Emancipation Day was quiet in my neck of the woods. Beaches and riversides were crowded, yes, but the Runaway Bay/Discovery Bay did not have the noisy dances and boom boxes that normally come with public holidays.

There was an almost eerie silence as you drove through the main road to Ocho Rios and wondered where were the people who normally flood the parks and open spaces celebrating they know not what, but spreading joy and traffic jams in their path.

It was not until I drove past the Seville Great House entrance that I realised what was happening, Emancipation Day was one gigantic hangover day.

The night before thousands had crammed into the Seville historic park for the annual all-night vigil staged by Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT), Jamaica Cultural Development Commision (JCDC), local government entities, and a dazzling line-up of entertainers and sponsors that made the show certainly one of the best in its 28-year history.

Our cast of thousands was treated to a spectacular night of theatre, comedy, music, songs, food, and beverage, Jamaica style, and narratives depicting the Emancipation Proclamation which freed our forefathers and was read from the steps of King’s House in Spanish Town on August 1, 1838.

If anyone really wanted to glimpse a reincarnation of or an understanding of the unbounded joy and the wild celebration of the freed slaves that night and the following days, Seville was the place to be.

The cultural performance of the Portland and St Thomas groups, in particular the kumina, the authentic bruckin’ party, the gerreh, the dinki-mini, the mento, the drumming, and the costumes brought it home.

The bruckin’ party was authentic, with the red and blue queens reigning over the set, and the performance claiming its place as the only elaborate Jamaican celebration specifically associated with slavery.

Then the vendors, pots steaming, breadfruits roasting, customers bartering, and tastes tickled by the offerings of asham, duckoonoo, jerk, ackee and saltfish, gizada, mannish water, run-down, curry goat, and grater cake., among other items.

The organisers gave Jamaicans a show to remember, with entertainers giving of their best, a concert capped by the legendary Bongo Herman himself, who took us down memory lane as he switched our attention from the 19th century Jubilee singing to the sounds and moves of the 60s bringing the fans to their feet and turning the lawns of the great house into one enormous dance floor.

My delegation left the party in the wee hours, leaving hundreds behind to soak up the atmosphere and the nostalgia of an Augus’ morning. I hit the hay totally worn out at around 4:00 am.

That explains the silence and the dreams that blanketed the morning and kept so many would-be revellers off the road on August 1.

We had been treated to bits and pieces of the Emancipation history by those excellent emcees Amina Blackwood and Ity, who kept us laughing and learning as they moved the show along.

For those who came in late and may have just considered it one big holiday party, Seville Great House is a standout in our history as it marks the site where four civilisations — the Africans, the English, the Spaniards, and the Jamaicans met at a crossroads in our past.

It is also the only site in the Western world where the remains of African slaves, four of them, were discovered in the 1990s and excavated. They were later ceremoniously removed from “the back of the great house” to the front garden where they were reburied on Emancipation Day 1997 beside the family plot of the plantation owners.

The remains of one, a child, was repatriated to Ghana in 1998, where it was given a grand welcome by the nation — an act which symbolised the repatriation of all enslaved Africans back to their homeland.

Amina Blackwood took us back to August 1 1838 when thousands of well-dressed former slaves flocked to places of worship all over Jamaica to give thanks for the abolition of slavery.

The Emancipation Day holiday, as we celebrate it in 2023, can never fully pay tribute to, or recall the passions and the immensity of the feelings that must have overwhelmed the Africans who that night were to hear the “proclamation of liberty to the captives”, and experience for themselves “the opening of the prison doors to them that were bound”.

And can you imagine how our forefathers and mothers celebrated? And, did they not have more cause for natural joy than we have today? Those former slaves, yes, our ‘owna’ family, set the pace for grand times to be had by all when they left church that night to spill out into the streets for joyous celebrations and thanksgiving.

“Queen Victoria gi wi free, tiday fus a Augus’, tenky massa,” they would have said as the women paraded around the rural neighbourhoods in their tailored petticoats “with tashan lace edging”. The bruckins party songs and dances which have been handed down to the present generation were the highlights. “Jubilee, Jubilee,” they sang, “this is the year of Jubilee.”

We are fortunate to get a first-hand description of what took place in the churches that night from a parson, Reverend Henry Bleby, who was an eyewitness to the event and who actually conducted the service of thanksgiving and freedom in one of the churches in his charge.

Bleby was a freedom fighter who represented and preached the cause for abolition both in Jamaica and in England. He was a contemporary of the great William Knibb, who was in the forefront of that battle.

From an address which Rev Bleby gave to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1858 we glean how he remembered, in detail, every second of the service, every sob, every gasp, and at the end of the night, every soulful prayer that sang and ran through the congregation.

“Sirs,” he told his audience, “I was there when slavery was abolished. I saw the monster die. This day, 24 years ago, I stood up late at night, in a very large church (unnamed), and the aisles were crowded, and the gallery stairs, and the communion place, and the pulpit stairs were all crowded, and there were thousands of persons looking in. This was at 10 o’clock at night, on the 31st of July.”

Oh, what a night!

Listen to Rev Bleby: “I took my text from Leviticus 25: 10. By and by, the midnight hour approached. When it was within two minutes of the first of August, I requested all the people to kneel down, as befitting the solemnity of the hour, and engage in silent prayer to God.”

A moment of the highest drama was approaching. “By and by, the clock began to strike: It was the knell of slavery. It was the stroke which proclaimed liberty to 800 souls. And, sirs, what a burst of joy rolled over that mass of people when the clock struck, and they were slaves no longer.”

Over at the Baptist church in Falmouth a similar procession of time in motion. As the clock started to strike the first chime of midnight, Rev William Knibb said quietly, “The hour is at hand, the monster is dying.” There was silence. Then when the church bell outside struck midnight, he shouted: “The monster is dead: The Negro is free!”

At Rev Bleby’s church there was also a heavy silence that had gripped the congregation. Then when the midnight hour struck, “A burst of joy rolled over that mass of people as they realised they were slaves no longer.” He told them to rise from their knees, “And, sirs, it was really affecting to see, in one corner, a mother, with her little one whom she had brought with her, clasp her baby to her bosom; and there was an old white-headed man, embracing a daughter, and here again, would be a husband congratulating his wife.”

This is what you call unspeakable feelings. One great, large, significant, unforgettable moment in history. Outside the churches the people gathered to bury the chain shackles all over the countryside.

Rev Bleby again takes the platform. “I cannot tell you the feelings which with which those people, just emerging from freedom, shouted. And they literally shouted the hymn which was sung in the church that night:

“Send the glad tidings o’er the sea,

His chains are broken, the slave is free

Britannia’s justice, wealth and might

Have gained the Negro’s long-lost right.

His chains are broken the slave is free,

This is the Negro’s jubilee”.

Lance Neita is a public and community relations professional, writer, and historian. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.