Guyana courts Venezuela to help transform local music vista
GUYANA IS seeking to establish, within the music industry, a scheme that would give youths the opportunity to further their careers in music, even if they are financially incapable of doing so.
This is according to Minister of Culture Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony during an interview with the Guyana Chronicle Friday at his Main Street office.
The proposed initiative, he said, would not only benefit persons in the field of music, but also work well in terms of national development.
Describing the venture as a step in the right direction, since there are a lot of persons that have shown interest in learning music, Dr Anthony said no time will be wasted in pursuing the project.
“We want to develop a system (which is) similar to what the Venezuelans have,” he said. “They have a youth orchestra system … What they have in that country is a lot of poor communities have children being offered an opportunity to play an instrument, and many of them have gone on to playing classical music at the highest level, because they were trained to do so.”
Dr. Anthony is optimistic that once this initiative is rolled out, it will bring about an excellent transformation of music in Guyana. “We have been talking to Venezuela to get some help on how we can develop something similar in Guyana … We want to roll out something similar to this, because there are tremendous benefits that can come from learning to play an instrument, and we really see this roll-out as helping in that direction,” he stated.
The minister said that, already, works have begun, and those works are geared towards accomplishing the ministry’s goal of fulfilling the dreams of young musicians. He said that, so far, the school has already been constructed, and a curriculum has been established, among other things.
“We started the music school; we have a physical building; and we have a number of music teachers employed by the Ministry, and they are offering several specific curriculum at the schools … We want people to do both theory and practice, and we have worked out a curriculum for this,” he said.
He pointed out that the syllabus is one that was worked out by the Guyana Music Teachers Association, and took approximately two years to be completed.
He said persons will not only be given an opportunity to do music here, but will be eligible to sit an examination that is being validated externally.
Minster Anthony said that the Ministry not only wants to do a small part for these children, but everything will be done to ensure that students who have completed their courses are certified.
“We want people to be certified when they pass through this school; to be properly accredited. So, we will be training people to do the external exams that are currently being offered in music,” he said.
He explained: “There are two things: One, you have an external exam that you write. If somebody does music in Guyana, they will write this external examination; so we have trained our people to be able to do that, so it will be externally validated. Later we will work on our own standards, and once that is acceptable, they can do both.”
In addition, he noted, tuition will be free of cost, and very shortly, the Ministry will be doing advertisements for persons to enroll into the school.
“We have the building, we have the instruments, we have the teachers, we have everything, and we have the curriculum; and in the new year, we will advertise for students to come to our school,” Anthony noted.
Minster Anthony said that while that is happening, there is also the National Steel Orchestra, the National School of Dance, and the Burrowes School of Arts, all of which continue to attract a number of young people every year.
He pointed out that Guyana continues to move in the direction of developing the youths of Guyana, through many interventions that are undertaken by the government.