Guest performer Claudja Barry (left), host Elaine Wint (centre) and Music Unites! executive director Rosina Moder at the launch of Music Unites! last Monday at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. - Contributed

To term 'Music Unites!' an entirely new entity would be like dropping the turntable's needle in the middle of a shiny black disc and ignoring all that had come before. Still, the organisation, formally launched last Monday in the amphitheatre of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, is new in the sense that it is a formalisation of years of efforts to support and promote a variety of genres across Jamaica.

Rosina Moder, lecturer in recorder at the School of Music, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, is co-founder (along with musician Peter Ashbourne) of Music Unites! and its executive director. She told The Gleaner that before Music Unites! there was the RCM Foundation, which began sourcing scholarships in 1994 and which has accessed four to eight annually since then. Among its activities have been the establishment of the 'Unsung Heroes Fund', assisting senior composer and writer Clyde Hoyte from 1998 to 2003, and 'Marley Meets Mozart', a musical marathon at Jamaica Day Graaz 2008 in Austria on July 12 last year.

However, it just became too much to be carried out on a somewhat informal level. "It got out of hand. The scholarship requests got more and more," Moder told The Gleaner. She points out that with Music Unites! now accommodating this growth, "the bigger it gets, the more work that can be done".

Educational workshops

Among this work is education through seminars, workshops and symposia; free concerts islandwide with Jamaican and wider Caribbean composers given priority; an instrument drive to provide players and potential players in schools and communities with instruments; assistance in the sustainable development of a National Orchestra movement in Jamaica in educational and administrative matters; and hosting the Reggae Workshop Kingston, which will provide theoretical and practical understanding of an art form that comes naturally to Jamaicans and is of deep interest to foreigners.

The mission statement of Music Unites! is "to enhance Jamaica's greatest asset, music, in every way possible, while networking with the musical fraternity, all established institutions and key players of the industry".

And Moder points out that "when we are fussing that music gets so little sponsorship, I realised that there are not many (musical) organisations with an office and so on".

She said the CHASE Fund and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) are among the organisations' 'Music Unites!' will partner with and "we will recommend students to the Jamaica Association of Composers and Authors (JACAP)".

Moder says that all instruments are required across Jamaica, but emphasis would be placed first on "the instruments that a lot of people can play", among them steelpans and drum corps instruments. Then there are the instruments that the reggae musicians use most: guitars, drum sets and keyboards.

Moder said there are instruments such as the oboe and bassoon, which are very expensive and "no one can buy them". However, students do wish to learn the instruments, and while she has located teachers for both, there is no instrument for them to learn on. And Moder points out that "we don't even have a violin repairman in Jamaica", as the last one died.

Free concerts

There were a number of performances at last Monday's launch, hosted by Elaine Wint. These included the Edna Manley School of Music Jazz Ensemble, featuring vocal students Symone Thomas and Abbygaye Dallas, the Wide Grin Jazz Quartet, NEXUS, Claudja Barry and the E-Park Band, led by Peter Ashbourne with guest vocalists Karen Smith and Michael Sean Harris. Among E-Park's members are Dean Fraser, Desi Jones, Glen Browne, Dwight Pinkney and Othneil Lewis.

At the free concerts to be held at schools and communities across the island beginning in September, there will be a mixture of genres, such as dancehall, jazz and classical.

Moder goes back to her work with the RCM Foundation for the source of her continued enthusiasm for the planned events' diversity, remembering when she was doing an all-island Anglican Church tour with a Cuban guitarist and a Jamaican tenor. After one performance, an elderly man came to her and said "miss, you must come back again. Don't think that we don't like your kind of music. We just can't get it".