Dave Martins

One of the best examples of what can be described as “cliché thinking” is to be found in the frequent diatribes against well-known artistes, particularly popular singers, who are lambasted these days for leading the public, more especially youth, into various negative social actions. 

With the explosive running performances in its recent Track and Field Championships, Jamaica is again in the world press for the world-class calibre of its athletes.

I know I’m not breaking any new ground here in my assertion that while there are surely many men who are standout human beings, men, as social beings, are generally jackasses.

It comes with the territory; when you achieve some sort of prominence in the arts, people are naturally curious about the process. 

Most things happen in isolation; some things appear as part of a wider condition. 

Some weeks ago I mentioned in a column that when I bought a nightclub in Toronto as a home base for Tradewinds, that although I had put up my house to secure the purchase, that didn’t quite cover it, and I had to turn to  my sister and her husband to put a second mortgage on their house to seal the deal.

You can try to describe Kaieteur Falls to someone who hasn’t seen it; you can try, but you will fail.

“What’s your favourite Tradewinds song, and which one you feel has had the strongest reaction?”

In the course of doing my column recently, I remembered a time in 2008, when I was living in Cayman, and a close Guyanese friend, living in America, had sent me a couple emails complaining about the rot in Guyana.

Some weeks ago, I’m on the phone with a friend in Canada who is infuriated about the boorish behaviour of a recent guest in his household.  

Some readers tell me, with grace, that I deal too much with cricket. 

Sometimes you learn from an unexpected source.  When I lived in Grand Cayman, I came to know one of the older boat builders, an interesting man named Ira Walton.

Wherever we live, there are situations or conditions or attitudes in the society that we come across, or they come across us, that have a negative impact on how we see the place. 

When I decided to write a weekly column for Stabroek News, some preconceptions were involved. 

I had had a brief encounter with the dress code previously at the Cultural Centre, or rather my wife did, so I went last week forewarned this time. 

It is often the case when popular musical patterns shift – roughly every 15 years or so –  that the adults of the mature generation, who are left behind yearning for their music that is now passé, will generally turn their backs on the new genre or even shut it out completely.

A good idea, although previously ignored, always bears repeating.  Here is one: Guyana should officially set about taking advantage of the very substantial unused resource this country has in the Guyanese diaspora sitting in the developed world.

When I moved to Canada 50-plus years ago, a musical career was not on my radar. 

Daily life in Guyana, particularly if you pick up the newspapers, knows no shortage of despairing incidents – “jarrings,” I call them – that combine to strain one’s resilience. 

Calypso is once again under the lens in a fine unravelling by Raymon Cummings in a recent letter to this newspaper where he expressed urgent concern for the declines in standard, in quality of judging, in song topics, and in marketability of the material.