Some other insights about the creative industry in Guyana

Nov 24, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
Monday 18th November Kaieteur News carried an interview about me as a writer /artist and self publisher in the reality of Guyana. The interview was conducted by a friend and writer himself, Michael Jordan. In that article I did mention that we did not receive replies from some corporate entities that we emailed and even sent hard copies to in this current time frame, for the exploitation of a particular ‘Cultural Item’. This was a comparison made against the enthusiasm that was evident in my experience of an initial period on self publishing in this genre.
The particular ‘Cultural Item’ mentioned above did yield an exception.
With the advent of the tenth Parliament I realized that some of these Corporate persons were operating on a far out pretext that was not within the normalcy of their authority. That particular ‘Cultural Item ‘mentioned above was based on the licensing of a particular copyrighted Character series as an advertising expression. One colleague with the broad vision of the CEO and an interactive background of the entertainment arts, was the exception.
He did respond and took this ‘cultural item,’ licensing the project for a year, but the work was never used, though I was paid the agreed sum. When I embarked on self publishing in the eighties, there were creative people in business, men like Len Beharry, Wilfred Holder, Bernard Ramsey, Ovid Holder, the founders of the Kissoon business group, to mention a few out of the jurisdiction or passed on, among others. Luckily, a few of them like Brig. Ret. David Granger are still around. The crux of the matter is, that we presently exist in a surreal administrative environment of cerebral defectiveness, where a dominant street cleverness, driven by banal idolatrous senses, is bent on stealing the economic and philosophical future of this nation. The development of Art and its arteries are beyond their functional consciousness.
Art and its currents to which we are its medium of expression, will continue to drive us. Occasionally as I do, I find myself alone, as most of my peers have physically migrated… others like Tyrone Dorris and Gregory Shanks have migrated to other ‘Pot-Boiling’ fields; even Angold is more Digital that Oils today. To really answer ‘Mike’ on the question that prompted the interview last week “What will become of the creative self of Guyana?” I honestly feel that it will redeem itself from the current stupor, because we are blessed with talented young people who will find their way eventually, and that we are having this discourse means that we’re aware that there’s a problem.
I was fortunate to have lived and was young and impressionable when Forbes Burnham insisted on the development of the creative imagery of the Guyanese Identity, producing the indulgence of self from Harold Bascom, Basil and Angold Thompson, Nauth, Shurey, Bernadette Persaud and many others, administrators like Olga Britton, Oswald Kendall, the late Billy Pilgrim and Derrick Bernard all supplemented the atmosphere then. I must include that with the collaboration of GGMC, I was able to publish a twenty year old project ‘The illustrated History of The Porkknockers’ in 2009 . A foreign Company, that wished and still wishes to remain anonymous, presented me with a cheque of appreciation after the launching of that project.
To chide Halloween’s incursion into the Guyanese psyche or any other product of the foreign Cultural Industries is petulant in the absence of just whining and not lifting a finger towards the emergence of our own. Those people worked hard to create their thing. We’ve got to keep banging at our parliamentarians to enforce that rehabilitating the State approach towards the Arts is as important as the Procurement Commission, in its capacity for the development of Cultural Industries. I’ll close by repeating what Akon said when a local reporter asked him the rhetorical ‘Stock question’ “ what advice he had for the local youth ?” he replied, “ I’m from Africa and you’re here; – in the Americas.” I never knew if any one understood what the brother was implying.
Barrington Braithwaite

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Some other insights about the creative industry in Guyana

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