COPYRIGHT as a human right has eluded Guyana for decades, with obsolete laws on even the registration of trademarks; we are flagging the tails of all of CARICOM, South America and the rest of the world.

Guyana has always produced the talents and budding skills to equip that functioning niche platform that the modern world describes as ‘Cultural Industries,’ to fill a creative space of its own, but sadly in this respect, we conform to the cryptic statement “That the best ideas lie resting in the cemetery” in reference to those who remain in Guyana. When I say the rest of the world, I also include Russia and China. Guyana is no longer locked away in a time zone of its own making in response to the impact of negative world trends, we either assume a cultural mind-frame that emerges from within our deeper experience, or are shaped into a grotesque skin-teeth clone that is an extension of the crumbs of ‘conspicuous consumption’ on the solitary altar of ultimate idolatry, before which the clone will lie prostrate. Surprisingly there has been a fervent anti-copyright and cultural industries lobby, which revealed the vacuum of understanding its reality and cluelessness about its potential, as well as contempt for the innovative minds within our borders.

The world is changing before us, faster than we can assimilate, probably because we were farther behind. However, people resist the ebb and flow of the currents of the times. So, I want to bring forward this article which I found seriously inconsistent. It was in a column I don’t like to read because I’m impatient and a little contemptuous of writers who hide behind pseudonyms of any kind, but it was a musician who told me to read it, since I had the paper: Kaieteur News June 14, 2016, Peeping Tom, the cluelessness hit me when the writer mentioned that, “ In other words, cultural policies (should be Industries) are about creating economic industries out of culture, it is a new phase in capitalism. The tentacles of capitalism are now reaching into tourism, entertainment and the environment.” I was flabbergasted that someone with the ability to construct an article did not realise that “Entertainment”-‘ Edutainment’, ‘ the Movie Industry’, ‘The publishing industry’ ‘Comic Books, the Video Games’, ‘Toys’, ‘labelled clothing and other merchandise, ’ are all cultural industries. Then the writer concluded that Guyana has no ‘National Culture.’ This was even more ridiculous, so what this writer was implying is that: over 100 folk songs and over 100 national songs, our history and our folklore, the reasons for our village days, our efforts to imitate Ram John Holder as we sing our folk songs, our national monuments and much, much more- none of this exists? Wrong.

All that I have mentioned are the treasures of our national culture. The national culture is what the inspiration of this land has inspired us to create about it here, to bind our souls to its aesthetics. When Walter Mac. A. Lawrence wrote ‘My Guyana Eldorado’ and R. C. G. Potter put it into music; they embodied the essence of the Guyanese culture and its imagination.

I can only presume that, that writer is oblivious of the topic it addressed, out of some fear or personal apprehension, because had there been interest, they would have read Odeen Ishmael’s groundbreaking article and warning in Kaieteur News Sun, Dec. 06 2009 “ Cultural Industries growing in significance in Latin America and the Caribbean.” But let me overindulge through a suggestive scenario as follows. If a writer can produce a script about British Guiana in the 60s around Jack Mellow and his Vaudeville acts at the cinemas, with the backdrop of Steel Pan in Federation Yard. A story enveloping hectic life in this forgotten recent era of our history with Guyanese music composed by modern Guyanese musicians capturing the rhythms of that day, make it a competition between young British soldiers and South Hampton youths vying for recognition before the life trophies young men hold sacred. Find a way to do include some Bill Rogers, licensing, employing, and exploring the entertainment markets wherever Guyanese and Caribbean folk are. That is cultural industries at work.

To disallow the legal platform towards this kind of creative liberation and potential is retrogressive; incidentally, this is a project that I have had in mind for some time. Copyright will be useful to the small man but will be worrisome to those who have invested in the media business with intentions to use the IPRs of creative person’s without licence or royalty arrangements- in other words as ‘Pirates, as thiefman’. Persons who lack the means for litigation here and more important with local laws that will make the process an act of principle rather than receiving a justifiable court reward. However, since broadcasting on social media places violators in international space and on American airwaves, this might support legal opportunities for contenders from that end, that Guyana denies its creative people at this end.
All in all, the question of the rights and empowerment of creative persons will rest with their capacity to lobby, engage, and positively enable their livelihoods as citizens. Trust my judgement, the creative people here have a tremendous contribution to offer. Next week, on local support.