, naked, and so the history that we have of our ancestors is all oral,” the singer said.

That’s one reason Higgins believes Jamaicans are so musically inclined, even amid worries that knowledge of our folk music is declining locally.

“Because our music and our customs were all oral and passed down. Every single facet of life, every aspect of life has a sound to it. Did you know that? Every aspect of life,” Higgins said, his excitement for imparting a music history lesson palpable, as he encouraged the Observer team to name any aspect of life during a phone interview.

When reporters responded with “washing”, the long-time singer, without hesitation, burst into song,

“Miss Mattie dung a river side, a wash her clothes with all her might, Oh, Mattie, wah do you so? She wash the clothes and spread them out, Right pan wah alligator snout,” Higgins trilled, sending peals of delighted laughter around the room.

After nearly 30 years as a singer, 23 of which were spent with the Jamaican Folk Singers, Higgins explained that he has a deep appreciation for the transcendent power of Jamaican mento.

The singer who has represented Jamaica in China, Japan, Australia, Germany, in London, and countless other places, demonstrated not only how the musical genre – which originated in Africa and was brought over to Jamaica by the enslaved – acted as a record for the Africans and their descendants, but how it has made him a world traveller and why its preservation is critical.

“My passion has always been to interpret music properly, soundly and positively,” Higgins, who hails from Morant Bay, explained. “My father is from a very musical family. His uncle used to play 11 instruments, and all of them used to sing – So yes, I learned musicality from them.”

“But my mother is a very ‘stush’ lady from the Victorian age, and she used to listen to classical music quite a bit. Her favourite song, for instance, is ‘The Lass with the Delicate Hair’, it is very proper. Daddy was just like me, very, very irreverent; I grew up in a home where music was an integral part of life.”

Higgins’ deep love for folk music specifically, came when he left home to attend what was then CAST, now the University of Technology, and joined the folk singers under the tutelage of the celebrated Olive Lewin.

In speaking of Lewin, who received the Order of Jamaica for her work researching folk music across the country, Higgins said: “If somebody [sang] a song to her like, ‘This long time gal, mi neva see you,’ it had to be arranged. You had to have soprano, contralto, tenor, bass instruments, and rhythms, and it has to be documented on manuscript paper so it’s official. She did that for over 200 of our Jamaican folk songs. And now, Jamaica is the only country in the English speaking Caribbean that has that collection of music.”

Hired for the time consuming work by then-Minister of Development and Welfare, Edward Seaga, Lewin would record those trips across the country on cassettes, now stored in the Institute of Jamaica, and Higgins was there for much of it, helping to collate and write the music.

In explaining why those trips into the deep recesses of Jamaica, the arranging and recording were necessary, Higgins said “I happen to think that in the same manner in which your eyes are the window to your soul, our music and the voice is a window to our experiences over the ages.”

In demonstrating examples of experiences spanning hundreds of years, all coalesced into lyrics, Higgins referred to another song called ‘Tambo’, which he explained was about an uprising in Brown’s Town.

“Slaves were not allowed to speak because they could be planning a revolt. But they were allowed to sing because the plantation owners thought they were happy and contained. So, people communicated their revolts and uprisings through song,” he said.

“There are other historical things, because we’re an agricultural society, a lot of songs were around agriculture– Friday is big market day, Saturday is another big market day. But you see if Saturday night comes and you don’t sell nothing, it’s a very sad thing, and so, this song,” he said, breaking into a sombre rendition of ‘Carry mi ackee go a Linstead Market’, “is a very sad song.”

Lightening the mood the singer described how mento was even used to poke fun, one Jamaican to another.

“We love laugh after each other you know, it’s cultural,” he said with a smile in his voice, adding, “when [Jamaicans] went to work on the Panama Canal, they worked in a place called Colon. And so, when they came back– they came back in three-piece suits, with all kinds of big fancy things– some of them couldn’t afford the [pocket] watch. But they could afford the chain [so] we wrote a song to laugh at these people.

“One, two, three, four, Colon man a come, with him brass chain a lick him belly, bam, bam, bam! Ask him for the time and him look up on the sun,” Higgins sang before dissolving into laughter himself.

“Every single genre of music that is indigenous to Jamaica came from the Mento rhythm,” he stressed, highlighting that while reggae and dancehall may be the sound of today, it would be a travesty to the sound of our ancestors.

The singer says his work to prevent this is driven by a promise.

“When I was leaving Jamaica to come and live in Florida [in 2001], Olive looked at me and made me promise her [that I would] continue the work, and I said yes ma’am I promise you I will continue that in the diaspora,” he explained.

And continue he has. Higgins founded and currently sits at the helm of the South Florida Caribbean Chorale, a group of 35 singers from across the diaspora that has spanned more than 20 years, and has been invited to head the Ecumenical service commemorating Jamaica’s independence, hosted by the Jamaican Consulate General in Miami every year for two decades. The service pulls crowds in the thousands each year, a feat of which the singer is quite proud.

Higgins also founded the Olive Lewin Heritage Foundation which former Prime Minister Edward Seaga flew to Florida to help launch.

As a soloist, since 2001, Higgins has performed at the UK High Commission during Jamaica 60, and at the Canadian Embassy during the celebration of 60 years of diplomatic relations between the North American country and Jamaica. The singer packed up and visited Australia of his own accord where he proceeded to put on a show for the 2000 plus Jamaicans living on the continent.

“And when I put that on, I sent it to the ambassador who has responsibility for Australia,” he told Observer Online.

Incidentally, that ambassador, Shorna-Kay Richards, was also the ambassador to Japan. Impressed with his efforts, she invited Higgins to the East Asian country this year to head a Jamaican Folk Music Lecture Concert celebrating 60 years of diplomatic relations between the nations.

“She sent for me and I did a mini tour with the cultural affairs ministry in Japan. I was treated like a diplomat, I nearly had to go get counselling to come back.” Higgins said with a laugh.

There have been many similar experiences for the singer who explains that the world just can’t get enough of Jamaican folk music – from being flown out to Germany by the Baden Baden Spiritual and Folkloric Group for workshops, to performing for the Queen’s chaplain and cerebral palsy patients in London.

Following these exploits Higgins says tourism is evolving to include culture, presenting a unique opportunity for locals.

“The tourists in Japan, in Iraq and all over Europe, they’re tired of sand, sea and sun. You know what they want now? It’s culture. And so I go through what I call edutainment and they love it.”

His mandate is an expensive one though.

“The Miami office of Jamaica Tourist Board supports me. They sponsor when I write to them, [and] most times they say yes, if they can. Their sponsorship alone can’t do it, but it helps. Most of what I do is out of my own pocket. And no, it’s not financially rewarding,” he admitted.

With this in mind Higgins says there are business opportunities to be taken advantage of in the sector, but the government and private sector need to do more.

“I mean, some things are coming back, you know- [but] people need to care about it, people need to want it to come back,” he said, adding “There is no political will to show. When you go to places like Japan, like Germany, you see all kinds of history, and people respect their history. I don’t think we respect our history. And I think the white man respects our history more than we do.”

The singer, who served for years as the director for MoneyGram International for the English, Spanish, French and Dutch Caribbean, wants lawmakers to conceptualise creative ways to make partnerships aimed at advancing folk music work.

“The political will has to be there from the people who control the money,” he continued, “There has to be a deliberate and focused plan that comes from government policy in collaboration with the private sector– it’s a mixture of the commercial and business; from a policy standpoint, if a business gives to an international cultural effort, will they get a tax break from the government, do you understand what I’m saying?”

Higgins says if Jamaicans want to protect, preserve and profit from mento, more regulation and standards also need to be put in place.

“When you google ‘national anthem of Jamaica’, I can bet that the first two or three voiced national anthems, they don’t even have the words [right] because some of them sing ‘guide us with thy mighty hand’- You have white people who are writing history books and writing folk songs like ‘Sammy plant peas and corn down a gully,’” he explained, adding “[these are] our authentic folk songs from the bushes, from the hills, and people just take it and whatever they want to do because there’s no protection.”

A letter from the Jamaican ambassador to Japan handed over after his visit stands as proof of Higgins’ impact.

“Our beloved island is lucky to have you as a standard bearer of our rich culture—fi yuh talent have lion heart!” Richards wrote.

For 2025 Higgins will be in Harlem with the Harlem Renaissance Group for a tribute to Harry Belafonte, for which he is particularly excited. Despite the fact that the work is time consuming and often comes at great personal cost Higgins is determined to continue.

“When I go to Texas and the other places and I see the tears in their eyes, and when they come choked up and [are] saying thank you; when the children come to me and they try to replicate what I’ve done and are so enthusiastic about it? That is my thanks.”
Jamaica
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2024-12-13
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Jamaica’s voice, the power of mento: Steve Higgins seeks to preserve music’s legacy