Celebrating Caribbean writers

Trevor Rhone

Beginning with this issue The Guyana Review seeks to shine a spotlight on Caribbean Writers whose works are widely felt to have made a significant impact on the literature and culture and in an understanding of the West Indian condition. We begin with the Jamaican playwright and scriptwriter Trevor Rhone on the occasion of the first anniversary. Rhone, credited with introducing reggae music and urban Jamaican culture to global audiences through his 1972 film “The Harder They Come” in which the Jamaican Reggae Singer Jimmy Cliff played a lead role. Rhone is credited as much for the value of his works to bringing about a more refined international understanding of Jamaica and, by extension, the Caribbean as for the inherent literary value of the literature that he produced.  Following his death on September 15, 2009 at the age of 69 the Times of London published an article the following extract of which is reproduced hereunder.

“Trevor Rhone was born in Kingston in 1940 and brought up in Bellas Gate, a

Jamaican creative icon, the late Trevor Rhone

poor area of the St Catherine region in eastern Jamaica. He was educated at the Beckford and Smith High School (later St Jago). He did not see his first play until he was 14. In the 1960s he spent three years in Britain where he studied drama at the Rose Bruford College, of which he was later made a Fellow.

Rhone taught drama on his return from Britain — an occupation he returned to later in life when he was appointed lecturer at the University of West Indies, Mona, in 1996. In recent years he also lectured at various American centres of education including Harvard University and Deerfield Academy.

He established his name with the play Smile Orange in 1971, a comedy starring the comedian Charles Hyatt, who later became a celebrated broadcaster. He directed the work as a film three years later. A critical view of the Jamaican tourist industry, the play got off to a bad start with hardly anybody attending on the first three nights. The fourth was much better, after which Rhone hardly looked back.

His output of successful plays and films portraying the authentic Jamaica continued for more than three decades, culminating in the romance One Love (2003), which featured Bob Marley’s actor son Ky-mani.

Rhone received numerous awards from, among others, the Virgin Island Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and the Cork Film Festival. He was also presented with the Living Legend Award by the National Black Theatre (US), and, at home, the Norman Washington Manley award and the Musgrave Gold Medal. The Jamaican Government appointed him Commander of the Order of Distinction.

His autobiographical Bellas Gate Boy, the story of a country boy from rural St Catherine, which he wrote in 2002, shows Rhone’s pride in his background. He bought land in the district and helped to found the McSyl Basic School, named after his mother, Rosomond McCalla, and his aunt, Mercella “Syl” McCalla.”