Some things you need to speak about more than once. Hence this column today in SO IT GO, which ran many months ago in this space Stabroek News has generously given me a long time now to vent my feelings. Nuff said.
A number of years ago I played in Castries at the funeral of a St Lucian friend who had died after a tough 2-year battle with cancer. His name was Bobby Clarke, and our friendship goes back to the early 1970s when Tradewinds were popular all over the Caribbean and came to make the first of many appearances in St Lucia. During my time in music, I have met, literally, hundreds of people, but only a few have become special. Bobby Clarke was one of those. In the 35 years after we met, even with him living in St. Lucia and me mostly in Grand Cayman, or latterly Guyana, I don’t think any two-month period passed without us talking to each other or visiting each other. I had even played with Tradewinds, at Bobby’s wedding in St Lucia. The bond between us never weakened. We told each other everything. We had become brothers, out of the blue, one Guyanese, one Lucian, simply propelled by the music. Important point to a long story.
Something else …many years ago, I had written a song about the Caribbean called “Living in the Sun”. Contrary to what people think, not every song is totally personal, but this one was. It had to do with my migrating to Canada and of, in effect, finding the Caribbean by leaving it – as Bobby did; as so many Caribbean people do – and there are some verses in the song about Bobby and St. Lucia. So after his wife Angela called, and after I got over the shock of his passing, the thought came that I should sing “Living in the Sun” at his funeral, and that’s what I did at the massive beautiful Cathedral in Castries on that solemn Monday afternoon. I did it simply. No bass. No drums. Just two acoustic guitars: me and Boo Hinckson – a great guitarist from St Lucia I’ve known for years – who was also close to Bobby.
I’ve never played at a funeral before, and I was very nervous, but once I started, the song rolled out. It was pure Caribbean, in church mind you, but it was a really touching moment because the song talks about the simple joys of Caribbean life, and while it was clearly a sad occasion in the cathedral, it was such an uplifting moment. That came across, big time. People applauded after we finished – unusual for a funeral service; very unusual. Boo had a big smile on his face, and so did I, and several others, including Bobby’s wife, Angela. It was a singular, powerful, experience.
There are two other aspects to all this. One is that, after the funeral, we went back to Bobby’s yard (with about 200 people, which is not my cup of tea) and nibbled and talked to all sorts of folks, many of whom I had come to know from our trips to St. Lucia. It was beautiful. I spent some time there with Bobby’s family and with his wife, Angela. She had had a bad time on Sunday and Monday, but she was bearing up well. She is truly a lovely person, so gentle, so warm, but a rock. She pulled me to one side and said, “Dave, you know what Bobby used to say? He used to say, ‘Dave sang at my wedding and he will sing at my funeral.’ ” That shook me to my core. I could hardly speak. She had never said anything about it to me, and neither had Bobby. Even when after she had originally called and told me he had gone, and I had called her back from Cayman to tell her I was trying to come and maybe even sing something at his funeral, she never said a word about it. She obviously didn’t want to influence me. That’s the kind of person she is. That’s the kind of people I treasure whom I have met through music. I see that as a gift from God…it truly is.
And that’s the other thought that subsequently came to me: that through some songs I had written about Caribbean life, I had come to know wonderful people all over this region, like Angela Clarke, that I would not have known otherwise. When I visit Barbados, or St. Vincent, or St. Lucia, folks shout at me in the street or call the radio to say hello; these people have become my regional cousins. I have come to know the little back-o-wall villages in those scattered places and the solid, genuine people who live there and invite you into their homes and make you feel special in ways I could never describe.
In Guyana of course, the exchange is more direct and more widespread and it affects me deeply (I will talk more about that another time) but on the plane trip back from that St Lucia experience it came to me to be grateful to God for giving me this musical gift that has opened windows for me all over the place and brought me into so many Caribbean lives.
Certainly I might have worked at some other career and possibly made enough money to travel to these diverse pearls of the Caribbean, but I would have gone there merely as an unknown visitor. Instead, because my songs had become popular in those places, I was going there as someone with a connection to those people that I could not have otherwise made. The same connection was in play when Tradewinds started playing music five nights a week in a downtown nightclub, the Bermuda Tavern, that was our home base in Toronto for years and years. Through the songs, drawn from them, and aimed at them, I had become familiar to folks from all over the Caribbean region.. They knew Dave Martins as a friend who understood them and was talking to them of their own world…. all that had grown out of these songs I had written. That realization had never come to me before; on that Tuesday afternoon, in a plane high over the Caribbean Sea, it came and it brought me to tears, travelling alone, with grief in my heart. Others nearby may have seen the tears; I don’t know for sure. So be it.
I remember to give thanks for all these wonderful people in the Caribbean and my homeland whom I have come to know because of my songs. It is a gift that has come to my life and enriched it time and again, in countries near and far, lifting me up from some weariness or some setback in ways I can never express. And the gift of music has brought me this unquestioning friendship and bonding with so many special people in so many special places that live in my heart today. a treasure that is a fixture in my life, ebbing and flowing, yes, but never completely leaving me. I don’t wonder what I did to deserve such a gift; I simply accept it, give thanks to God, and to the countless people who have propelled me so….story done.
