Olive Lewin

Olive Lewin

Olive Lewin OD OM (1927 – 10 April 2013) was a Jamaican author, social anthropologist, musicologist, and teacher. She is probably best known for her recorded anthologies of old Jamaica folk songs, researched and collected over her lifetime.

Olive Lewin was born in Vere, in Clarendon, Jamaica, to teachers. She studied music and ethnomusicology in the United Kingdom. She is a Fellow of Trinity College, London, and an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal School of Music. She also held the position of Director of Arts and Culture at the office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica as well as that of Director of the Jamaica Institute of Folk Culture. From 1983 she directed the Jamaica Orchestra for Youth. [2]

Lewin was the author of several books and has made numerous recordings of folk music, performed by the Jamaican Folk Singers, which she founded. She was honoured by the Government of Jamaica, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Government of France and by academia for her outstanding lifelong contribution to the arts. In 2001 she was awarded the Jamaican Order of Distinction.

She preferred to present her collections of old Jamaican folk songs through concerts, and useful recordings are difficult to find. Some of her collected folk songs can be found on the internet but most of the few original recordings are very difficult to find since the original reel-to-reel tapes have deteriorated and the 33rpm records are now scarce. In 1987 she was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.

Lewin died in a Kingston hospital on 10 April 2013. She was 85. She was given a State funeral at the University Chapel in St Andrew on Saturday, 27 August 2013. Her body was interred in the churchyard of the St James Anglican Church in Hayes, Clarendon. Edward Seaga tribute to her was as follows-

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