A THANKSGIVING service for the life of former businessman and international sports and entertainment promoter, Mr. Cyril Shaw, also called Barbar Ali Shah was held, on Tuesday, in the foyer of the National Cultural Centre, Homestretch Avenue, Georgetown. Joining bereaved family members and friends in paying their last respects to the cultural icon with a reputation for having ‘put Guyana on the map’, was Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, as well as professional acquaintances whose lives Shaw had touched in diverse ways.
Shaw, who died on January 12, a few weeks short of his 90th birthday, was a successful businessman in his time and had established a reputation across Guyana and the Caribbean, receiving several awards for his contribution to the development of the music industry.
As an entrepreneur, he promoted the world’s best performers and was an active supporter and promoter of Guyanese sports, especially boxing, matching Guyanese boxers with world-class counterparts.
With many moving tributes articulated in his honour, Shaw was remembered as a loving and caring father, respected family man and a successful businessman. He was lauded as a pioneer in show business who “made his mark” and an indelible contribution to Guyanese cultural life and, more importantly, the development of the calypso as a performing art.
He received several awards for contributing to the development of the music industry.
Shaw was also the owner of Arcade Printery on Wellington Street,  also in the city and the manager of the Mighty Sparrow for 50 years.
Giving an account of a wonderful and impacting life lived by her father, Dr. Seeta Shah Roath eulogised the man who had introduced Sparrow to calypso, as having spent some 60 years of his life promoting the stars from across the globe.

CREATED DREAMS
“He created dreams and made them a reality. He was not bound by borders.  The globe was his home.  He gave Guyana the first circus, first international boxing matches, first international Beauty Queen shows, fairs, coney islands,” she recalled.
He was praised for having raised the standard of the performing arts and the expectation of the Guyanese public when he brought international performers, such as Brook Benton, Johnny Mathis, the Moscow Music Hall, the American Ballet Theatre, the Japanese Spectacular, African Odyssey, Mahalia Jackson, Miriam Makeba, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Cliff, Percy Sledge,  Johnny Nash, the Blues Busters and Boris Gardner, among others, to Guyana.
The boxers he promoted included Ingemar Johansson and local heroes such as Lennox Beckles and Lennox Blackmoore.
Remembering that her father promoted calypso in every part of then British Guiana and throughout the Caribbean, between the 1940s and the 1960s, his proud daughter spoke of the wonderful interactions he had with local singers Lord Canary, King Fighter, Mighty Intruder, Contender, Lady Guymine and others.
Attesting to this, Canary, in his tribute, reminded of his first audition with Shaw in the 1950s, at the Globe Cinema as he aspired to make his way into his first national competition. The standards set were high and Shaw was a stickler for excellence, but the singer said he made it under his tutelage.
The attendance by calypsonians and other members of the music fraternity on the occasion spoke volumes and the sympathisers included veteran journalists Allan Fenty and Adam Harris; Master of Ceremonies Winfield James; The Mighty Rebel; Singing Lurlene and Eze Rockliffe of The Yoruba Singers.
Other tributes included a mesmerising duet rendered by staff of the NCC and reflections by Shaw’s grandson, Mikhail Shaw.

INTRODUCED ONE
Shaw’s love for and contribution to music caused him to work tirelessly, mobilising and galvanising for the promotion of calypso in the West Indies. As his daughter said: “Where there wasn’t a calypso contest in one of these countries, he introduced one.”
His accomplishments led the Mighty Sparrow to describe his input as incomparable in the international music world.
Ironically, during his teens, Shaw, who hailed from the Essequibo Coast, was in training to become a Roman Catholic priest and was a seminarian. However, he was taken out of the seminary and entered the world of work.
Later, in Georgetown, he took up a job at the Astor Cinema where he designed and published advertisements in the national dailies – the Argosy, the Guyana Graphic and the Evening Post. That was but his induction to a bright and promising career in the printing business and he set up the Arcade Printery on Bentick Street, later relocating to Wellington Street.
In the pre-independence era, he commenced printing the People’s Progressive Party newspaper ‘Thunder’.
Said his daughter:“We all agree that he lived a full life. His work, his calypsonians, his boxers, his printery, were the main focus of his life.  For many, he was a role model; for others, a business partner.  Growing up, it always seemed that he had a circle of people orbiting around him wherever he went. Yet, he seemed to stand out as a single person, not giving fully of himself.”
A wonderful husband and father who kept the family solidly welded together in love, through the years, breathed his last on January 12, leaving to mourn, his wife Mrs. Bhanmattee Shaw, 14 children, 30 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.
His body was interred at Adventure Sand Cemetery, on The Essequibo Coast, following a period of viewing at his home in Adventure Village earlier in the day.