ST LUCIA has lost yet another cultural stalwart. Cypriani Frank Norville passed away earlier this week, only days short of his 71st. birthday.
The son of a Saint Lucian mother, Norville was born in Barbados on April 10, 1944. After his mother’s death, he and his oldest sister migrated to Saint Lucia.
Norville worked for many years in the Audio Visual Division of the Government’s Public Relations Department (later Government Information Service) along with the late Martin Elwin and Leonard Duval which took him all over the island showing educational films to the rural folk.
In 1986, he moved from the GIS to become a cultural officer in the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Norville was an excellent photographer, actor and dancer. Among his many talents, he was best known for is his work as a singer, musician and composer. He was the author of dozens of original traditional and contemporary folk songs in both English and Creole, compiling 28 of them in a book “SWEET ST LUCIA published by Mayers Printing Company in 2001.
He dedicated that publication to his children Lyndel, Chris, April and Jesse.
In a foreword to that publication, the late Director of Culture Jacques Compton wrote: “In the midst of the pervasive influence of North American, Trinidadian and Jamaican musical art forms being transmitted via the electronic media, Frank has insisted, and succeeded, in retaining the Saint Lucian indigenous musical tradition, its richness and variety which he conveys in his highly personalized and confident style of delivery when he sings, an aesthetic experience that lingers long in the memory”.
So determined was Norville to share his talents that he often published both words and music to the tunes he had written. And what did he write about? Well just about everything , from festivals like Christmas and Jounen Kweyol to the island’s indigenous music and symbols, including AmazonaVersicolor. He wrote wedding songs, songs for children, for visitors, even religious songs. And to crown it all, he actually wrote some ballads as well.
Norville thrilled visitors to the island with his folk music as part of a small groups entertaining in hotels and elsewhere.
Before “SWEET ST LUCIA” Norville published a comprehensive compilation of the island’s most popular folk music titled “Songs of St Lucia: Folk Songs” in 1983. (By Guy Ellis)