ZIGGY Marley, the son of Bob Marley, may have been stingy with the truth when he said that they tried Jamaica but couldn’t find an actor suitable to play his father in the biopic of Bob Marley.

Ziggy simply could not have said publicly that they couldn’t find someone from the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) to play Marley because the MCC is no longer in theatre and music in the CARICOM countries today.

The brutal fact is the MCC which pioneered theatre, through the encouragement of the colonial administration in the British West Indies (BWI), went out of theatre after Independence, and the accession to power of local politicians, most of whom were not of light complexion and were from working class and trade union background.

It was the same with music. The Merrymen in Barbados, Tradewinds in Guyana and string bands in Guyana in the 1960s were from the MCC.

The history of theatre in the former BWI is the story of the shifting cultural preferences of the MCC based on class snobbery. The nations in the post-colonial Caribbean did not follow identical class evolution. In Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua, the MCC had substantial state power, a configuration that differed significantly in Guyana, Grenada, Trinidad and the Bahamas.

In Guyana and Trinidad this was due to the large presence of a non-Christian Indian middle class that challenged the MCC for state power. In Grenada, the ruling party was essentially a multi-class affair with elements from the peasantry, proletariat and middle class. In Grenada the MCC influence was tiny. The Bahamas was the only country in the British West Indies where the MCC’s hold on political parties was not dominant.

Theatre was made functional in the BWI by the colonial administration. In the case of Guyana, the Booker plantocracy pioneered theatre. An excellent work on how the colonial administration and the MCC in Guyana started theatre has been done by a White administrator of Bookers, Frank Thomassen. The book is entitled, “A History of Theatre in Guyana: 1800-2000.”

Thomassen did not employ class analysis in his book but this voluminous study is very rich on the role of the MCC in theatre in Guyana. As class changes began in the ruling parties of the post-colonial Caribbean, the MCC began to move away from theatre and string band music.

In Jamaica, in the 1970s the two main rivals – JLP and PNP and in Barbados, the two giants – DLM and BLP began to lose their MCC domination with leaders coming into the hierarchy of their respective parties who were less light-complexioned. The case of PJ Patterson in Jamaica and Keith Rowley in Trinidad are perhaps the best examples. In Guyana, a radical class shift took place under President Burnham which alienated the MCC.

As political parties in the Caribbean began to undergo class transformation and with the strong possibility of Indian government in Guyana and Trinidad, the MCC began to lose its appetite for theatre because of the instincts of colour and class and basically opted out theatre, music and literature. Jamaican cinema could not find MCC actors for some of its outstanding movies beginning with Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” through to “Smile Orange”, Dancehall Queen”, and Third World Cop.”

As CARICOM nations began to experience class changes because of certain dynamics including: The global popularity of reggae from Jamaica; Jamaica’s experimentation with Manleyite socialism; an attempted military coup in Trinidad; a Muslim inspired takeover of the Trinidadian parliament; a Marxist revolution in Grenada; a military coup in Surinam; a semi-socialist autocracy in Guyana; and the American ideological influence of Black power, the West Indies began to experience class and colour shift in totality. People of dark complexion, though still from the middle class began to become more pronounced.

As a reaction to this, the MCC began to withdraw from theatre. The national dance schools in the big CARICOM territories consisted mostly of students who were certainly not of mixed race or light in complexion.

It was unthinkable for MCC personalities to want to remain in theatre and rub shoulders with the darker folks. In Guyana, political upheavals under Burnham and the murder of Walter Rodney saw a substantial number of MCC folks leaving for foreign lands.

As a consequence of these class changes in the Caribbean, the makers of the Marley biopic simply could not find an actor from theatre or cinema in Jamaica who had the complexion of Bob Marley who was half-White, half African. Long gone from the Caribbean are MCC actors in plays and films.

Perhaps the last successful episode of the MCC era was the Guyana- made movie “Mustard Bath” which starred a quintessential MCC personality – Dr. Alissa Trotz. If there is going to be another Guyanese film, with a Guyanese lead actor, the producers will have to accept dark skin.