This started with a comment from my friend Henry Muttoo, the theatre whiz, following a piece of poetry by Louise Bennett I had sent him. Henry, who has strong opinions in artistic matters, was complaining that the work of our earlier stellar creative people, such as the late Madame Louise, was not getting the attention it deserves. It’s a dereliction I run into here frequently, sometimes from very unexpected quarters, and what is particularly striking is that this lack of attention is in all the disciplines, not just poetry, and there are many aspects to it.
In the first place, it is not a selective thing. Nobody is singled out, or made the subject of accolades. It’s not as if we ignore Edgar Mittleholzer, but we pump up Rudolph Dunbar or Ray Luck or Bill Rogers. We ignore them all. Furthermore, the totality is regional. You don’t see many persons bigging up Louise Bennett, or Peter Minshall, or George Lamming, or Aubrey Williams. You mention Jamaica Kincaid, and they think she’s from Kingston. In other words, these contributors are simply not on the radar. I went into Austin’s bookstore recently to ask for a book of Louise’s poems, and the sales lady, a mature woman, had no clue what – never mind who – I was talking about. Furthermore, it’s not just the arts. In Guyana, with the exception of Sonny Ramphal who is good at his own PR, our achievers are not known to us, particularly so with the younger generation. Okay, they know Clive Lloyd and perhaps Lance, but when you mention the “W formation” many of them ask you “what is that?” and Hasely Crawford draws a blank, never mind Arthur Wint.
There is a tangled sociological story involved here, which no one has yet attempted to unravel, and may never do. But with the condition as it is, however it developed, one factor in its continuance is wherewithal. In a country where the road in front of your house (in my case, along the East Coast) is, no exaggeration, a minefield, there is clearly not going to be money found to remind us about Ken and Marc and Denis. Here’s a small incident to illustrate: after the flash flooding a few months back, the relevant people came with a massive dragline and dredged a big trench immediately behind us dumping the tons of extracted mud on two sides of the trench making a dam about 5 feet high and 5 feet wide. However, that meant that the gutters that normally drain from each house lot into the trench were consequently blocked. We called up the Drainage and Irrigation people. The gentleman on the phone was polite but firm: “We had ferocious complaints from residents after the flash flooding that the trench should be dredged. We had no budget for that, but we were able to get a dragline. However, whatever problems you may have now, sorry; you have to handle it yourself.” I can get mad at the guy, and yell, but he gave us the bottom line: no money. Imagine somebody, going to that same government to get attention paid to honouring our artists? (As an aside, notice what few among us are noticing: that in a time when we are frequently exclaiming about the facilities and advantages of life in America, and their huge support for the arts, we now know that America is doing it partly by borrowing money they can’t pay back.)
Time is another factor. The work of creative people, generally, is transitory because (a) it is often tied to time (Louise is writing about conditions in the region that don’t exist anymore) and (b) the appetite for the new and the current is driven by a media dealing usually in precisely that – the new and the current. So there is a kind of inevitability about today’s young people not knowing about Laddie Lewis here, or about Mano Marcellin in Trinidad, or about Jackie Opel in Barbados, or Boris Gardner in Jamaica. New stars are competing for and, naturally, gaining the limelight.
Also, my take goes past that. My take is that the artist does what he does because he can’t help himself (herself) and that therefore the reception, while wonderful when it happens, is not as important, to the artist, as the doing. The creator – musician, dancer, writer, painter – is expressing or delivering his/her very being, and so that expression continues whether applause or reward follows or not.
And to go further – and this is the crux of it for me – once the work had value for the culture that spawned it, the reception did take place at that earlier time, and some of it does carry forward. Now the current notice I’m talking about of course is the individual one, or the personal one, usually not seen or heard by others, so it is not, in the sense that Henry Muttoo is referring to, one of national acclaim. However, beyond that still, to put the finest point on it, it is the personal plaudit, the one spontaneously given, that is the most prized reception of all. First of all, because it comes from the heart and because it is often a complete surprise landing on you like a calabash of water in the morning.
Also, while time is clearly against it, some reputations survive past that barrier, an example being the late Martin Carter. The awareness that the common people in Guyana have of Martin has been a revelation for me. I expected an Ian McDonald or a Miles Fitzpatrick or a Carlton James to quote him – that was foreseen – but to hear the man in the street refer to him or, better yet, quote a phrase from one of Martin’s poems is, first of all, a delight and secondly an affirmation of what I’m always preaching – that we continually underrate the acuity of the working man or woman who is not favoured with higher education. They may not be able to articulate matters with fluidity or span, but he/she has often grasped more than we assume.
