Given my own interests in cultural matters and the arts, generally, coupled with my wife’s own interests in other areas, it’s fair to say that evenings in Georgetown will often find me in various gatherings where those subjects are on the menu and, as to be expected, these occasions can vary in quality from official to exhilarating, and so one can go to these things hoping to encounter the latter. This past week I accompanied my wife, Annette Martins to an event that she assured me would be one of the exhilarating ones as we joined the crowd at the End of Year Review hosted by our National Commission for UNESCO.
Staged on the lawns of the Commission, the evening started off with the traditional welcome and opening remarks smoothly delivered by Minister of Education Nicolette Henry and the Commission’s Secretary General Patrice La Fleur. The entertainment items that followed on the programme included the St. John’s Bosco Steel Orchestra, some dance items, and a particularly vibrant piece of hand drumming from a young musician (I did not catch his name) who was providing musical accompaniment using only a drum – a very difficult task indeed – and doing it superbly.
The Christmas spirit then came alive with a very vigorous presentation by, if my information is correct, a group from Victoria village, of traditional Guyana Masquerade Band that really set the mood for the evening; it was the real thing, not the pale imitation we see in town during Christmas these days; we were off and running as my wife had predicted. Several more UNESCO business items then followed including updates on our National Sports Policy, our National Archives, and our National Cultural Policy. Then, out of the blue, came the next item, listed in our programme as Puppetry. I digress here to make the point that one of the things in entertainment matters that intrigues me is the inventiveness of mankind at play in such things as song-writing, topics for literature, designs for art, or lines for a poem, so my initial surprise at seeing the heading “Puppetry” had now given way to my musing “how is Merundoi going to pull this off given the Education and Culture context?” I did not see the answer coming.
It unfolded with the opening music of one of my songs, Is We Own. Good Heavens! Merundoi Director Margaret Lawrence, perhaps, or Old Man Pappy the comedian, had transported the lyrics of the song by presenting them on stage through an array of puppets, operated by persons, hidden under the stage, with the dancing figures almost leaping out at the audience through the openings on the set design. The idea was brilliant; the effect was magical. I almost fell off my chair. “The crabwood that grow in Essequibo is we own”…there was a puppeteer, invisible to the audience, manipulating that figure on stage. Similarly, there was a dancing “six o’clock bee” and a “sakiwinki”, and so on down the line. The audience was in hysterics at many of the depictions. “The labba that run from Goveia gun” was particularly vivid, but each of the figures came over as if they were indeed alive – so good were the manipulators. I don’t know if Annette had been given a whisper, but this was a complete surprise for me. I was floored. I found myself running to the microphone and telling the audience, “I’ve never seen the song done like this.” Maybe to a puppeteer this was all in the day’s work; to me, it was a master stroke. I have been known to have some wild dreams, but nothing to match this. I kept looking for the figures on the other lines – “Mary and Paul, up on the sea wall, is we own” and “Coconut metagee and wiri wiri, is we own” and “Umana Yana is we own.” Virtually each line was a figure, there must have been 30 of them…colourful, dancing, exuberant…indeed exhilarating, as Annette had predicted.
So to the folks behind this at the Commission and especially to Margaret Lawrence and the gang at Merundoi, and all the ones, out of sight, working the puppets – thank you. I never saw this one coming, not in the slightest. This truly came to me out of the blue. You gave me a surprise I will never forget. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
