Tribute to a carribean cultural icon.

The Honourable Dr Louise Bennett, OJ and OM, (September 7, 1919 - July 26, 2006) (Louise Bennett-Coverly) popularly known by her stage name Miss Lou, may be distinguished by many achievements and many important contributions to West Indian literature, culture, theatre and folklore. She was awarded the MBE, the Norman Manley Award of Excellence (in the field of Arts), and the high Jamaican National Honour (1974) in recognition of that distinguished place she created and earned in Caribbean life. That award is exceeded in Jamaica only by the title of National Hero, which she was anyway. In 1983 and 1998, she received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of the West Indies and York University, respectively. Her composition 'You are going home now,' won a nomination from the Aca-demy of Canadian Cinema and Television, for the best original song in the movie Milk and Honey. On Jamaica's Independence Day 2001, Dr Bennett-Coverly was appointed as a Member of the Order of Merit for her distinguished contribution to the development of the Arts and Culture.

Miss Lou was a poet, actress, social commentator, folklorist, storyteller, TV personality, comedienne, cultural activist, cultural ambassador and cultural icon. She started her career as a writer and performer of verse in her native Creole language 'Jamaica patois,' and went on to be included among the most celebrated authors and personalities in regional culture, to the development of which she made very important contributions through her writing, stage and television performances, talks, research, broadcasts and publications of poetry, prose and recordings. These include the establishment of Creole poetry, the rise of dub poetry, the further formal and linguistic enrichment of West Indian literature, Jamaican theatre and folklore, the rise of the Jamaica Pantomime, and the movement of Caribbean vaudeville, comedy and traditional story-telling of mid-twentieth century popular culture into the modern era.

Louise Bennett's publications include her first serious collection of poetry, Jamaica Labrish (1966) published by Sangster's Bookstore with critical introduction and annotations to the poems by Rex Nettleford. This book, which is a considerable volume, Nettleford's critical interventions, and a famous critical essay by Mervyn Morris, served as important catalysts and are largely responsible for the acceptance of Creole language and Creole poetry in Caribbean literature. Morris' essay, 'On Reading Louise Bennett Seriously' (1963) won the Prize for Essay Writing in the Jamaica Festival Literary Awards and made the case for Bennett's elevation from popular humourist/entertainer into the halls of mainstream literature.

What followed was not only the recognition of Bennett as a poet, but as a poet who helped to popularize poetry, perfected the art of 'literary' poetry in the Creole language, contributed to the development of Dub Poetry somewhere between 1968 and 1970, followed by the free, varied and uninhibited use of Creole and oral influences in both the fiction and poetry of the region.

Among the important publications that followed are Selected Poems (1982) and Me An Anancy, both introduced and edited by Morris. The second is a selection of Anansi stories (1979) collected and retold in her own distinctive style by Miss Lou, who also published another prose collection, Auntie Roachy Seh (1993), a selection of her commentaries earlier presented on radio. These added to several publications of sound recordings of folk songs, stories, commentaries and various comic pieces. Throughout her career Bennett had been involved in an impressive corpus of radio recordings. It is a long list with titles such as The Lou and Ranny Show, Miss Lou's Views, Laugh with Louise in addition to TV shows including the children's production Ring Ding. Even in these she was making very weighty contributions, since her stories, particularly those about the folk hero Anansi, represented collections from her fieldwork in Jamaican folklore and folk songs, amounting to a considerable archive. Her humorous radio pieces deserve their prestigious place in history and literature because they are really satirical and serious commentaries on many aspects of social and political affairs. This is also the case with many of her poems. In both verse and prose she shattered the myths that the Creole language was incapable of sustaining serious discourse on important public and national issues. The great irony is that while she was achieving what everyone understands - the heights of laughter in the language, she was also doing what so many think the language cannot do - analysing topical and public affairs.

An attempt to trace Dr Bennett's career development might also suggest how others of her significant contributions have been made and the roles she played in the development of so many cultural areas. Although the historians will date the beginning of her work at 1939, she actually started out writing and performing humorous satirical poems as a teenager at Excelsior High School in Kingston. Bennett tells the story of how she started. She was going out, quite fashionably dressed up, and entered a tram car (public transportation at the time) in which the higglers (market vendors) liked to occupy and take over as their own, the seats at the back. As the young Louise entered, she headed for the only seat available - one at the back between two vendors. They saw her coming and took her for a middle class lady, whereupon she overheard one of them whispering to her comrades, "pread out oonnu self, pread out oonnu self, wan dress ooman a come." It gave her the idea for a poem, which she wrote and performed.

She had many engagements performing at concerts and various functions. She was spotted at one of these by the editor of The Daily Gleaner, the leading newspaper, who invited her to contribute poems, which were published in the paper for a very long time. After that, she became involved in important cultural contributions including two very long associations, both professional, although many years later one of them was to become domestic. Her talent was also spotted by Eric Coverly, who included her in his series of productions within the broad band of vaudeville shows, cinema house and 'Christmas Morning' concerts, prime entertainments in the popular culture. She later married Coverly who spent his last years with her in Toronto Canada. Louise Bennett Coverly also started an association with leading comedian Ranny Williams, who began his own career in the 1930s performing with Marcus Garvey at Elderweiss Park in Kingston. Lou and Ranny became a household word in Jamaica as they took this brand of popular performance to unprecedented heights on stage and radio, producing the highly acclaimed series The Lou and Ranny Show. Both folklorists, they were instrumental in the formation of the now famous and established Jamaica Pantomime, started by Henry Fowler and Greta Bourke in 1942 as a British pantomime into which local elements were integrated. Lou and Ranny acted lead roles in it for decades, helping to make local folklore, local folktales and indigenous characters central features of the form. Right up until the beginning of the 1970s the team was almost a permanent establishment in Pantomime, Bennett continuing after Williams' retirement.

Dr Bennett was also a broadcaster and received formal training in radio at the BBC in addition to other training in drama in London. She was able to move the popular performance forward as the public media developed. As Jamaica developed local radio and television, she was involved, and what used to be vaudeville and concerts staged in cinemas extended in other directions as radio series and TV shows. These also became media for presentations of folk songs and the traditions brought back from the field. Lou and Ranny brought the hilarious adventures of grassroot characters in working-class settings, which were formerly located in areas frequented mainly by members of that class, to wider audiences through the media, and what was formerly sectarian entertainment became national. Miss Lou, however, was not restricted to traditional folk. While she made good use of the training she received from RADA (Royal Academy of Damatic Arts in England) to promote them, she was also involved in classical theatre as singer and actress. She appeared in productions of the Jamaica Operatic Society, the up-market Garden Theatre and the plays of Shakespeare, appearing in such productions as The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew and A Winter's Tale.

This social commentator took on a wide range of issues in poems as well as in her radio persona Auntie Rotie in Auntie Rotie Seh, or as herself in Miss Lou's Views. She assumed the personality of an uneducated but extremely wise and informed working class or peasant character to tackle such issues as political independence, hurricanes and their damage to plantation crops, local politicians, Black power, the back to Africa movement, elections and national censuses. Her personae are very well informed about language as she takes on skeptics who denigrate the Creole language with genuine linguistic evidence to argue its viability as a language. Among her special achievements is the fact that she never left where she began, and even in her most learned discourses, she kept sight of her role as performer and entertainer. Laughter was a weapon; the poem or the prose piece, a means of entertainment; satire, a practised art; and serious national and regional issues, social behaviour and attitudes, her subjects.

The work of the Honourable Mrs Bennett Coverly that earned its place in the highest forum of Caribbean arts and letters, as well as the views, arguments and popular performances of the proletarian Miss Lou, is the beginning of a new era in West Indian literature.


Stabroek News

thanks for this - I have always been a bit of a fan of Miss Lou

N.B.....