GUYANA DAY - A REVIEW (Part 1)

GUYANA DAY - A REVIEW 

My weekend Column, 3/07/2020

See all my blogs at letstalkwithharrybissoon.blogspot.com 

𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒙𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒑𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑷𝒂𝒖𝒍 𝑺𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒖𝒚𝒂𝒏𝒂 𝑫𝒂𝒚 2008 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑨𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒔𝒆𝒆

The Guyana Day Committee has finally got it.  Almost.

At first Auntie Comsee seemed like a scribe from an earlier era: an elegant “mouth-a-preckay” with a penchant for street “gaff;” she writes with a talking pen and a vocabulary that you may never be able to explore in the encyclopedia.

Yet she was very much a woman of the hour.

For many baby boomers, Auntie Comsee has been long gone and forgotten since the dog days of the seventies.  Many believed that she died, buried and resurrected and is now on the right hand side of the throne of the Lord.  It has been decades since that fable flourished.

So it was striking when she materialized at the York Center for the Performing Arts, radiating good cheer in her trademark delicious story of “Bur” ‘Nancy and “Bur” Tiger.  Her act was a rare moment when everything “ole-time” Guyanese seemed to come together.  She has a way of assembling characters in the same room.

Unlike many contemporary story tellers, Auntie Comsee enjoyed doing translations and adaptations, adding embellishments to the originals.  Her work last weekend was a fascinating display of the intricacies of translating – between English and Creole, between cultures and forms. 

At every opportunity she telescoped the narratives, making “patwa” a modern, glittering, manipulative medium so that you get a sense of acceleration as she reshaped a story.  Many fans who have had vivid memories of theatre on radio reflected on Auntie Comsee as she struck a chord with the art of traditional story telling.  Again.

You can’t help but wonder just how many of the smartly dressed folks walked away feeling a sense of euphoria, a sense of pride and joy of being Guyanese; of knowing that the Guyana they celebrated is a Guyana of nostalgia, or a Guyana of the future; but not a Guyana of present day.

And so was Sammy Baksh.  The guile-free rocker in search of love – and almost always finding it – was once a staple of the night spots in Georgetown.  Love, death, loss, devastation: these are the terms that a rock singer like Sammy Baksh tends to apply.

Already something of a misty legend, Sammy is now largely a newcomer to the second generation of Guyanese Americans.  But those with a sense of music history can accurately place him between The Doors’ Jim Morrison and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger for he has maintained the stage presence, the craziness and the hippie spirit of a world class performer.

Sammy Baksh knows many things about stage performance; it feels very comfortable – like home.  So when he walked on stage last Sunday, he was feeling the tremendous energy from the audience and connected with it.  Of course, Sammy Baksh is a man with strong artistic convictions that he puts in practice and expounds on readily.

It was all even more thrilling on the bonus performance of “To be Lonely,” a tantalizing  seven minutes of live stage action with an overall effect of just how much more dark, bitter, probing and theatrically explosive, easily explaining why this rock-and-roller was such a sensation.

And make no mistake.  Rick Ramdehal and Rudy Ramnarine’s interplay of Taan revived an ancient, forgotten- almost extinct – art form of music and vocalizing.  They were two very mystical voices, and the blend of them was very mystical. They both sounded like they were singing from some other time.

 And the beat went on.  From the fun, rib tickling calypsos of the Might Rebel to the exuberant stream of consciousness movements of the New Revelation Dance Theatre to Natraj and Nritya Kala Kendra dance troupes to Charlie Roots’ “Stand up for Guyana.”

Everything Guyanese was highlighted, celebrated and magnified.  In spoken words, music, dance and movement it showed the indomitable resilience of performing artists in a political culture of stagnation.

Aesthetically Guyana Day 2008 has been a positive development in the community, for it is fast becoming an institution of inspiration for artists and performers in the Diaspora. 

Last week’s presentation was also a missed opportunity for the arm chair visionaries to witness the confluence of ideas and the general networking, cordial expressions and friendly gregariousness among Indo and Afro Guyanese. 

Guyana Day 2008 stood alone; it was far removed from the bickering, belligerent Guyana 2008 five thousand miles away; far removed from the homeland’s toxic political interference; far removed from the nasty infiltration of overseas political support groups with exclusive agendas.  You get the tone.

It is for that, and that alone, that made it the finest display of Guyana’s most treasured aspirations - and for dreams yet to be pursued.