Obituary

In loving memory ofRalston Milton Nettleford (Rex)

Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford, OM (Jamaica), FIJ, OCC, (February 3, 1933 - February 2, 2010) was a Jamaican scholar, social critic, choreographer, and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus of The University of the West Indies (UWI), the leading research university in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, Nettleford graduated from Cornwall College in Montego Bay, Jamaica before going to the UWI to obtain an honours degree in history.[3] He was a recipient of the 1957 Rhodes Scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford where he received a postgraduate degree in Politics, and returned to Jamaica in the early 1960s to take up a position at the University of the West Indies. At the UWI he first came to attention as a co-author (with M.G. Smith and Roy Augier) of a groundbreaking study of the Rastafari movement in 1961. In 1963 he founded the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, an ensemble which under his direction did much to incorporate traditional Jamaican music and dance into a formal balletic repertoire.

For over twenty years, Nettleford has also been the artistic director for the University Singers of the University of the West Indies, Mona campus in Jamaica. The combination of Nettleford as artistic director and Noel Dexter as musical director with the University Singers has seen the creation of what is referred to as "choral theatre". Beginning with the collection of essays Mirror, Mirror published in 1969 and his editing and compiling of the speeches and writings of Norman Manley, Manley and the New Jamaica, in 1971, Nettleford established himself as a serious public historian and social critic. In 1968, Nettleford took over direction of the School for Continuing Studies at the UWI and then of the Extra-Mural Department. In 1975, the Jamaican state recognized his cultural and scholarly achievements by awarding him the Order of Merit. In 1996, he became Vice-Chancellor of the UWI, and held that office until 2004, when he was succeeded by E. Nigel Harris. Death On January 27, 2010, Rex Nettleford was admitted to the intensive care unit of the George Washington University hospital, Washington DC, after suffering a heart attack at his hotel in the city.[4] He was unconscious and in a coma for several days. On Tuesday, February 2, 2010, Rex Nettleford was pronounced dead at around 8:00pm EST.

Read 4,469 times