CULTURE | Jamaican Folk Revue and Tallawah Mento Band For PANAFEST, Ghana - The Heritage Preserved

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida, By Curtis Myrie - July 18, 2025 - Departing South Florida on Friday, July 18, a team of fifty -  24 performers from the Jamaican Folk Revue and the Tallawah Mento Band and patrons of family members and friends, will journey to Ghana for the PANAFEST and Emancipation celebrations to showcase how the heritage has been preserved.

On stage in Ghana at the Pan African Festival of Arts and Culture (PANAFEST)  will be what was colourfully premiered in June at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Centre, by the Folk Revue and Tallawah (celebrating its 21st anniversary this year), cultural ambassadors for Jamaica in the US.

Linstead and Solos Market Songs performed by the Jamaica Revue and Tallawah Mento Band.

They will present a Musical odyssey of what unfolded in Jamaica pre and post emancipation. The moving theatric enactment of these landmark occurrences as performed at the Lauderhill premier, highlights Enslavement (1500s – 1800s); Plantation / Pre-Emancipation Suite (1700s – 1800s) with the main piece Augus Mawnin); the Post-Emancipation / Market Suite (1830s – 1930s) with Linstead and Solos Market among the pieces); Pocomania Revival Songs (1920 – 1970), Life and Love Suite (1940 – 1970); Pan African Suite (1970 – 1990) featuring National Hero Marcus Garvey and icons Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff) and the African and Kumina Suite (1800s – current), which highlights kumina drumming with lead drummer Gabu Wedderburn and Steve Golding playing catta-tick, and the Kumina dancing ritual by Jenese ‘Meme’ Lewis from the St Thomas Kumina Group.

The venerable Colin Smith, director of the Revue and Tallawah, and a recent People Profile Innovator Awardee for his considerable cultural contribution, remarked that what was premiered at Lauderhill was ‘a history of Africans on Jamaican soil, the gifts of character and cultural resolve that they brought…and how well those gifts have been nurtured and preserved. This is what we’re taking back to Ghana,’ he said.

Acclaimed dub poet Malachi Smith, penning particular poems for the historic event, will also be a member of the performing party.

Kumina drumming and Ritual (L-R): Jenese ‘Meme’ Lewis, Steve Golding playing catta-tick, and lead drummer Gabu Wedderburn with other members.

They will first perform on Wednesday, July 23, at the National Theatre, Accra, at the PANAFEST Cultural Explosion and at the PANAFEST Village on Monday, July 28, Cape Coast.

Midnight July 31, at the break of Emancipation Day, they will take the stage at the Cape Coast Castle on what is billed as Reverential Night. It’s a crowning moment of what’s culturally and spiritually bonded – and rooted. 

‘Emancipation songs have a special connection,’ says Smith, ‘and shows how music was used to cope with slavery while inspiring hope for a better life.’

That’s heritage preserved!