IT IS seldom realized that though art enriches, it also enslaves, and then it redeems. We celebrate, in the season of Christmas, the time-space of a Mystic Sage from Nazareth, His birth and life. If His biographers are correct, then He is indeed a tremendous soul. He defied age-long traditions and sacred sects; He touted the egalitarian state, challenging who is without sin; and today an entire religion is ascribed to this Man, who declared we are all children of God.

His name was Jesus. By His wisdom and gifts, He became the “Christ.”
In Khemet [Egypt], where His parents had returned, as the scriptures say, on the instructions of an Angel, there He was schooled in their mystery systems; and in Khemet, they would have called Him Maa Kheru , which meant ‘made true the voice’ [word] of the cosmic law giver, the Goddess Maat.

He changed the ancient world as no other did, His gospel influenced Ethiopia and Kush long before it was embraced by Rome. His mother, Mary, and His countrymen did not look like, and so how did the world arrive at, the portraits of Christ now accepted?

It took the sponsorship of a colonising new religion, Roman Catholicism, in the Mediaeval age, which adopted Jesus the “Christ” and His ministry, with some additions, as their state religion to harness the incredible artistic talents of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and many others to construct epic romantic graphics to tell a distorted and fantastic story in art to an illiterate population.

But the Renaissance, as that period in European history is called, was also political. It constituted the indoctrination to remove the eclipsing influence of the Moors and Islam on European culture and Christianity, rejecting all that reminded them of the 800 years of Moorish influence, including their African ethnicity, thus the necessity of the art of the Renaissance.

This is the art that continues to enthrall the educated world of today with its standards and hypnotic imagery, art that is now woven into the tapestry of our human story. This paragraph is a narrative of art under the instruction of Politics, Religion, and the ambitions of Empire, fulfilling the task as a master secret weapon.

Recently, I mourned the attack in France directed at the publishing house whose cartoons depicted the Prophet Mohammed in a derogatory way. I couldn’t justify the violence, because two can play that propaganda game; and with the hardware the groups that claimed sponsorship for that bastardly act have, they can publish a major response.

Then, as an Afro–Guyanese, I know that there have been no other variations of the human species whose image, culture and spirituality have been maligned more by every medium that is artistically available over the last three hundred years in the colonising western world. And aspects still persist today, just pick up a children’s story of the Bible, of Egypt, the History of the World, and even respected journals, and it’s there — artistic fiction for those who can see. The problem is that seeing and wanting to fix it is not alone enough of a force, for that’s where the other business of finance steps in.

To put it bluntly, a nation that ignores the importance of its arts will not survive within its sovereign self for too long. Forbes Burnham understood that. Let’s flash back a little to a pivotal experience. I was at Kuru Kuru College in its formative years when, because we were sleeping on “jackasses” [not the animal], my fellow pioneers [not GNS] implored the barrack room artist to compose a protest so we can have beds. After all, we were human, and I eagerly complied.
We lodged it at the office of the Principal, Mr. Basil Armstrong. The beds and mattresses came, delivered by Mr Haynes himself, the Minister of Cooperatives. Months passed, then finally, in 1973, the Co-op College was opened. The Prime Minister, Mr Burnham, opened it. We were gathered there but weren’t necessarily listening to his speech, until he asked about the artist who had forced his government to buy beds for us.
I wanted to sink into the sand. Gordon, “Pointer,” Tilak, Bamfield — my buddies — gave me up, so I stood as this towering man spoke. I heard nothing. The only part I remembered was when he said: “Tell the story of our heroes with your talent.” I replied, “Yes, Sir.” He corrected me that I was his comrade; comrade, as in socialist comrade. That philosophy didn’t essentially succeed in Guyana, but it did allow the state to remove certain important social fetters and barriers.

What Prime Minister Burnham did back then was to jolt me and numerous others into the reality of questioning who our heroes are. That was the first question I asked the late Skipper Gordon, who managed us, that evening. He had answers about past events I had never heard about or, in some cases, had heard but had not paid attention to.

We were in a comfortable imported cultural vacuum with some attractive glimpses of ourselves, like Quamina’s “Tides of Susanburg” and James Sydney’s radio narration of Edgar Mittelholzer’s “My Bones and my Flute.” They were great radio dramas, but were not packaged for export or for ingestion by the wider public consciousness. The most direct artistic secret weapon, to my memory, were the first comic books given out freely in Guyana from my boyhood days, political comic books distributed by the United Force, showing the said Evils of Communism. Classic Cold War stuff, they painted a most grim picture. Just read the artwork of armed Russian troops monitoring everything, from poll stations to conversations.

Communism was illustrated as a gruesome development to the young and not-so-young minds that absorbed those comics. They were aggressive. Art also served negative industry. Camel cigarettes, with their devastating health implications, were graphically marketed to an unsuspecting world. But the arts are also vehicles for social change. The play-turned-movie, “To Kill a mocking bird”, as well as the short-lived anti-racist comics that evolved after WW2 in the USA, are excellent examples.

We will soon be celebrating our 50th independence anniversary. Key figures of this administration understand where we need to go in this context. The resurfacing of the independent local arts will occur, for the talent pool is there. The new digital world is upon us; we’ll discuss its implications next week.