Mento

Over the long history of African slavery in the Caribbean and the deep South (from around 1690 to 1850's), the practice of sharing stories, of people, faith and indiscretions in the form of songs and chants around the evening fire and other major gatherings at Christmas and Easter was a way cultural information was passed down through time. This ensured that tales of woe, faith and humor would be preserved in the oral tradition. The tales usually focused on the role of the spirit, the solace provided by the church and the need to protect the righteousness/morality of the Church as an institution, along with secular tales of the human experience. The Church was the first institution that embodied the ideals that any slave or person could aspire to. Therefore, it was a desirable position in the community to be able to sing songs or play an instrument in order to be able to impart cultural knowledge.

A more secular focus in the content of music in the Caribbean began to emerge as the period of slavery ended in the early to mid 19th century (in Jamaica slavery was abolished in 1833). According to historians, freed slaves and similar blacks from larger, mainly agriculture-based islands (like Jamaica) ventured to other parts of the Caribbean including Costa Rica, Haiti and Trinidad in search of non-agriculture-based work, such as construction or factory labor (which paid better than farming).

As a result, Latin (mainly samba) and polyrhythmic Calypso patterns of Trinidad influenced the Jamaican music scene as returning workers brought back musical ideas from foreign lands. The main instruments that made up the mento bandstand were the drum (Jamaican bongo or tree drum being first and foremost), acoustic guitar, banjo, rhythm box, and a variety of percussion instruments. Direct Cuban musical influence on mento took the form of incorporating the rhythm box or giant thumb piano ('Marimbula') into the range of instruments used in mento (something the Jolly Boys refer to as the 'Kalimba'). The choice of instruments used varied according to the choice of the artist or more often, availability - there was no fixed rule. Overall, most experts say that the mento style is more similar to calypso and other Caribbean styles rather than the complex melodic structure of Latin music. The emphasis of mento musical structure is based on the a few key stylistic and structural elements - the upstroke of the guitar and rhythm and melody are tightly coupled in accent and delivery; the form of rhyming verses which tell a story and lastly a catchy chorus that was melodically different from the verse.

Due to its mainly localized range and appeal, early mento evolved slowly in the last century (i.e. without major western influence) and was relatively unaffected by Latin or early 20th century western music and had a heavy colloquial flavor. The description of mento as being early Caribbean 'street folk' music is apt. Themes that were sung of were for most part 'happy' and not religious in nature (the common themes being sex, Jamaica, inter-island differences or rivalries and human caricatures). Thus mento music served as an active cultural sub-text and it pointed out these resilient peoples' ability to "tek bad tings mek laugh" in what must have been an unimaginably destitute hard life.

As the evolution of mento was a localized phenomenon, this is one of the reasons for its lack of an official historical record. Songs relating local events, personalities and issues were staple for mento songs. Villages and towns around Jamaica developed their own sub-styles of mento and each had its own special lyrical emphasis to suit the topical interests of the day in local communities. The largely local thematic focus of mento's lyrical content, echoes back to similarities in slave musical beginnings. As slaves were disallowed from travel and learning about geography, the early songs and stories dealt with the limited reaches of their world. Similarly, the focus of early mento had a constrained geographic worldview to be relevant to the average mento listener (largely poor and uneducated non-whites). This point is good to remember when thinking of why the history of mento is so poorly recorded - it was a musical stance, for most part, borne out of the oral tradition of the slaves and did not have the support of the white establishment.