H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – The Island in the Sun is a little bluer

Apr 27, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – It takes a special individual to stand against the odds, to battle with time, to rage against circumstances, in a laborious quest for justice. For his people. In his own time. Against his own personal progress and possible prosperity. Harry Belafonte was such a man. He fought the good fight, and he never letup in his heart, never gave up place as part of what was an endless struggle for equity, for dignity. The struggle is as newborn as the first day, and it continues to this day, with a need, a demand, a call, for all the energies, all the convictions that can be found and marshalled so that others can be better.

“I see a woman on bended knee

Cutting cane for her family

I see men at the waterside

Casting nets at the surging tide…”

It was real then, and so still very real today. when no such thing should be. Thank you, Harry.

GHK Lall

Harry Belafonte was a prince among coloured men; men that look like me. A heroic figure of rare and raw stature. Like the impossible dreamer that he was all his life, and not just in song, he ran where the brave would shrink from going. Yes, he marched into the gates of hell for the righteous cause of his people. Black Americans. Black West Indians. The Black people by its widest definition, the broadest coloration that could be attached. I look closely at myself, and I don’t need a microscope. Though paler, I am like he, at least in colour. Lord, give me the heart to write what this giant of a man sang in such rhythmic, pulsating, enchanting lines about a place long trampled upon by the feet of invaders and conquerors for gold, then tobacco, then the sweet richness of sugar. Today, it is not out of the land but from under the sea. Today, it is for the solid, but the liquid. Gold in any form will bring them, and then people like Harry Belafonte take to song first, then their feet, and last to the street.

It was, and will continue to be, the fate of the man and woman of a less pale pigment of skin. It will be as he sang: “Where my people toiled since time begun.” Others took the easier, safer road. Not Harry. He was one of the last of those politically incorrect, unseemly, untimely, uncivil, unwelcomed, and unstoppable voices and hearts, who dared to say: this is wrong, and let it be damned. It would be a source of great personal joy to encounter a few with the same indomitable spirit and will along the way over here; on this mainland that is so insular and singular in its individual docility, its national fragility.

Where a Harry Belafonte would have reared to his fullest height and screamed to the ramparts of heaven, here we have those only too willing, and pleased with themselves, to grovel, and gore the next fellow, to get at the grounds disdainfully cast their way. What happened to that kind of Guyanese man of fire and iron? How and why did he fold into such an ignominious heap lacking in self-respect, some sliver of sturdy, fearless, honest character? The fearlessness and honesty to speak to the plight of his peers, the sum of his suffering people and their wrenching pathos; yeah, what happened to that kind of Cuffy and Critchlow and Cheddi?

The tireless toiling at the thankless was the life Harry Belafonte embraced for himself. It was cherished, one he would not exchange for all the ballrooms and cocktails and civilized conversations. The man was a true warrior, and to the marrow. In song and the strongness of his ever-brimming passions and convictions, he was torch singer to the bitter experiences of the underdogs, those dealt with as dogs; and a torch bearer for the poor, the voiceless, the downtrodden, the lost, the lonely of hope, and the ones empty of sinew, faith.

It would be remarkable, a real gamechanger, if we could we have a small handful of Guyanese here who would be proud to bear that load. Only those few would make a difference, of that, I am sure. Most grievously, even those few, that small, cupped hand, Guyana cannot find among its sons and daughters. For them the fake light of paternalistic approval, for them the artificial smile of welcome. When our loud and our proud, Guyana’s diluted cream of diminished upstanding, thrill to be in the company of exploiters and enrichers, then there will always be the call and cry for a Harry Belafonte. He usually comes from beyond the horizon. Regrettably Harry, the day has come, but there will still be singing of those calypso songs so loved. They have them in the singer’s and fighter’s arcadia where headed. This is less of a Jamaica farewell, and more of a Guyanese one. So long, and thanks for the songs, and the life of courage lived in exemplary fashion. Today, the Island in the Sun is a little bluer, a shade dimmer, slightly cooler.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)