Next February, Guyana will celebrate another golden jubilee. February 23, 1970 was the day this country became a republic; February 23, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of that day and of the national festival of Mashramani.
Mashramani is the highlight of republic celebrations and has for the five decades given the nation’s Republic Day its impact, its identity, its popularity and cultural mark. This has been so to the point where it is known and celebrated as Mashramani season and the revelry of the actual festival dominates the national consciousness at the expense of any significant awareness of republicanism. It is not popularly remembered that it is a political event that is really being celebrated. Much of the population would be unaware of this and of the meaning of the nation’s status as a republic.
There have been a number of fairly feeble attempts to do public things that add an acknowledgement of the intellectual content of the republic anniversary. There is the Flag Raising ceremony, which is often accompanied by much festivity, performance and spectacle. But it is not enough to educate the public about what this republican status means, or even that it exists. The political speeches do not come near to achieving that. But apart from the Flag Raising, anything highlighting republicanism as a political fact or adding mental weight to the celebration is rare.
Yet, Mashramani, for all its gaiety and frolic, was originally designed to contribute to that very weight, intellectual depth and awareness of republican nationhood. That part of it, though, has, truthfully, floundered and sustained no momentum.
The original concept and vision of this premier national festival was informed by an attempt to reflect republican ideology concomitant with the celebratory and cultural performance. But it has never lived up to that these 50 years, and some restoration of that should be a feature during the golden jubilee celebrations.
What ought to be very prominently trumpeted this time around, while the significant anniversary is marked, is a man who was foremost in the origin, design, concept, vision – the very invention of Mashramani – Mr Jimmy Hamilton.
There should be a tribute to him in the republic jubilee for his seminal contributions which gave the Republic of Guyana the gift of Mashramani.
Jimmy Hamilton was President of the Jaycees of Greater Mackenzie – a conglomeration of the three townships of Mackenzie, Wismar and Christianburg, now known as Linden. A photographer by profession, he previously served as Public Relations Officer, and then led this private sector service organisation in 1970. He was the leader of the group that worked from May 1969 to February 1970 to create the festival of Mashramani.
There were others who worked with him in the team, at various times and at different levels. Foremost among those was Walter Melville, a middle manager at the Demerara Bauxite Company (DEMBA) and an executive member of the Mackenzie Jaycees. Others were Basil Butcher, hero of test cricket, who served in the committee at times when he wasn’t touring with the West Indies team; Claud Saul, manager of Guynet; Michael Brassington, a manager at Barclays Bank; Jim Blackman, and an Antiguan Clavis Joseph.
Still others who served in varying capacities included Alan Fiedtkou, leader of a DEMBA bauxite exploration team; Adrian Thompson, also of DEMBA; and Herman Nobrega.
The nation owes these gentlemen a huge debt for this addition to the national state of being and identity, for their contributions in the field of culture. Countries have national days, in some cases it is independence day; in China, for example, it is the founding of the PRC, the anniversary of the country as a communist republic. Hamilton and his team gave Guyana a major cultural event – a festival that has endured for 50 years. What is more, the festival is not just to mark the one national day but has a set of cultural and political events grouped around it. It is also a popular force.
The history of Mashramani is that there were a number of popular performances and cultural events in the 1960s that were grouped and organised into Guyana’s Independence Carnival in 1966. These included the steel band, the calypso king competition, the contest for Band of the Year competed for by costumed bands and float parades with the king and queen of the bands. These were drawn into one event modeled on the Trinidad Carnival and mounted on May 26, 1966 as a public celebration of independence.
Although such an important national event, it was produced and administered by a private sector institution – the Jaycees. The prime movers of it were the Jaycees of Greater Mackenzie (Linden). These Jaycees proved themselves to be the most capable in running this annual event and solidified it considerably when they moved it to Linden and developed it there.
This carnival assumed very high national importance in 1969 under Hamilton’s leadership and was virtually adopted as an official national day event. Although it was a borrowed festival, Hamilton may be credited with leading its growth into a formidable force and the country’s national festival. Of great significance is the way it was developed to be a force for the social development of Linden. At the core of the event was the crowning of the Miss Independence Carnival Queen, but the contestants were made to be involved in a programme of community development while the entire population of the town was involved in choosing the queen. This turned a beauty contest into a force to get the people of the town interested and involved in the festival, which was used to provide them with entertainment while giving them a sense of identity – belonging to a community while generating funds for its benefit.
This same depth of conceptualization of a popular event led to the creation of Mashramani. It was clear that Hamilton had an imagination and a sense of nationhood. In 1969, the Guyana government declared that the country would become a republic and named February 1970 as the appointed date. Without any official request or prompting, Hamilton saw it as a duty to turn the independence carnival into a celebration for the inaugural attainment of republican status. So, he set his team to work to transform the carnival into something deeper and more befitting an indigenous national event worthy of a republic.
Although the festival already had significant social and political goals towards the social development of Linden, the efforts were turned to building a new event with an even greater sense of identity for Republic Day. The Jaycees were conscious that what they had was something basically borrowed from Trinidad. They had earlier made efforts to build a real community in the town of Linden, they then set about an ideological change and identity to have the festival fit the new status of a cooperative republic.
There were plans to make it more indigenous. It was no longer called a carnival. The festival queen remained central, but instead of a crown, she was ceremonially presented with a symbol of the republic. There was to be a “Revolt Dance” in the programme in honour of the February 1763 slave rebellion. Instead of the calypso, there was a shanto competition, since shanto was native to Guyana. The J’ouvert was changed to a fore-day morning jump-up.
Furthermore, there were plans to go into all corners of the country and bring out the best cultural productions and performances from each region so that the nation’s cultural diversity would be on show at Mashramani in Georgetown.
Hamilton and team did research and hunted for a name that was indigenous to Guyana to call the festival. They came up with “mashramani” which they thought was an Arawak (Lokono) word meaning “celebration after cooperative work”. That was not accurate, since “mashramani” does not exist in the Lokono language. It is a coinage at best, or a corruption of the Arawak word “meshirimehi” which means “work”. Nevertheless, they adopted the word, which gives the festival a local concept.
The point here is that Hamilton and his colleague Walter Melville were 50 years ahead of the rest of their nation. They had plans for a Mashramani that would have an intellectual and an ideological component – an element that is still largely missing today, 50 years later. They had plans for a Mashramani that was developmental and indigenous – 50 years later Guyana has introduced an independence carnival to celebrate its nationhood on May 26.
Hamilton must be celebrated because he did away with an independence carnival in 1970 to build something more native and hopefully, more traditional; something that could be identified with a name from a native language and culture. Fifty years ago, he dropped an imported J’ouvert from the festival agenda. Today, 50 years later, Guyana celebrates its independence with J’ouvert – the imitation of a borrowed name.
