Rudy Grant still blushes at the success of ‘Mash in Guyana’

Feb 19, 2012 News

– 25 years later

You can see the excitement gush through his eyes when he is told that “Mash in Guyana” is still known

Rudy Grant

in Zimbabwe today, and not just among the older folks among whom the song was popular when it first came out 25 years ago.
When Rudy Grant put lyrics to paper and had what to others seemed like a rather clumsy idea of putting strings and bass to work on a soca song, he didn’t really expect it to get anywhere. Why, he didn’t even know what Mash, or Mashramani – the name given to the country’s Republic anniversary celebrations – was about all about!
Once he got an idea, he conjured up in his head images of the Notting Hill carnival in London where he had moved with his family from Guyana and came up with what is the undisputed “anthem” of Mashramani; and so it remains today.
The song became an instant sensation in Guyana, and crossed borders, becoming also an anthem as far as Zimbabwe.
Imagine Rudy Grant’s surprise when an air hostess requested of him a copy for her country’s Head of State! The song was quite the rage in Zimbabwe.
“My mother was then a humble African woman in the post colonial era of Zimbabwe and to think she knew and loved it meant it was a song that had broken the barriers of class in society,” says Robert Mukondiwa, the deputy editor of H-Metro, a lifestyle and entertainment newspaper in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
“She is the one who would always swing and sing along to it,” Mukondiwa tells Kaieteur News, and he has money on the table that if it is played in a club today, in would still create the same kind of ruckus as it did back then.
“Mash in Guyana was played a lot on the national television station ZBC TV (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television) and it was almost an anthem everywhere one went.”
“The video was a hit and to be honest people didn’t know it was called ‘Mash in Guyana’ but rather knew it as ‘Mashingayana’ as if it were one word,” Mukondiwa fesses up.
It took a meeting with someone from Guyana for Mukondiwa himself to actually make sense of it all.

The cover of Mash in Guyana

He bets that his mother, now 64, would still sway her hips to the tune today, even if she is not able to do it with as much vigour as 25 years ago.
Tell Rudy Grant this story, and he blushes. Yes, blushes. Perhaps he still underestimates just how good the song is.
The “instigator” of “Mash in Guyana” was Pancho Carew, the veteran Guyanese broadcaster who urged him on to produce something for Mash.
But Rudy Grant hesitated at first. He had migrated to London in 1960 and didn’t know anything of Mash when he returned first returned in 1978.
But it was his next return, in 1986, when he met Pancho that the song had its genesis.
Rudy Grant returned to England and set about working on the song.
When he sent the song via FedEx to Pancho, the broadcaster had an unmistakable conclusion: “This song is going to be the national anthem of Mash.”
The song has never been remixed, though there have been temptations.
“There have been times when I thought of doing a remix, but, like they say, if something is not broken, why fix it?” Grant reasons.
The song in its pure form continues its hold on Mash, able to generate a sort of mystical reaction whenever it is played on radio or on the road Mash day.
“I don’t know if a better version can be done.”