So It Go

For several days recently, I have been in somewhat of a daze and even mourning for the passing of a long-time friend, Jerry Gouveia, former athlete, hunter, fisherman, etc.

It happen here a lil while back, in the middle of we MASH We ban some calypso outright friend, no more airplay, one lash But why they pick on kaiso man, I just don’t understand There are more important things now we should ban   The civil servant with a fancy house taking bribe left and right Ban that, immediately yes, ban that Some gutters up in Albouystown that block up day and night Ban that, oh yes, no argument, ban that And the ones that we have driving, drunk on vodka, rum or gin If you want to ban, right away, with that crowd, let’s begin Ban all the corruption, and the poor construction, look around and you’ll see Like pot holes in the road, ban that now.

Going in, although this is the traditional Sunday space in Stabroek News for my SO IT GO column, I am operating merely as a conduit this week for my wife Annette and her very focused work as an environmentalist.as

I’m a typical case, I ain’t come to boast Living with my wife in her casa East Coast Pretty bungalow; two mango tree Three dogs – Peppa, Jet and Choo And if you ask me the best, ah not sure who They each got their smartness, each got their way It depends if they’re hungry and what time of day   My mother said, “In life there’ll be times when the tides are high And the boat will be rocking as you try, just never give up, never give up It’s hard to believe but you gotta believe To achieve whatever you need to achieve, just never give up, never give up.

Looking back on the story of the emergence of my Tradewinds band in Caribbean music, it is interesting that I did not have any burning desire to be a professional musician when I migrated from Guyana to Toronto, Canada, in the early 1950s.

We’re facing in the world now what we never faced before These days it’s steady worries, left and right You have to cover up your face, and don’t shake people hand And no crowds anywhere at all… that’s right.

Some places on earth are stunning just as they are – Utah’s Bryce Canyon; the rock formations of the Pitons in St.

Several weeks back, on a flight from Miami to Toronto, I ended up chatting with a Jamaican about the painful and often unintentionally humourous mangling of the English language that we see these days. 

In the course of doing my column recently, I was reflecting on our tendency to see Guyana only through a negative lens, and I remembered a time in 2008, when I was living in Cayman, and had an exchange with a close Guyanese friend, George Jardim, living in America, who had sent me a couple emails on some matter in Guyana.

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

People often ask me about this column or that, or this song or that.

In my time living abroad, mostly in Toronto, Tradewinds gigs took me all over North America and to Mother England, and, of course, all over the Caribbean. 

I wrote a column on this topic some time ago, but following some recent brouhaha in our local media over the quality of a particular artistic production, it is clearly a focus we have to keep revisiting, It’s not obvious – in fact it’s often completely overlooked – but the truth is that in every high quality performance in the arts, the writing is the key. 

Lately I’ve been overrun with old memories, some of them going back decades, like my Mom passing away and my sister Celia, both in Toronto, and my first wife, Dorothy, who was from Scotland.

Memory does not tell me exactly how many years back, but several decades ago I recorded a song, IS WE OWN, with Tradewinds,  essentially highlighting aspects of Guyanese culture that constitute an integral part of our way of life, and the song has now become one of the Tradewinds standards frequently heard on radio and at various public functions. 

We grow up in Guyana, and the Caribbean generally, with this notion of jumbie, soucoyant, ol’ higue, etc.

Two days ago, out of the blue, I had an awful experience with the sudden death of a friend here, Colin Ming, in a traffic accident (he was on a motorbike) that just shattered me. 

Coming back here to live some eleven years ago, I began writing a regular column for Stabroek News.

Learning, or more appropriately, perhaps, “awareness” is the better word, is usually a gradual, inch by inch process, building and building to finally get there as a shape you can put your mind around. 

In the course of having a career in music, which led to my doing a series of columns headed SO IT GO in Sunday Stabroek, material of one sort of another comes to me in diverse ays. Recently,