EMCVPA launches Jonkonnu Arts Journal

Keino Senior, senior lecturer, School of Arts Management and Humanities, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, introduces the ‘Jonkonnu Arts Journal’ at the college’s Vera Moody Concert Hall last Thursday morning.-Photos by Mel Cooke

At only the second staging of its biennial Rex Nettleford Arts Conference, The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) presented the first issue of its Jonkonnu Arts Journal recently.

The publication’s official presentation in the Vera Moody Concert Hall on the college’s Arthur Wint Drive, St Andrew, campus, took pride of place on the programme, before the opening (and main) panel.

Keino Senior, conference co-chair and senior lecturer in the EMCVPA’s School of Arts Management and Humanities, handled the journal’s introduction before a near-full hall. Declaring it “The first scholarly journal that looks at the arts in the Anglophone Caribbean”, Senior also positioned the Jonkonnu Arts Journal within the EMCVPA’s teaching philosophy.

“The college strongly believes that the promotion of research in the arts is a fundamental background essential for the development of the arts, in particular, and society in general,” he said.

Jonkanoo_JournalCover_FinalThe publication’s name was put in Caribbean context. “Since Jonkonnu is a regional phenomenon, which appears in various forms throughout the Caribbean, the name also reflects the college’s commitment to Caribbean culture as a whole,” Senior said.

Senior and Carol Hamilton, vice-principal of Academic and Technical Studies at the EMCVPA, co-edit the publication.

Research articles

The initial Jonkonnu Arts Journal‘s seven research articles are ‘The Impact of Dance on Middle School Outcomes and General Society (Vickie Casanova); ‘Music and the Rise of Caribbean Nationalism: The Jamaican Case’ (Gregory Freeland);’Doris Campbell: A Forerunner in Jamaican Textile Art’ (Margaret Stanley); ‘Clothes That Wear Us: Caribbean Identity and the Apparel Art of Robert Young’ (Marsha Pearce); ‘Caribbean Intransit’: Museology in the Caribbean, a Different Approach’ (Marielle Barrow); ‘We are not Minstrels’: Nettelfordian Political Aesthetics and the Discourse of Caribbean Development’ (Wigmoore Francis); and ‘Literary Black Power in the Caribbean’ (Rita Keresztesi).

Originally Published: Sunday | October 27, 2013 by The Jamaica Gleaner | Gleaner Writer: Mel Cooke

Link to Orignal Article: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20131027/arts/arts5.html

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The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts has been through several stages in its evolution. The four Schools—Drama, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts—started out at different locations in Kingston. Two of the Schools, namely the School of Art and the School of Music, are historic because of their establishment in 1951 and 1961 respectively, before the island gained its independence from Britain in 1962.