PROFESSOR Rex Nettleford, one of Jamaica's brightest sons and a cultural icon, died in the George Washington University Intensive Care Unit last night, six days after he collapsed in his hotel room in Washington and four hours before his 77th birthday. Nettleford, who suffered a massive heart attack, was admitted to the hospital's intensive care unit and placed on life support. He never regained consciousness and finally passed at 8:00 pm.
Nettleford was a recipient of the 1957 Rhodes Scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford, 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.
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