It's so fine to have a North American president ( with his soulful "first lady") who relishes the flavours of his ethnic roots and and their expressions in the dialogs of theatre, poetry and jazz...The White House turned into a Bluesy Jammin' Joint the other day with an artsy rundown stew of far flung voices (including that basso profundo, James Earl Jones... the Voice of the Universe).

There was the young slam poetess from Obama's home state of Hawaii, with the glorious name Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, who intoned: "What happens to the ones forgotten"

"...But there is a culture, a people...somewhere beneath my skin that I have been searching for since I landed here...but it is hard to feel sometimes".

Jamaica currents do whirl far, nuh?

The poetess, Mayda del Valle, summed up the occasion in a Calabash vein, reminiscent of Lorna Goodison:

"To be able to go to the White House and represent my grandmother and my ancestors means a lot...It's a generation of women that don't often get heard, you know, these old Puerto Rican women that no one really thinks about."

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203955.html