Audio Book Obeah

I is a Long Memoried Woman bewitches the ears

By Gwyneth Cumberbatch | Posted: October 10, 2005

Audio Books are magic. I keep them in my car. That way I listen to a story when driving to and from work everyday. I listen on weekends too, driving from the grocery to the laundry to the post office and so on, completing the mindless chores that define my life. Not for me the foolish shock jock radio chatter. I did not have to tolerate boring Stuart McLean reruns courtesy of the arrogant CBC lockout. I’m always on Cloud Nine with my latest Audio Book.

Believe me when I say that listening to an Audio Book is the next best thing to reading a book. Sometimes it’s even better. First, I don’t have to put the Audio Book down in order to get on with my life. Second, a good Audio Book transforms and enriches my everyday ordinariness.

I could not believe my luck last week when someone at CaribbeanTales told me that the video I is a Long Memoried Woman is now available as an Audio Book! I remembered how, years ago, I could sit for hours at a time and watch that amazing video. It didn’t surprise me when it won a Gold Award at the New York Film and Video Festival in 1991.

Today, almost fifteen years later the video remains a treasure waiting to be discovered by most of the world. Although, with a quick Internet search I found it listed as a valuable curriculum resource in university and high school libraries here in Canada and across the United States. And friends say it’s still programmed as a “must see” at cultural festivals and literary conferences in Canada, in the United States and in Africa.

I is a Long Memoried Woman was the first book of poetry published in 1983 by the Guyanese poet, Grace Nichols. That year it won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Then Frances-Anne Solomon brought together an enormously talented group of women from England, Canada and the Caribbean to make the fabulous video that breathed life into the poems. Audiences could then clearly see the strength, despair, resourcefulness, vitality and elegance of the Long Memoried Woman. The video’s most striking features are the women’s faces and the dancers’ long-limbed African grace. Who can forget the beautifully choreographed interpretations of movement and mood performed on the stark landscape of slavery?

I is A Long Memoried Woman: the Audio Book truly took me by surprise. I didn’t expect it to measure up to the video’s high standard. But it does, in its own unique way. Since there’s nothing to look at, the Audio Book highlights the several different modulations of Caribbean voice. In that way, its language quickly enters the imagination and its meanings come alive.

These are the voices that stood out for me when I listened to it last week. There is Grace Nichols’ quiet (almost matter of fact) confidence and her unaffected Guyanese way of speaking as she explains the cleverness of her craft. Leonie Forbes’ wise and world-weary inflections locate the Long Memoried Woman firmly across her different incarnations – as slave, mother, concubine, obeah woman and warrior queen. And I just loved Djanet Sears’ many layered tones as they rose and fell in wonderful African-based incantations. Sometimes Sears teases and taunts her white master and mistress. At another time she gloats over the efficiency of the Long Memoried Woman’s witchcraft. At the end, her voice steps up proudly and aggressively as Nanny bears the flame of revolution alongside Toussaint L’Ouverture. I guess you could say that the Audio Book showcases Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of Nation Language.

When I went to the CaribbeanTales office on Gore Vale Avenue in downtown Toronto to pick up I is a Long Memoried Woman:the Audio Book CD, Leonie Forbes was there, graciously greeting me. I couldn’t believe my luck. It’s not every day that I run into a Caribbean legend without warning.

So picture this: Here I am, stumbling over myself to congratulate her on her starring role in the unique Caribbean-Canadian sitcom Lord Have Mercy for which she received a Gemini nomination two years ago. But Leonie Forbes is always in the moment and all she really wants to talk about is her current project. She is totally engaged in producing five more Audio Books for CaribbeanTales with funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. They are: Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge; Honour Ford Smith’s My Mother’s Last Dance; Tessa McWatt’s This Body; Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk; and Olive Senior’s Gardening in The Tropics.

Of course, I quickly enthused about Audio Book magic. And Forbes told me of a real estate agent friend who listens to Audio Books as she drives all over the city from house to house every day to meet her clients. Now that makes at least two fans that are anxiously waiting for the CaribbeanTales Audio Book Launch.

It’s pretty obvious that Leonie Forbes believes in the value of her Audio Book project. She says that Audio Books make ideal curriculum resources for high school and university students, here in Canada and across the Caribbean. She’s also sure that there are seniors and partially sighted or blind people in the Caribbean-Canadian community who would really enjoy listening to stories that speak to their hearts and evoke their own cultural memories.

In the April 2005 CaribbeanTales Newsletter, one reader’s response to the news about the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s funding for the Audio Books project went like this: “Caribbean Audio Books, wee pappa! Thank you and Congratulations! A projection I uttered in the 1970's has come to pass, at last! That we should have audio books for the ghetto blasters on the block!”

Well, all I can say is that the ancient art of storytelling has no limits. CaribbeanTales’ goal is to make it possible for Canadian-Caribbean communities and others in the Diaspora to continue hearing and telling our own stories wherever and whenever possible. That’s what the magic of Audio Books does for me. We better look out. Audio Books may well become obeah for everyone’s soul.

CLICK HERE TO BUY 'I IS A LONG MEMORIED WOMAN: RADIO VERSION'

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