So It Go

(In memory of the late calypsonian, song writer, playwright and Caribbean man, Dave Martins we reproduce below one of his Sunday Stabroek columns from April 17, 2022) The professional musician’s life has many attendant aspects, other than the activity itself, so that any successful Caribbean musician will tell you that one of the problems is dealing with hecklers who consider themselves comedians and will shout stuff at you from the crowd, very loud.

In my younger years growing up in Guyana, I had the daily school-boy experience of travelling from Hague, on West Demerara by bus to Vreed-en- Hoop to catch the ferryboat to Georgetown. 

The professional musician’s life has many attendant aspects, other than the activity itself, so that any successful Caribbean musician will tell you that one of the problems is dealing with hecklers who consider themselves comedians and will shout stuff at you from the crowd, very loud.

Living again in Guyana and driving about in my van, I am often reminded of my early life in Georgetown, and going to St.

Over the years, going back to my beginnings, travelling on school breaks to my father’s farm in the Pomeroon from our family home at Hague and Vreed-en-Hoop, and later when I worked for B.G.

Part of our Guyana history that has vanished in recent times was the era of the broad, squat steamship, the Queriman, which was at one time in operation as the ferry between Georgetown and Vreed-en-Hoop on the opposite bank of the Demerara River.

Looking back at it, so many years later after it came into being, that was the name, The Base,  most commonly used to refer to Guyana’s international airport, Atkinson Field, which had been created during World War Two, as the jumping-off point from North America for US Air Force planes headed for the Far East and Europe. 

It’s one of the features of daily living that we often look back at our lives and feel fortunate for some of the things that have come our way. 

Today I’m running a column I used in this space some time back, but certain things clearly need repeating so I offer it again. 

I migrated to Toronto, Canada, in the early 1960s, dabbled in the music business part time for a while, and then started my own band – the Tradewinds – in the mid-60s and started our own nightclub there, in a venue known as the Bermuda Tavern, which became our home base and a favourite with Caribbean people. 

As a young man, my roots were almost totally Guyana, with a large slice of Trinidad when I started the Tradewinds band in Toronto where I had migrated and hooked up with a wash of Trinis living in that city.

Essequibo busman Kass, who drove one of the big buses on the Essequibo route when I was going to school in Georgetown, was fond of playing a game with passengers who would disembark after a trip and come around to the front of the bus to pay Kass their fare and get any change owing. 

In the wake of recent Diwali celebrations here, one is reminded of the frequent calls to ban fireworks at such times because of the widespread terror they generate among the various animals we have as house pets in Guyana.

As a young man in West Dem, Guyana, living at Vreed-en-Hoop, going to Saints Stanislaus on a scholarship, I made many trips to my father’s farm in the Pomeroon, sometimes by train, sometimes by bus, linking up with the ferry to Adventure, and then by bus to Charity, and boat to the farm. 

One of the most powerful influences in our culture operate on folks like me who are involved, whether we like it or not, with the various shifts that come about from time to time, some as reaction, some as possibilities, or suggestions for possibilities. 

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.

A column in this vein appeared previously in this spot in the hope it might propel others to contribute to the subject.

In 2008 when Annette and I were courting she took me to Shell Beach.

Okay.  Going in, today I’m speaking up for Pit Bull dogs everywhere who have been labelled as dangerous  creatures given to indiscriminate biting of persons close to them. 

Over the weekend Guyana said goodbye to one of its premier citizens.