The rich history of music in the parish of St. James took centre stage in a lecture that formed part of a stacked calendar of events commemorating the Holetown Festival.
Speaking to an audience at the Holetown Methodist Church in Holetown, St. James, historian Morris Greenidge traced the origins of local folk music as far back as one hundred years before Independence when enslaved people openly and defiantly sang ‘Tuk, bumba-tuk, and banjo.’
Migration, he said, also played an important role in the evolution of Barbadian music, as over 30,000 Barbadians travelled abroad in search of better job opportunities. The returning migrants took advantage of the new housing trusts to build residences large enough to accommodate permanent, heavy musical instruments—some with pianos, others with organs or harmoniums.
Around 1950, every Bajan parish boasted one or two tuk bands. The parish of St. James, with its long-established churches, later attracted a rising number of evangelicals with their lively tambourine-backed singing.
Then came dance halls, and other venues became popular recreation spots. In 1935, the Silver Beach Casino opened; the 1940s brought the Fox Club, followed later by the Buccaneer Friendly Society, which is now the Recreation Centre for Orange Hill.
“Those were the days when many strata of Barbadian society—but most especially the poor—were forced to depend upon God for life and upon the village shopkeeper for trust that daily bread would be provided through those hard times. Church, for most, was a sign they could have known.
“The singing of hymns and psalms was like the balm in Gilead. Music, generally, was a salve to soothe the savage breast. And the occasional dose of dancing was the instant anaesthetic to deaden the pain of poverty, to dim the screaming of tortured thoughts, to put bars and staves on the growling of empty bellies, and a coda to circumvent the perennial shortages on the shelves,” Greenidge said. (JRN)
