Mento Music Revealed as Resistance Communication

At a gathering dedicated to the legacy of Marcus Garvey in Limón, Costa Rica, Jamaican folk traditions were placed under a cultural and historical spotlight, with music used as both performance and archival memory.

The Tallawah Mento Band drew strong attention for a presentation that explored how mento and folk music operated as coded communication during plantation slavery. The session, led by founding member Colin Smith, combined narration, performance and audience participation to demonstrate how rhythm and dialect carried layered meaning beyond entertainment.

Smith described the songs as tools of survival that allowed enslaved communities to pass information while concealing meaning from plantation authorities. He also pointed to ongoing debates over language, noting that Jamaican speech patterns are increasingly being recognised by educators and cultural advocates as a national language rather than dismissed as “broken English”.

“These musical artforms,” Smith said, “simultaneously lightened the challenges of slavery and harnessed resilience. It was storybook of our very survival spreading news of plantation activities and developments that was entertainment and information network to avoid detection and comprehension by the planter class.”

The presentation, strengthened by dub poet Malachi Smith, traced a historical arc from the transatlantic journey through plantation labour to the evolution of Jamaican musical expression. The repertoire included mento, ska and nyabinghi, with performances of Ribba to De Bank, Sweet Jamaica, Dis Long Time Gal and Rum and Coconut Water, alongside musical interpretations of Marcus Garvey’s poetry including Keep Cool and Africa for the Africans, the latter performed for the first time at the symposium.

Attention was also given to call and response traditions in plantation field work, where music helped regulate labour, signal rest periods and coordinate collective tasks such as house moving in rural Jamaica, particularly Westmoreland.

Smith also reflected on a related performance in Wallaba, Puerto Viejo, known among Jamaican residents as Old Harbour. He described the event as unexpectedly emotional and communal in nature.

“It was quite festive,” he said. “The audience took to the floor. There was a connection. A member of the band even discovered family members.”

He likened the atmosphere to Jamaica in the early twentieth century, noting familiar food traditions and a strong sense of cultural return among attendees.

Smith further noted Marcus Garvey’s historical influence in Costa Rica, where he was involved in labour organisation that led to political tension, including a general strike after his expulsion and eventual return.

“The tour, the symposium,” Smith said, “was simply about us all being home.”

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