Fittingly, a trumpet fanfare by Michael Edwards and Gordon Marshall of the Clemsville Music Conservatory heralded the official opening of the Guyana Music Festival 2009 at the National Cultural Centre on Tuesday night, and the return of an old tradition many hope will continue to be an annual feature.
Prior to the beginning of the night’s competition, Chairman of the Guyana Music Festival (GMF) Committee David Dewar sounded a clarion call for the re-entry of real music into the Guyanese society. He noted that back in the glory days, music was present in schools since in order to snag the post of headmaster, applicants had to have knowledge of and the ability to play music; he called for a revival of those days.
But he was preaching to the converted. The shamefully small number of people present was no doubt all there because they felt the same need.
He also pointed out that there were music festivals in sister Caribbean countries every year and citing Trinidad and Tobago as an example, drew attention to the quality of music that emerges each year during that island nation’s carnival season.
Dewar, a singer and musician who also took part in the competition on Tuesday night and won in his category, revealed that there were 200 entries to the GMF 2009, a far cry from the 1,000-odd that past competitions had seen. However, if the indications of Tuesday night are anything to go by, there will be far fewer by the time the competition ends on Saturday.
Of the 16 acts – four groups, six duos and six individuals – set to vie for places in the prestigious competition, seven were no-shows.
Dewar thanked sponsors of the 2009 GMF, but said that the festival had a budget of $2 million and organisers had only collected $300,000 thus far, However, they were going ahead hoping that the rest of the funds would be realised by the end of the five-day event.
In a nostalgic trip down memory lane, musician and dramatist Rosamunde Addo recalled that she first entered the first British Guiana Music Festival in 1952, when she was ten years old, in the verse-speaking category.
She recalled the healthy competition over the years between Demerara and Berbice (New Amsterdam), a charge led by the accomplished NAMS choir which proved difficult to beat despite the best efforts of the urban singers.
She recalled the packed audiences which attended past GMF drawn from a wide cross-section of the local population. Her obvious favourites among them being the ‘second-line judges’; housewives who purchased season tickets to what back then was a two-week activity, armed themselves with pens and notepads and kept a running score of the performances then waited to see if their tallies matched the judges’.
Her reflections included a veritable who’s who of Guyanese musicians some of whom have passed on, but whose contributions live on in our national songs and musical compositions.
The Fellowship Lutheran Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma, through its ongoing partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Guyana, has collaborated with the Guyana Association of Music Teachers in reviving the GMF. Its representative, Dr Erv Janssen confessed to being mesmerized by the history of the music festival and he urged that efforts be sustained for a revival.
Janssen, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, noted that children learned about life from adults, but having been charmed by the courage and efforts of child performers in the afternoon session of Tuesday, he called for a reversal of that role.
Dr James Rose, standing in for Minister of Culture Dr Frank Anthony, the GMF’s patron, who is overseas, declared the festival open after giving the minister’s commitment to continuing to partner with the committee in its future endeavours.
The minister, in a message printed in the GMF programme, welcomed the return of the festival pledging to work with the committee and others to remove the seeming “one dimensional music appreciation of our nation’s youth”.
In Tuesday night’s competition, the Christian Brethren Assemblies won over the Methodist Circuit Choir and the New Apostolic Choir in Class 43 (Mixed Voice Choirs). Their test pieces were “Exultate Cantamos Festivos” by Jay Althouse and “Total Praise” by Richard Small.
In Class 33 (Tenor Solo) Michael Thompson won as the only entrant present. He performed “All I Ask of You” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.
In Class 30 (Mezzo Soprano Solo) Karen Yaw edged out Althea Brutus in their expressions of “To The Hibiscus” by Horace Taitt/Una Marson.
In Class 37 (Vocal Duet Ladies Voices) two young ladies – Abedeminand Seaforth and Ernesta Nelson raised the bar triumphing over their more mature competition in a thrilling performance of “White Waves on the Water” by Hugh Robertson.
David Dewar and Russell Lancaster were the only competitors and the winners in Class 38 (Vocal Duet Men’s Voices) where the test piece was Valerie Rodway’s “River Idyll”.
Lancaster was also the Master of Ceremonies for the evening and the adjudicators were Don Ryan, Adjunct Professor, Piano of Oral Roberts University (ORU) and Marilynda Lynch also a musician and a member of ORU alumni.
Prime Minister Sam Hinds, Mayor Hamilton Green and GECOM Chair-man Dr Steve Surujbally who handed over the certificates to the winners also attended the opening night.
