Dear Editor,
You can talk until the cows come home but if you do not have unity as a people, others wouldn’t respect you. Don’t get me wrong, they will come to your shores when invited and smile and be very warm and sociable. They will give you a good musical or other artistic performance, take your millions and leave. You are not there when they give an assessment to those closest to them of what they really think of us as Guyanese. Guyanese people are no different to our Caribbean (Not SA) counterparts; we all love music. We love to party and have fun. But there is something that is missing when it comes to Caribbean subculture.
We, deep down inside, do not genuinely believe in our own artistic product. We spend millions on Caribbean and other entertainers from around the world. We fill our stadium and other massive venues and behave as if those foreign artistes are gods to be worshipped, while right there in Guyana we have entertainers as good as Machel Montana, Kes, Majah Hype and those we give our millions to but our self-hate and disbelief in what we have and can promote, market and build upon as our own unique brands find us choked by our dislike and disrespect for our local talent.
I find Chow Pow and Kunchi funnier than Majah Hype but we have not made them into international celebrities that we can say we give to the Caribbean and the world as Guyanese. Jamaica has reggae and dancehall. Trinidad, Barbados and other islands have soca and calypso. America has hip hop, rap, R&B, heavy metal, country and western, soul and we can go on. What do we have? We have Natural Black, Eddy Grant and a few others that we can hypocritically claim but we never built them. Their success is attributed to Jamaica and the UK respectively. Today, we are being cussed by the very people that we worship and give our millions to. They are saying we have nothing to showcase to the world in the area of entertainment. The truth is, we cannot find a solution until we remove the self-hate and disrespect for selves as a nation.
Just recently, a young overseas based Lindener started an award show to promote our local entertainers and other notable Guyanese. The hate he is receiving from our own people, you would think that they just found out he is Jim Jones. I conclude by saying that we cannot be foreign minded and be truly patriotic.
We have to find a way to make our local artistes become internationally renowned like the Burna Boys of this world. That will be my biggest challenge in 2025. I can see a thriving film and music industry that will rival Hollywood, Nollywood and Bollywood. We have the wealth. Let’s get rid of the self-hate and place our pride in our own. It is hard but we can do it.
Sincerely,
Norman Browne
Social and Political Activist
