Escapist-like, today I veer away from all those current issues of national significance, which too often tend to be stressful, provocative or controversial.
Taking a break, I’ll recycle thoughts on aspects of our cultural expression and heritage whilst blowing sharp blast on my own trumpet. You see, I produce and present a weekend television family-oriented show named “The Guyana Cook-up Show” and on radio another programme titled “Bun-bun” (getting to the bottom of Guyanese folklore). Man the latter is evidently evoking lots of nostalgia amongst over-50 listeners and some interest among those younger Guyanese who actually listen – or hear it.
Ironically, my take is to promote aspects of Guyanese folkloric culture – proverbs, folk songs, shanties, ring games, superstitions, spirit beings, foods, et al – in the face of what I deem to be the overwhelming intrusions of Jamaican and American elements, which submerge our own. We ting!
Yet, our iconic music maker and social commentator, Dave Martins, assures us that there is no cause for concern. If! Let me repeat views I first permed many, many months ago.
Heritage, technology, globalisation
At a bygone symposium on Guyanese culture Mr Martins assured the gathering that “if we maintain respect for our traditions and heritage and strive for the highest standards excellence, we have nothing to fear from that which is now known as globalisation.”
In fact, Mr Martins asserted, Guyanese could market our culture products in this global market (village), now more easily facilitated by the Information and Communication Technology of computers, videos, the internet and modern works.
But how good are our cultural entrepreneurs at that? I think of the fledgling efforts of Burchmore Simon, Bonny Alves, and our younger film-makers and hope for the best. For them. That means I hope that they garner national, governmental support to, at the minimum, give them an effective, rewording start.
I understood, at that session, that our “intangible heritage” refers to those same stories, songs, myths, proverbs, folkloric expressions, which really are “non-infrastructural icons” of our national identity and culture. My preference was to focus on how we promote and preserve our cultural identity. And the effectiveness of the few institutions tasked with those objectives. Our supposedly custodians of culture.
But does not globalisation thrust other people’s culture and cultural products upon the consciousness of our vulnerable, impressionable youth? Our rituals, our pre–wedding ceremonies, our first people’s customs flourish periodically, whilst overseas pop-culture dominates. Daily! So what is to be done? I suppose that the same modernity which places our heritage under threat can be utilised to resuscitate and sustain it. The technology must be used to broadcast our own traditions. Am I being farfetched to suggest Guyanese folkloric video games? Our spirit beings recreated for television?
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Kaiso in Kentucky, Halloween in Haslington
I think it’s great to hear Americans, Nigerians, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Bangladeshis singing Bob Marley and playing reggae and kaiso. After all my generation of colonials have been singing European songs and hymns for an eternity. And though other societies now savour our Caribbean rhythms and steelpan, never do those foreigners allow other cultural influences to dominate or diminish their native identity. Global village or not.
Frankly Speaking, I suspect that poverty and hopelessness constitute another reason why the youth abandon our traditions. 50 Cent and Shahrukh Khan easily replace Ole Higue, Kweh–Kweh, Bush Dai-Dai or local heroes. Then again if we can’t get to Jamaica, New York or London we tend to bring other folks’ celebrations right here. Watch our youth celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving. After all, some argue, thousands of our own are in a diaspora wherein they are (paper) American, Canadians, Jamaicans, Londoners and Barbadians. So why not adopt and adapt? Huh?
Look, let’s just export our good behaviours and products. Let Sparrow sing Kaiso in Kentucky. Let us remigrate our Baccoo from Boston for Palm Court’s Halloween. And oh, start from and with the young. Sponge Bob and Dora must meet Baccoo and Fairmaid. Right?
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Simón the liberator, but Nicolás?
The award of the tribunal of arbitration constituted under Article One of the 1897 Treaty of Arbitration between Britain and the USA, was handed-down on 3rd October, 1899. Tomorrow, then, marks 116 years since that binding international decision.
We all know what Venezuela now thinks of that full and final agreement and award. I shall not repeat all the obvious fallout. Rather, I congratulate our president David Arthur Granger for his forceful, persuasive and pointed prosecution at the United Nations on Tuesday. The Dickers with Nicolás Maduro after that. We await the UN and world reactions now. But why did I think of the legendary Venezuelan leader after President Granger spoke?
A few years ago I enjoyed the privilege of spending about an hour in the actual birth place of Simón Bolívar in Caracas. The house, of course, is now a Venezuelan Heritage Museum. I invite Guyanese to study Bolívar’s life. To many – in and out of South America – he remains a great. El Liberator – the South American Liberator – though rebuked by none other than Karl Marx as just wanting to preserve his old Venezuelan “Creole nobility”, is hailed as a lovable dictator who dismissed Spain’s dominion to establish the Gran Colombia – a then giant state of Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and a portion of Brazil. His continental military conquests, coupled with some autocratic political governorships, leave him a revered South American icon.
But did his expansionist attitude inform his modern-day Venezuelan successors? Chávez? Maduro? I doubt it though they would invoke Bolívar’s spirit like a Bible. I again suggest: Guyanese read about the military Simón José Antonio de La Santisíma Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios. About his aristocratic but lonely childhood and being nursed by a black slave woman; about his safety sojourns to Jamaica and Haiti – and about my own suspicions about his African connection. Riveting stuff!
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Think about…
- Next Friday we’ll explore guess which minister. Which minister is coping? Is already dismissive of those who elected him? Is overwhelmed by his portfolio? Is tending to be rude? Guess which one!
Til next week!
(comments? allanafenty@yahoo.com)
