Dear Editor,

MY association with Dave Martins goes as far back as the 1980s, and it was through theatre and not music.

It is a creative side of him that is seldom recognised, so I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without hailing him as a writer of two of our most outstanding local musicals, and his work in the theatre.
In 1988, Guyana celebrated 150 years of the abolition of slavery and indentureship.

The Guyana Commemoration Commission was created to organise the celebration of this major milestone. Artists came from Africa and India to join with Guyanese to celebrate the occasion. Dave was commissioned to write a musical for this event.

Dave spent endless hours in our libraries, researching and writing. In the end, the musical, ‘Raise Up’ was never staged by the Commission without explanation.
Dave called Ron Robinson (Ron and I were running The Theatre Co. at the time) from the Cayman Islands in early 1989, asking us (The Theatre Company) whether we would be interested in staging the play.
We jumped at the wonderful opportunity to stage this musical production. We immediately sought and received permission from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports to stage the play. The production premiered at the National Cultural Centre on November 25, 1989 for seven performances, including two matinees. It was well attended.

Sir Shridat Ramphal, who attended the performance, had recommended that the play be staged at the opening of the Heads of Government meeting that was due to take place in Africa a few weeks later. This, unfortunately, never happened.

The Theatre Company then decided to take “Raise Up” on a one-month tour of the Cayman Islands and the USA, performing at 10 venues at universities and other theatre spaces in Miami, Mississippi, Virgina, Washington, Michigan and New York.

The Mayor named the day we performed in Brooklyn, New York ‘Raise Up’ Day. We were invited and performed an excerpt of the play on ‘Nine Broadcast Plaza”, a television programme.
In 2006, for Guyana’s 40th Independence Anniversary, Major General Joe Singh, CEO of GTT at the time, proposed sponsoring the staging of a historical production for the occasion. The late Billy Pilgrim was asked, and was, of course, delighted to write this musical, but ill health prevented him from doing so, and Dave was approached and agreed to do so.

The musical which Dave called, “ALL IN WAN”, premiered at the National Cultural Centre on May 26, 2006 for four performances. The musical was produced by GEMS Theatre Productions, directed by Ron Robinson, with Dave as musical director. It was an epic production, with a cast of 100-plus artists, including Keith Waite and Terry Gajraj, who came to Guyana for the occasion.

In my view, this musical is more than worthy of being produced again for staging at the National Cultural Centre. I recalled inviting Dave to Guyana on two further occasions to perform his unique style of singing and story-telling at the Accountants Conference meeting in 2005, held at the Princess Hotel, and for a pre-CARIFESTA event at the Theatre Guild in 2008.

When we performed ‘Raise up” in Grand Cayman and concluded the final performance after the 10-city US tour, we had comprehensive discussions on the Link Show, a satirical review which we started in Guyana in 1981. He was very keen, and a year later, he started “Rundown” (the Cayman satirical show) at the Harquail Centre, in George Town, Grand Cayman, where he wrote from 1991-2008 until he moved to Guyana.

He was also Chairman of the Cayman National Foundation, and chaired the annual event, ‘Pirates Week’, in that country.

In summing up, Dave was much more than a calypso singer. He was a songwriter, singer, musician, playwright, educator, and entertainer par excellence.

Sincerely,
Gem Madhoo
GEMS Theatre Productions