Name: The BluesFem Project: Smile Orange
Start: 2023-06-17T17:00:00
Location: BRAVA Theater

Dee Spencer

San Francisco International Arts Festival

The bluesFem Project: SMILE ORANGE is a musical experience arranged and directed by Bay Area jazz luminary, Dee Spencer, combining the 1976 film Smile Orange with a live performance of the soundtrack composed by trombonist Melba Liston. Spencer’s arrangement combines soul, R&B, jazz, pop and blues with traditional Jamaican sounds and pays homage to two great artists: Author Trevor D. Rhone (1940–2009) and Melba Liston (1926–1999). Sketches of the original scores are archived at the Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois, where Spencer accessed Liston’s manuscripts. Previously, Spencer was a member of a group of four researchers called the Melba Liston Collective and served as Liston’s music copyist in NYC in the summer of 1982. Smile Orange is a satirical farce about the daily lives of native Jamaicans working in the tourism industry. Rhone’s title is embedded in Jamaican tradition and mythology. Inside this slapstick comedy is commentary about the social conditions of the Jamaican workforce with sharp comparisons to slavery. The characters of Smile Orange, who work at the fictitious Mondo Beach Hotel, must use their “smiles” as tools for survival. According to a myth dating back to the slave trade period, eating oranges causes sterility. The orange growers used this to preserve the crop. Interestingly, oranges are enjoyed by everyone throughout the film.