Sugar Cain promises powerful music, deep message

A sober message of moral commitment complemented by powerful music is in store for audiences at Father Ho Lung and Friends’ upcoming stage production Sugar Cain. “It’s a show that I think everybody will be able to relate to, even if you are not Jamaican,” music director for the group Jody Anne Johnson told the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday, just before the start of rehearsals for the production scheduled to run over two weekends — October 3-4 and October 10-11 at the National Arena in St Andrew. “There are a lot of emotions that we go through every single day that will be explored, and the music is powerful... in kind of fuelling those emotions and setting the stage for the whole story to unfold,” added Johnson, who described the music as a “kind of melting pot of different genres”.

Dr Belinda Morrison-Blidgen joins her sons, Micah (left) and Noah, who are members of the cast of Sugar Cain, for a photo before they start rehearsals last Wednesday. Sugar Cain is the upcoming Father Ho Lung and Friends’ stage production.

“We have traditional Jamaican music; there’s mento, there’s reggae — a lot of nice Jamaican reggae. We also have a little bit of hip hop; there are ballads; a little bit of music from the 60s, 70s; and then it comes up to dancehall as well,” Johnson explained, adding that the show contains 20 songs. The script and all 20 tracks were written by Ho Lung in keeping with the tradition of his stage productions over the years, but Johnson, who took over from Wynton Williams as music director in 2019 after joining the group in 2003, wouldn’t be drawn when asked whether Sugar Cain tops all the previous productions. “You remember them for different things. I remember Moses for all the tech — all of the interesting lights and special effects. And the Messiah is remembered because it is the story of our Lord and Saviour when He was crucified and risen. So each story has a special kind of brand that it leaves on our audience. So, I wouldn’t want to compare,” she told the Observer.

Father Ho Lung and Friends Music Director Jody-Anne Johnson talks about the music in the group’s upcoming stage production Sugar Cain during an interview with the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday.

“I believe, though, that the music in Sugar Cane is a little bit more current, because of the addition of the hip hop, and we have some dancehall and stuff like that. But I think it’s going to be a powerful story... and all the stories that Father Ho Lung has done are powerful,” Johnson added. She reinforced Director Hugh Douse’s observation, shared in an earlier interview with the Observer, that the ego often associated with artistic personalities is conspicuously absent among the cast, whose members have instead embraced a spirit of humility and collective purpose. “The persons in this group are very easy to work with. We’ve been doing this for a long time, so we kind of have an idea of how things are to go, exactly what is to be done. So a lot of those initial growing pains where you have different ideas and people getting at each other, it doesn’t really happen,” Johnson said.