– A CULTURAL MOSAIC OF AUTHENTICATED HISTORIES OF THE PEOPLES

Though I’d promised to talk about Baracara Village, a historic maroon settlement and a potential heritage site and a tourist destination this week, I’ve been given pause.In her Arts & Culture column in last Sunday Chronicle’s Pepperpot, Dominique Hunter concluded a four part series entitled “Points of Departure” in which she explored ideas related to “The politics of shaping a cultural identity”. For me, her piece was evocative, recalling a time 50 years ago when I was more concerned with bringing fashion news home from London, Paris, and Rome via the catwalks of the Dusseldorf Fashion Fair and the haute couture of Carnaby Street in Soho, Central London, even while providing publicity for our local designers including Lloyd Lawrence, and George Morrison on my weekly Petticoat Page.
That was before I was led away from my interest in fashion by the compelling combination of marriage to Julian Mayfield, a Senior Special Political Advisor to President Forbes Burnham, and the stimulus of the Burnham Feed House and Clothe the Nation by 1976 epoch.
Dominique Hunter’s piece began with historian Vere T Daly’s challenge to the new nation’s artists in June 1966, less than a month after our first Independence celebrations: “Can our writers and artists live up to Burnham’s dreams?”
Daly said: “Mr Burnham communicated to us what he called his dream – Burnham’s Dream. It was the very blueprint which the pragmatic limitations of the artists had made them fail to conjure.
Mr Burnham said:

• I dream of literature inspired by the peculiar temperament of the West Indian artist
• I dream of paintings inspired by the tropical jungle of Guyana and the beautiful waters of the Caribbean
• I dream of sculptures depicting the forms of our forefathers
• I dream of research in art forms, of artists being capable of borrowing from the Europeans without slavishly imitating them

This is the Burnham vision that motivated the creation of the Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts…inspired Philip Moore to produce our Cuffy National Monument.
From Daly’s historian POV, ”the artists did not appear to have in their minds any clear image of the Caribbean – Guyanese personality which, by right of their genius, it is their job to fashion” (emphasis mine); the cultural expressions in 1966 were a “staggering tonnage of pointless inanities”, he said.

The question: “CAN OUR WRITERS AND ARTISTS LIVE UP TO BURNHAM’S DREAMS” is as relevant as it was in 1966; perhaps because fifty years later, “pragmatic limitations” – the day to day economic anxieties – what to eat, where to live, how to pay the bills – still blur our vision of the role we should be playing in creation of an authentic Guyanese/”Caribbean personality with the creative arts at its foundation”. Discussing Burnham’s Dream since 1966, the historian said: “The statesman stole the artists’ thunder.”
At the same time Daly confessed: “The Prime Minister, Mr Burnham, surprised me at the sharpness and clarity of his vision of the personality which should be fashioned”. Like Daly, I believe that the role of creating an authentic Guyanese identity is definitely in the purview of practitioners of the Arts.
In a recent summary of the essential concept of Yukuriba Creative Farming Community the contemporary interpretation of such “pragmatic limitations” facing our artists was described thus:
“At present in Guyana, there is a dearth of quality creative/cultural works for stage and TV; many of the country’s naturally talented youth are eager to give expression to their creativity. However, they are marginalized and discriminated against in terms of financial sponsorship and capital funding generally. Consequently, many are homeless, penniless; desperate for a reprieve from the humiliating prospect of stomping the pavements of the city with a begging bowl held out to sponsors who pay exorbitant sums to import foreign performers, in preference to encouraging and taking advantage of a burgeoning local talent resource. It is the opinion of YCFC members & Associates that this prevailing disrespect for the value of home grown artistic contribution is contributing to an overall lowering of standards. For example, many creative and performing artists are forced to compromise their talents, regurgitating the kind of mediocrity that thrives on sensationalism and elicits cheap laughs from masses of uneducated theatre audiences. This level of production is more likely to get the nod from sponsors, rather than any work of substance, with a serious message. This situation is unacceptable”.
In her well researched piece, Ms. Hunter also quoted an A.J. Seymour cultural policy proposal published by UNESCO in 1977, in which the poet stated inter alia –
“the revolution cannot sustain its momentum without an ever deepening apprehension of national identity. For artists of Guyana, the revelation of a national identity is the most revolutionary possibility that exists. The Guyana man has to re-create himself in his own image as an indispensable basis on which to realize the image of a national identity.”
I see Seymour’s “revelation of a national identity” as the depiction of a cultural mosaic – unique, clearly defined identities based on the authenticated histories of Guyanese men and women re-creating ourselves in our “own image” even while freeing ourselves from the mental slavery of our colonial past .
Academic research and creative analysis were refreshingly combined in Dominique Hunter’s thought-provoking piece was recalling the time which shaped who I am today. In the early 1980’s less than two decades after Forbes Burnham, Father of Guyanese Nationhood (any other claim is false), had communicated The Burnham Dream, I’d made my way to Yukuriba Heights to dream as President Burnham did, of a vibrant Artists’ community; till now, thirty years after that, we’re creating The Maroon Sculpture Trail, first of its kind in the Caribbean.

The Maroon Sculpture Trail, to be created by artists of all ages and nationalities, invited to be a part of a memorial dedicated to the Maroons Of The Americas in this United Nations Designated Decade For People Of African Descent, is part of The Philip Moore Artists’ Retreat at the Yukuriba Creative Farming Community. It will bring together a unique collection of original permanent creations “sculptures depicting the forms of our forefathers” marrying art, history and conservation. Every sculpture along the trail will tell a story reflecting maroon life.
All of which brings me back to my own question addressed weeks ago in this column, “primarily to Guyanese historians, especially our President Brigadier David Granger, a historian himself: IS THERE A PEOBLEM ABOUT HOLDING A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT WHO REALLY WERE THE FIRST GUYANESE?
Is it possible that this could be a disquieting aspect of “The politics of shaping a cultural identity”?