Legendary broadcaster Ayube Hamid passes on

Jan 22, 2009 News

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For five and a half decades, Ayube Hamid brought the sounds of Mohamed Rafi’s “Suhani Raat” to radio listeners across Guyana; but now he has stopped playing.

 

The legendary broadcaster collapsed and died in the bathroom of his Hadfield Street, Georgetown home, at about 04:00hrs yesterday, just before performing “Fajr” or morning prayers, his daughter Saffiyya Khan said.  He suffered a history of heart complications.
He died in the same house he had lived in for most of his life. He had shared this same house with his wife, Jinette, for the 46 years of their marriage. She died in 1994. Safiyya was their only child.
Ayube Hamid was 82. His real name was Ayube Ahmad Khan.
He adopted the name Ayube Hamid to avoid any confusion that would come with two persons broadcasting under the name Khan. His boss was Rafiq Khan, and so they agreed that he would broadcast under the name Ayube Hamid, instead of Ayube Khan.
Ayube Hamid was born at Danielstown, on the Essequibo Coast, to a family of staunch Muslims. He attended Madrasah at the local Mosque, where the gamut of Islamic life was taught to him, including the need to say the five daily prayers.
In school, he excelled and secured one of just two Essequibo county scholarships, and this landed him a place at the elite Queen’s College in Georgetown.
After school, his first job was with a firm engaged in geological exploration for bauxite. However, he would soon leave that to take up a job in radio, which he never left until he died. 
Ayube Hamid joined the radio station on April 1, 1952 as an announcer for the news, and he also played music and conducted interviews. 
This was shortly after the Great Fire of 1951, in Georgetown, which destroyed the Philharmonic Building which housed the then radio station VP3BG.
Within a year on the job, his knowledge of Urdu and Arabic, derived from a strong Islamic background, together with his excellent enunciation of English, prompted then radio boss Rafiq Khan to set him on a lifelong career in broadcasting. 
Within a year, Ayube Hamid replaced Mohamed Akbar as the host of Indian Memory Album, and he always played “Suhani Raat” to start off. It was the programme that came to define his career in radio.
The programme featured old Indian music of different genres. He was a class act in introducing the songs. Not many could do it, even though there were other Indian broadcasters: Sugrim Singh, Azeem Khan, Paul O’Hara, Ishri Singh, Sunny Mohamed, and Moses Hussain.
The albums were written mostly in Urdu and Hindustani, and so his groundings in Urdu gave him a distinct advantage, and audiences across the country came to love him for the evergreen classical songs he played. 
Then, in no small way, he, along with others, started a local talent show on Sunday afternoons that blossomed in a bigger event that was responsible, not only for the promulgation of Indian music on the radio, but for the development of the musical talent of those who dared to make a name for themselves.
When the radio shifted from North Road to High Street in the 1960’s, Local Indian Performers became a much- looked-forward-to event for those who figured they could sing. He auditioned them, and put the best ones on the programme. And so he was responsible for jump-starting the careers of persons such as Mohan Nandu, Gobin Ram, Tilak, Sudama, and Beni Balkarran.
Artistes came as far as from Berbice and Essequibo to make it big.
However, a change in the concept of managing the radio station occurred, and Local Indian Performers was discontinued. Indian Memory Album continued, though, until now.
His career in broadcasting, over the decades, has seen him broadcasting live and emceeing many memorable events in the country, including concerts by the likes of Mohamed Rafi, Manna Dey, Lata Mageshkar, Mukesh and Kishore.
Uncle Ayube, as he was affectionately called by those dear to him, was a cultural philanthropist.
He was one of the founders of the Gandhi Youth Organisation, was a trustee of the Queenstown Jama Masjid, and was also actively involved in the promulgation of Indian culture as a member of the Indian Commemoration Trust, for which he helped to establish the Indian Monument Gardens.
For his contribution to broadcasting and his social and cultural pursuits, he was bestowed with three national awards, including the Golden Arrowhead of Achievement – the country’s fourth highest national award.
During his lifetime, one of Uncle’s Ayube’s greatest joys was visiting Sumdatt, North East Delhi, from where his grandfather came to what was then British Guiana.
In an interview published in the “Horizons” magazine two years ago, Ayube Hamid bemoaned the fact that Indian music is today recognised only as those that come out of the Hindi film industry.
“Indian music has become so adulterated with Western influence that only the purists now enjoy an evening of Raag, Thumris, Ghazals and Bhajans,” he said.
“But we must be proud that despite the adulteration, the passing of the years from Indentureship has not, and will not, obliterate the love and sense of cultural belonging to this Guyanese cultural form.
“It is my fervent wish that we should teach the community and ourselves in general the language, and so appreciate what we hear in Indian songs.”
A funeral service was held in the compound of the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana, on Woolford Avenue, yesterday afternoon, after which his body was interred at Le Repentir Cemetery.

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