Spotlight on Marcus Garvey in February

Jamaica’s first National Hero, the Right Excellent Marcus Garvey, will be the focus for this year’s Grounation, under the theme ‘Garvey’s Ghost: Muse, Cultural Arts, Aesthetics, Freedom Song’.

Grounation is the Jamaica Music Museum (JMM) flagship education and cultural community outreach programme.

The event will be held each Sunday in the month of February at the Institute of Jamaica Lecture Hall, 10-16 East Street, downtown, Kingston, beginning at 2:00 p.m. It will be accompanied by the exhibition, ‘Marcus Garvey’s Cultural legacy: Music, Art and Literary Muse’, which commemorates the 130th anniversary of Marcus Garvey’s birth.

Activities are scheduled to begin on Sunday, February 4 with a talk by Professor Rupert Lewis. He will discuss Garvey’s influence on culture in Jamaica and among members of the diaspora.

On February 11, President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Steven Golding, will look at the UNIA’s influence on youth, poetry and contemporary popular music.

The following week, Director and Curator of the JMM, Herbie Miller, will discuss the influence of Garvey’s philosophy and aesthetics in instrumental music.

Mr. Miller told JIS News that the National Hero was chosen because he is one of Jamaica’s most significant heroes and inspires more art “and is muse for many artists across genres, painters, poets, writers and singers”.

“He is the most well-known, popular and important to a mass of people throughout the black diaspora, more so than the rest of our heroes,” he said, while admitting that all the heroes are important in their respective roles.

He noted that Marcus Garvey inspired Black Power and civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

“Marcus Garvey has aspired leadership in the anti-colonial movement that includes people like Malcolm X and Kwame Nkrumah, among many many others who went back to their countries and fought for freedom from colonialism,” he said.