Olive Lewin

Olive Lewin OD OM (1927 – 10 April 2013) was a Jamaican author, social anthropologist, musicologist, and teacher. She is probably best known for her recorded anthologies of old Jamaica folk songs, researched and collected over her lifetime.

Biography

Olive Lewin was born in Vere, in Clarendon, Jamaica, to teachers. She studied music and ethnomusicology in the United Kingdom. She is a Fellow of Trinity College, London, and an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal School of Music. She also held the position of Director of Arts and Culture at the office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica as well as that of Director of the Jamaica Institute of Folk Culture. From 1983 she directed the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth. [2]

Lewin was the author of several books and has made numerous recordings of folk music, performed by the Jamaican Folk Singers, which she founded. She was honoured by the Government of Jamaica, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Government of France and by academia for her outstanding lifelong contribution to the arts. In 2001 she was awarded the Jamaican Order of Distinction.

She preferred to present her collections of old Jamaican folk songs through concerts, and useful recordings are difficult to find. Some of her collected folk songs can be found on the internet but most of the few original recordings are very difficult to find since the original reel-to-reel tapes have deteriorated and the 33rpm records are now scarce. In 1987 she was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.

Lewin died in a Kingston hospital on 10 April 2013. She was 85.

In October 2013 Lewin was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit by the Jamaican government.

Works by Olive Lewin

• Alle, Alle, Alle: 12 Jamaican Folk Songs (London: Oxford UP) 1977. Music scores incl.
• Beeny Budd: 12 Jamaican Folk-songs for Children (London: Oxford UP) 1975.
• Brown Gal in the Ring: 12 Jamaican Folk Songs, Collected and Arranged for Schools (London: Oxford UP), 1974.
• Dandy Shandy: 12 Folk-songs for children (London: Oxford UP), 1975. Folklore. Music. Songs. Jamaica.
• Forty Folk Songs of Jamaica (Washington, DC: OAS), 107 pp., 1 map, 1973.
• Some Jamaican Folk Songs (Kingston: Oxford Group Publishers), 1970. A collection of 36 folk songs, including scores.
• "Mento", in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, vol. 16, pp. 435-6 (London: Macmillan Publishers), 2001.
• Rock It Come Over: the Folk Music of Jamaica (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press), 2000. Map, Illustrations, Foreword, Introduction, Preface, Acknowledgments, References, Indexes, and chapters as follows:

     I. Introduction
         1. The Making of a Musician
         2. Slavery:
         3. Conflicting Concepts of Wealth

     II. Non-Cult Traditional Jamaican Music
         4. Music for Work, Play and the Spirit
         5. Mento and Other Styles for Dance, Entertainment and Ceremony

     III. Cults and Cult Music in Jamaica
         6. Maroon, Tambo, Goombeh, Ettu, Nago
         7. Revivalism and Rastafarianism

     IV. Kumina and Queenie Kennedy
         8. The Kumina Cult
         9. Queenie Kennedy: Her Life
         10. Queenie Kennedy: Her Teachings and Her Work
         11. Conclusion

References

• Tanna, Laura (Feb-April, 1988). "Olive Lewin: A Life of Service," Jamaica Journal,. Vol. 21, no. 1. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Text "pages 2–11" ignored (help)