Cultural policy in Guyana; Studies and documents on cultural ...

Cultural policy

in Guyana

A. J. Seymour

Studies and documents on cultural policies

In this series:

Cultural policy: a preliminmy study Cultural policy in the United Siutes, by Charles C. Mark Cultural rights as human rights Cultural policy in Japan, by Nobuya Shikaumi Some aspecta of French cultural policy, by the Studies and Research Department of the French

Cultural policy in Tunisia, by Raiik Said Culturalpolicy in Great Britain, by Michael Green and Michael Wilding, in consultation with

Cultural policy in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, by A. A. Zvorykin with the assistance of

cu~tura~policy in Czechoslovakia. by Miroslav Marek with the assistance of Milan Hromádka and

Culturalpolicy in liuly, a survey prepared under the auspices of the Italian National Commission

Culturalpolicy in Yugoslavia, by Stevan Majstorovi6 Cultural policy in Bulgaria, by Kostadine Popov Some aspecta of culturalpolicies in India, by Kapila Malik Vatsyayan Cultural policy in Cuba, by Lisandro Otero with the assistance of Francisco Martínez Hmojosa Culturalpolicy in Egypt. by Magdi Wahba Cultural policy in Finland, a study prepared under the auspices of the Finnish National Commission

Culturalpolicy in Sri Lanka. by H. H. Bandara Cultural policy in Nigeria, by T. A. Fasuyi Culturalpolicy in Iran, by Djamchid Behnam Cultural policy in Poland, by Stanislaw Witold Balicki, Jerzy Kossak and Miroslaw Zulawski Ths role of culture in leisure time in New Zealand, by Bernard W. Smyth Cultural policy in Israel, by Jozeph Michman Culturalpolicy in Senegal, by Mamadou Seyni M'Bengue Cultural policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, a study prepared under the auspices of the

Culturalpolicy in Indonesia, a study prepared by the staff of the Directorate-General of Culture,

Culturalpolicy in the Philippines, a study prepared under the auspices of the Unesco National

Culturalpolicy in Liberia, by Kenneth Y. Best Culturalpolicy in Hungary, a survey prepared under the auspices of the Hungarian National

The culturalpolicy of the UnitedRepublic of Tanzania, by L. A. Mbughuni Culturalpolicy in Kenya, by Kivuto Ndeti Culturalpolicy in Romania, by Ion Dodu Balan with the co-operation of the Directorates of the Council of Socialist Culture and Education

Culturalpolicy in the German Democratic Republic, by Hans Koch Cultural policy in Afghanistan, by Shafie Rahe1 Culturalpolicy in the Unired Republic of Cameroun, by J. C. Bahoken and Englebert Atangana Some aspects of cultural policy in Togo, by K. M. Aithnard Culturalpolicy in the Republic of Zaire, a study prepared under the direction of Dr Bokonga Ekanga

Cultural policy in Ghana, a study prepared by the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Education

Culturalpolicy in the Republic of Korea, by Kim Yersu Aspecta of Canadian cultural policy, by D. Paul Schafer Cultural policy in Costa Rica, by Samuel Rovinski Cultural policy in Guyana, by A. J. Seymour The serial numbering of titles in this series, the presentation of which has been modified, wan

Ministry of Culture

Richard Hoggart'

N. I. Golubtsove and E. I. Rabinovitch

Josef Chmust

for Unesco

for Unesco

German Commission for Unesco

Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia

Commission of the Philippines

Commission for Unesco

Botombele

and Culture, Accra

discontinued with the volume Cultural policy in Italy

Published in 1977 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 7 Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris Printed by Imprimerie des Presses Universitaires de France, Vendôme

ISBN 92-3-101511-7

Spanish edition: 92-3-301511-4

0 Unesco 1977 Printed in France

Preface

The purpose of this series is to show how cultural policies are planned and implemented in various Member States.

As cultures differ, so does the approach to them; it is for each Member State to determine its cultural policy and methods according to its own conception of culture, its socio-economic system, political ideology and technological development. However, the methods of cultural policy (like those of general development policy) have certain common problems; these are largely institutional, administrative and financial in nature, and the need has increasingly been stressed for exchanging experiences and information about them. This series, each issue of which follows as far as possible a similar pattern so as to make comparison easier, is mainly concerned with these technical aspects of cultural policy.

In general, the studies deal with the principles and methods of cultural policy, the evaluation of cultural needs, administrative structures and management, planning and financing, the organization of resources, legislation, budgeting, public and private institutions, cultural content in education, cultural autonomy and decentralization, the training of personnel, institutional infiastructures for meeting specific cultural needs, the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, institutions for the dissemination of the arts, international cultural co-operation and other related subjects.

The studies, which cover countries belonging to differing social and economic systems, geographical areas and levels of development, present therefore a wide variety of approaches and methods in cultural policy. Taken as a whole, they can provide guidelines to countries which have yet to establish cultural policies, while all countries, especially those seeking new formulations of such policies, can profit by the experience already gained.

This study was prepared for Unesco by Arthur James Seymour, who is Director of Creative Writing at the Institute of Creative Arts, the teaching arm of the National History and Arts Council of Guyana. He is

,

also the Deputy Chairman of the National History and Arts Council, the Chairman of the National Commission for the Acquisition, Preservation and Republication of Research Materials on Guyana and Deputy Chairman of the Guyana National Trust. A poet and an editor, he has published a number of volumes of prose and poetry, and has edited anthologies of poetry from Guyana and the Caribbean.

The opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unesco. ,

Acknowledgements

The author is responsible for the observations and judgements contained in this work, but he wishes to acknowledge the assistance, in the form of advice, discussion and material, received from the Minister of Information and Culture, Shirley Field-Ridley and a number of individuals. H e wishes specifically to thank the following colleagues for their assistance: Hutton Archer, Joel Benjamin, George Bumham, Lloyd Conway, Ken Corsbie, Carol Davis, Lynette Dolphin, David Ford, Olive King, Clarence Kirton, Agnes McMurdoch, Patrick Munroe, H. Payne, Bill Pilgrim, N. O. Poonai, Margo Singh, Brian Stuart-Young, Denis Williams and R. L. Young.

Contents

11 Foreword

14 Introduction

17 Trends in cultural policy

25 The cultural tradition

61 Prospects and recommendations

64 Appendix

Foreword

In Guyana the value of cultural approaches is fully appreciated and in the 1972-76 National Development Plan, a chapter was devoted to the importance of developing culture and sport as part of the battle for the mind (see Appendix).

Looking back over the cultural history of Guyana prior to independence, one can discern the persistence of the values of the immigrants brought to act as economic work machines. These values which can be considered as sub-cultures and which operated quite independently of the cultural patterns imposed by the colonial masters, were to be found in the kitchens of big houses and in small unpainted cottages in the free villages and on the plantations. Some of them proved to be survivals from the Middle Passage,l expressing themselves in family customs relating to birth, marriage and death, and the general pursuit of traditional African mysteries. These values were closely related to the sense of identity of the common folk and formed a strong undercurrent, sometimes at war with European and Christian values, hpt assimilating and being assimilated in a creolimtion of culture.

The Guyanese Government is understandably preoccupied with the battle on the economic front to improve the quality of life for the whole population, and the major planning and financial thrust goes towards the restructuring of the economy and the reshaping of the educational system inherited from the past that can make this possible. However, with the achievement of independence and the end of cultural manipulation has come a gradual recognition of the importance of these recessive values and it has been a feature of the government’s policy to adopt a course of action which will make the people fully aware of these elements and create images

1. The Middle Passage is the traditional name given to the heavy movement of ships carrying slaves across the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Caribbean during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

11

Foreword

of value, self-respect and self-worth to replace the images they had previously accepted.

In the movement of indentured labour from Asia and other parts of the world to Guyana, the survivals are more evident since the East Indians came with their religion and customs, but the Guyanese people are now finding their identity, and defining their national values.

One segment of this study is a summary historical description of the various cultural traditions existing in Guyana. These traditions are placed side by side and projected in accordance with the national goals enunciated for the country since independence.

The Unesco Intergovernmental Conference on Institutional, Admin- istrative and Financial Aspects of Cultural Policies, held in Venice from 24 August to 2 September 1970, provided the nucleus of a definition of the goals of cultural activity, basically designed to improve the quality of life of a people. Like other Third World countries, Guyana needs to introduce new technology into the economy to help bring the nation into the mainstream of the modern world, but is wary of the dangers of the illicit importation of values accompanying that technology which may undermine the sense of national identity. Like many young nations, Guyana has the paradox of a relatively sizeable land mass occupied by a small but growing population with roots in several disparate cultures. The struggle to achieve economic progress and to provide a better life for all is therefore accompanied by the need to maintain the balance between economic and social tensions while creating a national cultural personality capable of making history.

One of the legacies that the Guyanese people inherited was a legal system in which property was of more importance than people. There is obvious need for a new philosophy of law to shape the system in order to redress the injustices of the past; for example, to achieve equality of status for women, to remove the stigma of illegitimacy, and to guide the Guyanese in their relationships in order to remove any exploitative system and allow them to relate in a real sense one with another through the National Service, and through the operation of co-operatives.

Today, the face of the world has changed. The impositions of the past are now recognized for what they were-an intense form of cultural exploitation and humiliation which created images of inferiority in the minds of the subject peoples, discriminated against them and kept them unfulíilled, depressed and deprived of any spiritual development, and set one ethnic group against another, with those of AÇrican descent at the bottom of the social, economic and cultural scale.

If one were to attempt to catalogue these practices of cultural exploitation, one would find an interrelated framework of politics, economics, religion, education and mass media created by those who controlled Guyana and who established institutions to maintain this control. For example in religion, the missionaries were strongly antagonistic to many ofthe practices

12

Foreword

surviving from Africa, and legal limitations were imposed on the use of the drum and what was described as obeah. There was little respect accorded to the religious practices of the East Indians. Many immigrants’ children received no education at all, and the system provided for the emergence of clerks and labourers, with a very small minority gaining an adequate education. The cultural expression in music and drama reinforced the domination of the master class.

There was need therefore for a complete change in all aspects of the Guyanese way of life. A new series of values has been articulated, research is proceeding in the field of folk culture, art forms are being adapted by national pride. The National History and h t s Council has been established to extend and democratize Guyanese cultural forms, to develop a sense of historical awareness, to encourage the masquerade dances and the steel- band movement and to stimulate the national genius in each of the arts.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly stated the importance of the cultural revolution as an indispensable basis for the economic and political revol- utions. Guyanese society is still highly vulnerable to external forces, for example, the influences of pop music and films, and the intrusive power of the transnational corporations. As Guyanese citizens are trained overseas for the new positions available in society, their attitudes are sometimes influenced negatively by the values inculcated abroad. All these factors point to the importance of the government’s decision that a new international economic order must be established which will remove the present economic stranglehold and give effect to the new spirit of independence being expressed in Third World countries.

The formulation and the implementation of a policy require an explicit statement of principles and the institution of a network of relevant administrative and financial practices, and this short survey of the movement of historical forces and the identification of dynamic factors indicates that a national soul is born and is developing in Guyana, able to inspire the highest and deepest types of motivation. A cultural census will. provide the base of a deliberate, planned and sustained campaign to-increase the cultural content in education and to ensure participation by all the people.

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Introduction

The name Guyana traditionally means ‘the land of waters’. Some observers have claimed that the five Guyanas in history-Spanish (now part of Venezuela), British, Dutch (now Surinam), French and Portuguese (now part of Brazil)-constitute an island bounded respectively by the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon, the Rio Negro and the Orinoco.

The h s t Amerindian settlers are reputed to have come into Guyana at many points--from Peru via the tributaries of the Amazon, from the Caribbean and from along the Orinoco River system. There are still many groups within the national borders, each speaking his own tongue and possessing his own myths and legends-the Arawaks, the Caribs, the Acawaios, the Arecunas, the Macusi, the Wapishana, the Patamona, the Wei-Wei and the Warrau among the better known in Guyana. The rivers are the natural means of communication in Guyana and it is on the banks of one of them that the European peoples attempted to establish settlements. However, it was the Dutch who in 1621 first declared Essequibo a colony.

Fort Kykoveral is reported to have been the first site of Dutch settlement and the point of contact with the Amerindians, but with the establishment of plantations to grow sugar, cotton and coffee on the fertile riverain and coastal lands, slaves were brought from Africa, and Essequibo, Berbice and finally Demerara became part of the exploitative plantation system spreading from the bottom of North America to the top of Brazil. In the 17408, an enterprising Dutch administrator invited planters from Barbados to take up the virgin continental lands available and so set the scene for eventual British sovereignty early in the nineteenth century.

The annals of history record a succession of revolts and rebellions as the people sought by violence to change the system in which they found themselves. The slave rebellions of 1763 and 1823 are the most outstanding, but history records many disturbances in a pattern expressing the workers’ resentment and frustration.

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Introduction

With the emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s, the Afiicans refused to work on the sugar estates and alternative labour forces were brought from India, China and Madeira in systems of indenture. In this way, labour in Guyana fell into a series of manipulated stereotyped occupations and categories-the Amerindians in the forest, the Africans in village farming, the East Indians on sugar estates, the Chinese and Portuguese as shop- keepers and clerks, while other Europeans retained control of the administrative apparatus.

The administrative class exercised ingenuity in creating and main- taining hostility between one class of the exploited and another-African and Amerindian, Portuguese and African, and African and East Indian. On the other hand, the need to share goods and services, and the challenges of the environment created a similarity in approach to a Guyanese life-style.

In the 1950s, a political party representative of the young educated Guyanese of many groups and classes, and determined to improve the quality of life for all by breaking the power of the system, came to power under the first adult suffrage elections. In a short while, however, the Government of the United Kingdom suspended the Constitution and imposed direct rule; the political party was split into two left-wing groups. When independence was achieved in 1966, the new government moved to create a system of co-operative socialism and in 1970 the co-operative Republic of Guyana was established.

One major aim of the nation is to achieve national unity and to realize a quality of life reflecting the cultural richness of a people with diverse strands deriving from the Amerindians, Europeans, Africans, Indians and Ch' mese.

In a White Paper on Education Policy published in January 1968, the government set out its aims of producing in the shortest possible time, Guyanese with adequate skills to meet the national needs and of providing for the total development of each child, integrated into the Guyanese and Caribbean environment and working towards common national goals.

The citizen of the new republic was conceived as being loyal to Guyana; appreciating the value and dignity of all types of work; conscious of the importance of moral, ethical and spiritual values in human affairs; alert and alive to social change and dedicated to initiating and sustaining these changes in society for the benefit of all; questioning and sifting the heritage of the past to ensure the removal of barriers to human progress, irres- pective of ethnic origin, social background, religious convictions or political persuasions.

The government formulated a series of national goals as follows: to feed, clothe and house the people as soon as possible; to expand agriculture; to make an act of possession of the hinterland; to own and control the natural resources; to promote Caribbean relations leading towards the god of Caribbean federation; to adopt a non-aligned position and to support the liberation of oppressed peoples everywhere; to create an egalitarian

15

Introduction

society; to use the national philosophy of self reliance and the instrument of the co-operative selected by the government to build a better Guyana.

The combination of the concept of education with the concept of development is acknowledged to be the key process by which a socialist- oriented society will evolve.

Although compulsory primary education was instituted in Guyana in 1876, the legacy of the past was limited and restrictive. There was basic provision for education at the primary level, with a low priority in science education, inadequate provision for secondary education and no form of further education.

In Guyana, in September 1976, a decision was taken to introduce universal free education from nursery to university as part of the requirements in an egalitarian society and to allow the education system to respond sensitively to the nation’s developmental needs and to promote technical competence and the development of human resources.

Starting with nursery education, some of the main purposes of the system are to develop capacities and skills, support exploration and problem-solving, promote creativity, and help the student to function as a full member of society.

Secondary education is provided in courses of four, five or seven years’ duration in schools of varying types-the traditional grammar-type school, new secondary schools with original multilateral programmes, and community high schools with a technical/practical bias.

The technical education programme, in which a work-study approach is included, operates at secondary and tertiary levels and is closely adjusted to meeting national needs. Special emphasis is placed upon physical education, science, music and the arts (especially art and the dance).

The main purpose of the National Service scheme, planned as a mobilization of human resources to supplement the educational system, is to ensure that all Guyanese become aware of the new values of the independent society and understand the relationship between society and themselves; to provide additional training and development of skills in appropriate instances; to place emphasis on the practical approach in training and provide for the opportunity for on-the-job learning. At the same time National Service enables the government to bring under control the untapped resources of the hinterland in a planned and deliberate fashion.

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Trends in cultural policy

‘Cultural expressions must be encouraged. There cannot be a real political and/or economic revolution, nor can the Guyana man or the Guyana way of life be identified, unless there is a cultural revolution.

‘The cultural revolution is not cultural chauvin- ism, but just an expression of what we know, what we are familiar with, what we have experienced, regardless of the origin. It represents the will of a people to express their own way of life.’- Prime Minister L. F. S. Burnham (1975)

Among the Third World nations, one of the most important problems is that of defining a national identity as part of the ongoing process of survival and development. In Guyana, where traditionally cultural development has taken place on a voluntary basis, the administration is making a summary survey of the development of the arts and of the total cultural heritage, with a view to creating or strengthening the institutions which will improve the quality of life, establishing the administrative and financial framework, training the necessary personnel and making the necessary links with other countries and international bodies.

A cultural policy must be formulated against a background of the assessment of national goals and cultural needs and the availability of resources.

Historically, the forces that have shaped cultural development in Guyana can be described as economic, social and educational, and increasingly the government is deliberately making use of these forces to create the new Guyana man in his society.

The economic forces involved, in the first place, meeting the challenges of the environment, and creating a better quality of life for all the citizens

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of Guyana out of the surplus made available. In colonial days this surplus went abroad, but the government’s plan to feed, clothe and house the people is designed to give expression to the national philosophy of self- reliance, while conserving reserves of foreign exchange by banning certain imported foodstuffs and substituting materials produced in Guyana.

The government is also attempting to utilize the energies of the youth of the nation to make an act of possession of the hinterland. This is being undertaken partly through the medium of the Guyana National Service, and partly through hinterland development projects-for example, the Hydroelectric Power Scheme.

The co-operative has been selected by the government as the major instrument in economic change. This will enable the small man to place his savings at the disposal of the government for development purposes and also enable him to take part in decision-making in his co-operative group.

With regard to social forces, it should be remembered that throughout Guyanese history the elements of race, because of religion and language, have been factors which the master class manipulated so that they worked against unity. The African slaves were dispossessed of their tribal languages and had to learn Dutch or English in order to survive. With independence has come a desire to allow all submerged and recessive cultural forms-some surviving in comfah, obeah and other traditional religious mysteries-to find their own levels in the new society. With their articles of indenture, the Indians brought their own religion and cultural patterns based on religion, and they lived in reserves on sugar estates. The Chinese and the Portuguese, coming in small numbers, quickly left the sugar estates after the indenture period had ended, and integrated themselves into the general population in various occupations such as shopkeeping, selling groceries and laundering.

Since family life forms differ, especially among the Africans and Indians, social forces have tended to permit Guyanese to work together in a mixed employment pattern but to live separately. Games and clubs are mixed but intermarriage patterns have been slow to develop and this has been reinforced by the natural inclinations of groups to pursue separate types of work and employment in this pluralistic society.

Political factors form an important part of these social forces and are highly emotional. They have traditionally been used as a means of division under the British maxim ‘Divide and Rule’.

The historical pattern of colonial development up to 1966 meant the dominance of a European ruling group augmented by the support of white creole families and businesses; this led inevitably to individualism in politics. With the application of the Report of the Waddington Commission in 1950, there developed for the first time, as already stated, a system ofparty politics, and a highly organized group of educated eager young men captured power in 1953 under the short-lived Waddington Constitution. After the suspension of the Constitution and with manipulation by external forces,

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this party structure split into antagonistic African and Indian-dominated segments, a pattern that has pervaded Guyanese politics to the present day.

In addition to the economic and social forces there have been educational forces at work and politically alert observers are studying their inter- relationship in order to maximize their infhence in the direction of national unity. The function of education is always to prepare the members of the community to meet the challenges of the environment. The educational structure in Guyana is being refashioned to prepare the type of citizen required in the co-operative republic. The system inherited textbooks which were not focused upon the new needs and therefore must be replaced by new texts that focus upon knowledge of and pride in the country, that provide the new skills and attitudes needed for its development and seek to heal divisions among the ethnic groups. The examination structure is now being revised to give effect to these new goals and in the move towards regional co-operation and community, the Guyanese pattern of change will have to accommodate itself to another rhythm of regional educational consciousness.

Factors and principles in cultural policy

To ensure the creation of a national culture in which the best traditions and results of the existing culture will develop in accordance with the national goals, and with socialist principles, the following steps should be taken, as in other emerging countries: 1. The nation should make an inventory of its cultural heritage and its

artistic and historic wealth; this should include the protection of national monuments, of places known for their natural beauty or their artistic or historic value, and the inculcation of respect for the preservation and enhancement of the environment.

2. The country’s folk traditions and their artistic expression should be identified so that these may form a basis for the national cultural policy. Since there can be no system of individual patronage, they should receive encouragement at national level. (This would ensure that the folk element was represented in national forms of artistic expression.)

3. In order to raise the level of consciousness of the people in cultural matters and to prepare them for an improvement in the quality of life, the policy should initiate and develop a lifelong education in the arts, enhancing the cultural content in education; it should encourage the vocation for creation and the cultivation and appreciation of art in all its forms. Special attention should be paid to the development of the creative artist.

4. All forms of expression of art should therefore be encouraged which will reveal to the Guyanese, new aspects of beauty and truth that do not speak the language of repression, exploitation, vulgarity or mediocrity.

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5. All aspects of art and beauty existing in different parts of the world should be examined and brought into service to help develop a unified and viable Guyanese culture.

6. Cultural planning should be an integral part of the National Develop- ment Plan; it should include the ordered mobilization of resources of all kinds, especially human resources. Training should be included to improve the capacities of artists and cultural administrators.

7. Cultural planning should stimulate and encourage the participation of all in cultural development, so that the national culture is a genuine people’s culture, paying special attention to the development of indigenous art forms.

8. Special attention should be paid to subsidizing cultural participation by children and old people.

9. For the development of cultural appreciation and widespread activity, a dynamic use should be made of museums, architecture, art galleries and concert halls.

One main emphasis in the spread of culture should, in the terms of the Declaration of Sophia (an important policy statement of the ruling party, The Peoples’ National Congress (PNC)), stress ‘the value of the human being as part of a whole society’. The Guyanese citizen must be helped to view himself as a being of value, and the images of self-doubt, lack of worth and lack of dignity that are residual in his mind, formed there from the background of slavery and indenture, must be removed and replaced by images of value, self-worth and dignity. This value of the human being is a cultural extension of the national goal of creating an egalitarian society with equality of opportunity for all, including the handicapped, the poor and the disadvantaged, while removing exploitation and treating all people with human respect.

The ruling PNC Party has decided upon the establishment of a socialist society in which the profit motive is removed and the State controls all natural resources and the means of production. The replacement of the profit motive by the nationalist incentive of service should be accompanied by the emergence of a classless and egalitarian society albeit with functional superiors, but with the equal and intrinsic value of the citizen entrenched in all aspects of community life.

As stated before, in cultural terms, an egalitarian society presupposes a equal exposure of all to the universal values of the arts; the poor, the disadvantaged, the vulnerable woman and child, and the elderly must be accorded every opportunity and respect due to the human being. Tolerance, personal courtesy and mutual respect are ultimately enhanced by the government’s policy of regionalism which requires the demarcation of Guyana into a number of regional areas with a regional minister in charge of each, to co-ordinate total policy, accelerate remedial action and maintain a sensitive response to the assessment of regional needs in the improvement of the quality of life.

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To enable the National History and Arts Council to respond to the cultural needs of the regions, the Institute of Creative Arts was established with five departments in art, dance, drama, music and writing, supported by a unit engaged on research into folklore. The regional minister, advised by the Cultural Advisory Committee, will seek to identlfy the creative talents available in his region and seminars, workshops and national festivals are planned to help identify these new talents for further development.

As a corollary, it follows that artistic creativity must be encouraged in every way.

In Third World terms, creativity emerges as one of the most valuable attributes to develop in the average citizen, since the capacity to make new and innovative responses to stimuli in the post-colonial period, to analyse old situations and to regroup and record the elements in terms of national goals and continuing cultural values, is urgently needed in the creation of the new institutions necessary for the improved quality of life.

In Guyana, the creative artist has the freedom to make his choice among the many styles and manners of expression open to him, both in the region and elsewhere, and this leads to a spontaneous variety of artistic creation which is likely to persist as the national identity strengthens. Because of the historical past, and the diminution or removal of erstwhile dominant, imported cultural values, the major cultural asset lies in the people themselves, and in the strength of the folk traditions that have survived to the present day.

Following the Unesco debition of culture as an improvement in the quality of life for the general population, the cultural policy emerging in Guyana will be formulated to promote the use of institutions of culture to encourage mass cultural participation and appreciation. This will be organized through the use of museums and libraries, the formation of choirs, the production of books, the extension of radio education, the perservation of village ceremonies and festivities and the development of co-operative attitudes towards elderly people and other disadvantaged sections of the population.

All Third World peoples are increasingly conscious of the problems of defining national identity in the modern world. These problems stem from a linkage of political, economic and cultural factors. The majority of these peoples have come to political sovereignty from under the shadow of a former imperialism, for example, British, French, German, Dutch or American. Gradually the leaders of the new nation realize that there is a close relationship between the three terms, independence, national sovereignty and cultural identity.

After the political euphoria has subsided, the national leaders begin to realize that the test of independence and the value of its achievement must be linked with an improvement in the quality of life of the mass of the people. The Third World nation has inherited, generally, an economic

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system which is tied to the production of raw materials, a poor educational system, often a poor health record, and certainly a strong sense of built-in inferiority. While struggling with the economic problems and restructuring the educational system, the national leaders become conscious of the value of a national identity in the cultural context, the fragile sense of being a distinctive people coming into existence, having special characteristics and attributes linked to the colonial past, but developing to the full the recessive qualities that had been rejected and despised. This consciousness of the value of cultural identity is part of the process of building the nation and is linked partly with improvement in the economic quality of life, and partly with transforming within the minds of the people their attitudes to themselves and the world.

At the same time, two associated problems emerge and loom large before the leaders of the country. First, because of the requirements of economic development, there is also a need for the transfer of technology from the more advanced nations, often on the terms dictated by those nations themselves, and sometimes by the former colonial masters, now wearing the hat of the donor-nation. Unless great care is taken, this transfer of technology will occur under the cloak of a disguised attempt at neo- colonialism and may be accompanied by an imposition of alien cultural values. The organs of the mass media may easily relapse into easy accept- ance of the former dominance of the imported product and the inferiority of the local article. The mass media wield a powerful force in the creation of self-images, and may retard the national growth of self-pride and self-value.

Secondly, the role of the multinational corporation is becoming more and more apparent as that of a nucleus of highly organized and concen- trated capital formation, with a power that renders it free of restriction and control in the land of its origins and in the lands of its operation. The multinational corporation, as the Proteus of the modern world, can also adopt an amazing variety of forms of penetration, through subsidiary companies in the most innocuous fields, thereby obtaining power over Third World economics and throttling economic and cultural development in many countries.

In the protection and development of this fragile sense of national cultural identity, the leaders of Third World countries are finding that there are two main agencies of power and support-the mass involvement of the people in understanding their cultural heritage and realizing that it is in themselves that the roots of their people’s culture will be found and, secondly, the role of the creative artist in capturing a vision of the emerging national soul of the people and mirroring that vision for the people to see themselves and to realize their personal and national worth.

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New institutions

In order to change attitudes inherited from the past, to restructure society in the republic and to mobilize all sections of the nation, the government is gradually establishing a framework of new institutions to support and accelerate the changes being made so that the new Guyanese man and woman may develop from the cultural point of view. These include the National Science Research Council, the National Commission for Unesco, the Insti- tute of Creative Arts and the National Cultural Centre. In the process of reorienting the nation, these institutions along with other organizations all play a co-ordinated part.

The Declaration of Sophia (14 December 1974) is the instrument which sets out the objectives of the restructured ruling party, the PNC, for example, dedication to co-operative socialism, the use of the co-operative as the little man’s institution, the production of goods and services for the use of the people, the establishment of an egalitarian society, positive attitudes towards work and the use of leisure, the social use of land and the control of all trade, the mobilization of all resources and the observance of a code of conduct for leaders and members.

NATIONAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

Created by Act of Parliament in 1974, the main function of the National Science Research Council is to advise the government on the application of science and research to problems of national importance and to ensure that the priority goals of the nation in science and technology are met, i.e. to assure the nation of an adequate supply of food, energy and materials, to increase efficiency, to conserve and improve the natural environment and to minimize pollution and contamination, to engage on experiments intended to improve the nation’s health, to increase the quality and range of training in all fields and to indicate means of improving the national systems of housing, communication and transportation.

The National Science Research Council has responsibility for pursuing international relationships in science, in collaboration with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Economic Development.

THE NATIONAL CULTURAL CENTRE

A National Cdtural Centre was opened in May 1976, with an auditorium- cum-theatre able to seat an audience of 2,200 persons. The stage 72 feet wide and 48 feet deep with a proscenium of 24 feet is recognized as the largest in the Anglo-Caribbean, and Guyana now possesses a national theatre which can accommodate large-scale national spectacles and international presentations.

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NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR UNESCO

In keeping with its policy of ensuring that Guyana participates fully in the activities of all international bodies to which it is dliated, the Ministry of Education and Social Development is in the process of establishing a National Commission for Unesco. The work of the national commission will be to create an interest in and promote an understanding of Unesco’s programmes, to advise the government and other interested organizations on matters relating to Unesco, and, in a general way, to serve as the liaison agency between the Unesco Secretariat and the Guyanese Government. Through its programme of activities, the commission is also expected to foster regional co-operation with other Caribbean countries in education, science and culture.

It is proposed that the Guyana National Commission for Unesco should consist of government and non-government representatives interested in educational, scientific and cultural matters. Its principal organs will be (a) a general conference; (b) an executive committee; (c) a small secretariat. In general, it is anticipated that in this form the National Commission for Unesco will be able to assist in the execution of Unesco’s programmes and projects in Guyana.

National holidays

Of deep cultural significance is the structure of national holidays introduced by the govemment in 1967 and, with two modifications in 1973, still in force today. During the period of British and Dutch rule, the public holiday structure reflected the wishes of the ruling classes and their policy of disregarding the values of the existing sub-cultures and imposing direction from above. The government after independence took note of the fact that the three major faiths in Guyana were Christianity, Hinduism and Islam and, therefore, of the need to extend to all Guyanese the celebration of holidays of these faiths.

It was realized that this would encourage deeper understanding of one another’s festivals and religious values, would lead to a sense of dignity and respect among the religious communities themselves, and therefore make for national unity and cohesion. The Christian holy days at Christmas and Easter were earmarked as public holidays, and it was decided to celebrate the Hindu festivals of Phagwah and Diwali and the Muslim festivals of Eid-ul-Ahza and Youman Nabi. National holidays were also created to commemorate national events and give expression to national aspirations and ties.

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The 1763 Monument.

a cs

The Prime Minister, the Honourable L. F. S. Burnham, addressing a recent national conference of Amerindian chieftains in the Parliament chamber.

Madame Lavinia Williams directs a practice session at the Guyana National School of Dance.

Drama workshop in action in Linden.

A petroglyph showing timehri markings.

View of the Guyana International Airport showing the drawings which give the airport its name, Timehri.

The Director of Art, Denis Williams, conducts a class at the Burrowes School of Art, Eccles.

Scene from a presentation in February 1977, A Pride of Heroes, on the stage of the National Cultural Centre.

The cultural tradition

The beginnings of the intellectual tradition

There has always been a strong oral tradition in Guyana, The Amerindians, the 6.st settlers, came into the area with their myths and legends of creation and their stories of the Flood, each tribe cherishing its own fund of stories. The African slaves brought with them those stories related to traditional African mysteries which were able to survive the Middle Passage. The East Indian immigrants were permitted to bring their priests and a strong tradition of religious lore as part of the indenture system and this is true also of the Chinese and Portuguese from Madeira, who arrived in Guyana with part of the oral traditions intact from their respective culture patterns. However, in time, these oral traditions began to fade in varying degrees. The Amerindians were the most secure in the retention of their lore because of relative inaccessibility, but in the case of the other settlers as the need grew to learn the white man’s language (Dutch and later English) in order to survive and progress, the sanctions of Christianity operated against some of these memories of the past.

Little evidence survives today but it is possible from hints and sup- positions to reconstruct a model of the limited intellectual life existing in Guyana, during the nineteenth century.

In 1844, the British lawyer William H. Campbell founded the institution later known as the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society (R.A. & C.S.) and provided an apparatus for literary and other discussions for the ruling British group in Georgetown. (Goodall, the British painter, who accompanied Schomburgk on his travels wrote in his diary about the lively activity in the Georgetown white society.) In 1882, Timehri the journal of the R.A. & C.S. was founded.

There are many instances of the children of British families born in Guyana being sent to the United Kingdom for education at an early age.

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The fathers were principally company directors, bank managers, ministers of religion and other members of the administrative élite.

Intellectual life of the free non-white inhabitants must have been very limited before emancipation and probably developed, if at all, around the ministers of religion and their Sunday schools against a background of reluctance of the planters and slave owners to introduce the study of the Bible. There is the instance in the early 1800s of the Methodist minister, the Reverend Tallboys, being sent back by the authorities to the London Missionary Society on the same ship by which he came and there are the strictures made against the Reverend John Smith as published by contem- poraries, that show the implacable nature of the resistance by the planters to teaching the slaves and their descendants the sacred word of the Bible and consequently giving them the means of reading the secular word.

There would have been descendants of slaves and free non-white people in Guyana in the decades from 1850 onwards who would sit in their lonely rooms, wrestling with ideas in books by Charles Darwin, Edward Gibbon and Thomas Henry Huxley, pursuing their solitary intellectual interests in a desert of indifference, alienation and ignorance, discussing the contents of these books with one or two kindred spirits, applying them to the conditions in Guyana and creating the beginnings of a tradition of intellectual life in the society.

J. McFarlane Corry, later a magistrate, was reported to have founded a Young Men’s Christian Association in Den Amstel in the middle of the nineteenth century and there is the tradition of learning and intellectual advancement which sustained the headmasters of the church schools under the tutelage of British ministers of religion.

Many headmasters graduated into lawyers and ministers of religion and in addition to the Reverend F. C. Glasgow and his son, the Reverend Thomas B. Glasgow, there were the Honourable A. B. Brown, the Reverend J. E. L. Isaacs, the Reverend Dr J. E. London and Aloysius de Weever, all of whom made sterling contributions to the community towards the end of the century. In 1896, Frank O. Franker €ounded the Young Men’s Guild which became an oasis of intellectual endeavour and debate for another half- century.

In later decades, probably in the first half of the twentieth century, the Churchmen’s Union (also a nursery of talent under the aegis of the church) was formed as both a cricket club and a debating society.

It is from this layer of society that the first Guyanese literary effort emerged. In 1838, Simon-Christian Oliver, a headmaster in Buxton who had been born in Grenada, wrote a poem about ‘August the First, the Day of Emancipation’. The occasion is grand, the quality is poor, but here is the evidence of creative imagination, the first authentic singing voice in Guyanese literary history. Compared with later developments, it reads like the stammering of a child not yet given to speech. The verse expresses gratitude to the master class who ‘nobly set you free’; calls upon the freed

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slaves to salute Emancipation Day and shout hurrah to Queen Victoria. ‘Your minds, you ought to cultivate as well as till the ground.’

Following Oliver’s twelve lines of verse, we have the record of Thomas Don publishing a book of forty-three poems in 1873, Pious Effusions, with episodes of the Bible converted into rhymed verse-the Prodigal Son, the Jailer of Philippi, the entry of Christ into Jerusalem and the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Many of these poems end with a vision of paradise and many passages are composed in the form of prayers.

In 1883 Egbert Martin (Leo) published his Poetical Works and in 1888 a second book Local Lyrics. A mulatto, Martin, reported to have been a cripple, is the first important writer in the Guyanese tradition with a fine command of imagery and rhythm. H e covered a wide range of topics from the Amerindian in the forest to the royal personage. H e sang of children at play and villagers entertaining themselves with music, of duty and joy, of sorrow and solitude, of justice and truth. H e won the first prize in a British Empire competition run by an English newspaper for the best two additional verses to the British National Anthem, and it is said that Alfi-ed Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate of England, was favourably impressed by the quality of his poetry. Nearly forty years passed before Walter Mac A. Lawrence in the 1920s emerged as the next important Guyanese poet.

It would be many years (indeed not until the middle of the twentieth century) before these two strands of intellectual life converged-the European dite represented by the R.A. & C.S. and the people’s mutual improvement movement directed by the British Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs-and by then the whole cultural pattern of the nation had begun to change and the Guyanese were assuming the direction of policy. At the beginning of the 1940s, young men and women in Georgetown decided to group themselves together in a British Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs. The Science Club, the Photographic Society, the Writers’ Association, the Music Teachers, two dramatic groups, youth groups attached to religious bodies, three associations of former students of secondary schools, a group of painters, and two or three young men’s debating societies agreed to create a Committee of Management to co-ordinate the activities of the individual clubs, to identify projects for joint action and generally to promote cultural development in Guyana.

For seven years, the union operated successfully. It ran annual conven- tions for discussion of important themes in the nation’s life; it made a collection of the rare old books on Guyana for all to read and study; it presented an annual debating competition; it organized presentations of plays by Guyanese authors; it ran a cultural magazine reporting the activities of the clubs and encouraging literary work. The union organized lecture series and radio programmes on literature and cultural topics.

Most important, the union was dedicated to the proposition that everyone should become aware of the history, origins and backgrounds of the six racial groups in Guyana, that emphasis should be placed on those

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trends which held Guyanese together and gave them a common pride, and that a spirit of cultural understanding and tolerance should be cultivated, since in the realm of the spirit, each strand had an important contribution to make.

After seven years, the union ceased to meet, since other bodies like the British Council and the Extramural Department of the University of the West Indies had emerged to carry out on a professional basis what had previously been done on an amateur level.

In the late 1950s in order to maintain the valuable momentum generated by the union, the government inaugurated a series of annual ‘History and Culture Weeks’. The policy of the administration was designed: (a) to create solidarity between rural and urban areas, while encouraging the specific development of individual religious and historical groups; (b) to create a sense of solidarity among ethnic groups based upon the need to promote a better quality of life in Guyana; (c) to conserve the nation’s heritage in all aspects and create conditions for nation-wide recreation; (d) to encourage creativity in every possible way.

Following proposals to divide Guyana into specific regions with a Regional Minister appointed to co-ordinate government action in each area, the government decided to adopt a more positive policy of using culture as an instrument of social change and to set up regional cultural centres in order to improve the quality of life in rural areas. As a result, the Institute of Creative Arts (ICA) was established as the teaching arm of the National History and Arts Council with five departments in the first place-art, dance, drama, music and creative writing. The ICA would organize a series of workshop/seminars in regional areas and, with the assistance of regional cultural committees, would identify and develop talents existing in these five fields in rural areas. A series of oral history programmes would be initiated whereby senior members of the community would be interviewed on their memories of the past, and their answers recorded on tape to create a nucleus of the history of the =ea. This material would later be used as a basis for creating short stories, dances and plays for presentation to the community in a massive programme of national self-awareness and human fulfilment.

The printed word

THE LITERARY TRADITION

Guyana possesses a rich literary tradition. Ever since Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and

Beautqul Empire of Guiana was published in 1596 by Robert Robinson in London, the image of El Dorado, the fabulous city of gold hidden in the Guyana hinterland and protected by dense jungle and the vigilance of Amerindian forest peoples, has been a lodestar in the European conscious-

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ness, luring adventurers to attempt to find the gold, and it is not surprising that both Shakespeare and Milton have mentioned Guiana in their writings.

The tradition of the Guyanese novel begins around the end of the nineteenth century with two novels, In Guiana Wilds (1899) by James Rodway and Green Mansions (1904) by W. H. Hudson. Both novels celebrate the life in the hinterland, the exotic in the tropical forests and the savannahs; of course, both authors are expatriates and are attracted by the sense of the unusual in the Guyana environment. The next novel to note (the first to be published in Guyana), Those That Be in Bondage, 1917, is by A. R. F. Webber, a Tobago poet-politician who desired to prove a political point relating to the East Indian indenture system. He stressed the relatively sophisticated patterns of living on the coast, with the interwoven life of the African village and the East Indian sugar plantation linked to life in the town.

The history of the novel in Guyana was to move between these two poles of attraction-the life of the hinterland, with its romantic vision of the Amerindian peoples and the tough Porkknocker (see page 51), and the life of the coastal areas, bound up with slavery indenture and agriculture.

The two most important Guyanese novelists to date have been Edgar Mittelholzer and Wilson Harris. Mittelholzer, who died in 1965, published twenty-five books, the first appearing in 1941 and the most significant being the Kaywana trilogy. In these three novels authenticated by research in the British Museum, the author traced the fortunes of a planter family, the Van Groenwegels, through three and a half centuries of Guyanese history.

The main theme is the Nietzschean proposition that the strong shall inherit the earth; the men and women of the far-flung family work out their individual destinies in variations of the principle that power corrupts and that slavery corrupts both the slave and the slave owner.

Other important novels by Edgar Mittelholzer are Shadows Move Among Them, a variation of the theme of the noble savage, the Amerindian on the Berbice River, Morning at the Osce a novelette on racial and social relationships in Trinidad, and My Bones and My Flute, a psychological thriller on necromancy in the 1763 rebellion. He also wrote some essays on travel into the future, two experimental novels on the leitmotiv in one of Wagner’s operas, a sally into the low-class jungle of Georgetown showing how it sucked the life out of a weak uneducated girl, a series of sermons against English hypocrisy that irritated his publishers, a lyric on life on the Corentyne Coast and a lively novel on the way hurricane ‘Janet’ hit the Island of Barbados in 1955.

Mittelholzer’s critics have pointed to the psychological damage wrought in him by his love for the Germanic in his ancestry and the burden of his African roots, and they evaluate the heavy weight of his rejection by the British parent culture. But his main virtues lie in his great skill as a story- teller, and the use of the swiftly mounting drums of suspense. H e was a humanist, loving human beings for the affection buried under much

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hypocrisy and rubble. His novels have been translated into many languages and given pleasure and information throughout the world.

Wilson Harris, whose first novel, Palace of the Peacock, was published in 1960, is regarded as a revolutionary figure in the English-speaking world, changing the shape of the modern novel from its present form and also preaching a gospel of reconciliation among peoples. The Harris novels are poetic in texture and philosophical in significance and they involve a surrender to the message in the flow of images rather than a concentration on the orthodox movement of episodes developing character.

H e introduces as characters time, myth and the power of the Guyana landscape and these affect the mood and consciousness of the human characters. One critic suggests that the work of Wilson Harris involves a creative response to the divisiveness of the West Indian cultural and historical scene. Harris’s work continues to attract the increasing attention of universities and literary seminars.

The first novel, Palace of the Peacock, is a poetic jewel; the living/dead crew of a boat travels up a Guyana river towards an Amerindian settlement for the seven days of creation, before the crew dies again at a massive waterfall. This depicts the European pursuit of gold, and the crew belongs to the waves of immigrants coming over the centuries into the Caribbean. Dream, imagination, memory and vision are all woven into the text in a complex implosion of character, and the reader has to surrender himself to the play of images.

Harris, who was a land surveyor before he became an author, has made use of the Arawak and Wapishana myths and legends in his books The Age of the Rainmakers and The Sleepers of Roraima and the very titles of the earlier novels-Tumatumari and Ascent to Omai-indicate the way the topography of Guyana obtrudes in his work. He has spoken of ‘the depths of inarticulate feeling and unrealized wells of emotions belonging to the whole West Indies’ and of his desire to ‘reconcile the broken parts of such an enormous heritage’.

After a series of novels based upon his residual memories of the Guyana scene, Harris has set the locales of the two latest novels outside Guyana in Edinburgh and in Mexico City.

Black Marsden, set in the city of Edinburgh, was notable for the first appearance of a strong story line in a Harris novel, while Companions of the Day and Night, set in Mexico City, is reconstructed and restructured from the fragments of a diary he pieces together from acharacter in the Edinburgh tale.

There are several other novelists in the Guyana canon. Jan Carew has written two novels on Guyana about boys who have come from Guyanese coastal villages. One story follows the fortunes of the young hero as he goes into the hinterland and prospers as a diamond digger. Peter Kempadoo wrote a light-hearted account of a boy growing up on a sugar estate. Oscar Dathorne tells the tale of Guyanese students in a lodging house in what

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could be London but in a second novel he places a West Indian character as a lecturer in English in the faculty of a West African University, and portrays semi-humorously the ambiguous social forces at work as the country achieves independence.

Christopher Nicole devoted his first three novels to the Guyana scene. Two deal with the problems of white and Creole characters, and the third, Ratoon, is a carefully constructed story around the 1823 slave uprising in Mahaica and shows the influence of Christianity upon the young slave leader of the uprising.

E. R. (Ted) Braithwaite produced the best seller To Sir with Love, later converted into a film, which is an outstanding portrayal of successful tone- relations in a racial context and the application of intelligence and personal moral courage in a difficult situation. Other books from his pen are A Choice of Straws, Paid Servant and A Kind of Home-Coming. Denis Williams has published two novels, Other Leopards and The Third Temptation. Other Leopards is a study in dissolution, showing how a man in conflict with himself over his own heritage and his own future, falls back into an animal state.

Guyana has been fortunate in the range and number of its literary groups. Records have been lost but the successive establishment of The British Guiana Literary Society (1930), The British Guiana Writers Association (1945) and The PEN (Guyana Centre) show how persistent has been the writers’ desire to come together and support one another.

In 1973, the Department of Creative Writing was set up within the Institute of Creative Arts. The department organizes regular courses in creative writing open to all members of the public, and lectures on the identification and encouragement of creativity are offered to student teachers.

On the death of Edgar Mittelholzer in 1965, the government instituted a series of Memorial Lectures in his honour on themes of contemporary Guyanese or Commonwealth Caribbean writing or aspects of the relationship between thought and history and the emergence of creative writing in the Caribbean area, in order to promote a sense of national pride and help keep Guyana in the forefront of the new nations. The titles of the successive publications in the series are Edgar Mittelholzer: the M a n and His Work (A. J. Seymour); Image and Idea in the Arts of Guyana (Denis Williams); History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guiana (Wilson Harris); M a n and Making- Victim and Vehicle (Martin Carter); Racial Identity and Indi- vidual Consciousness in the Caribbean Novel (Michael Gilkes); Calypso and Caribbean Culture (Gordon Rohlehr).

The Second World War served as a watershed in Guyanese writing since it stimulated a blossoming of verse and poetry. Before ehe war, the following impulses could be distinguished-the desire to set down old and sentimental themes in a tropical country; a religious impulse inspired by Bible themes

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and linked with the desire to moralize; the desire to record some personal experience of the beauty of nature and the world. With the 1940s emerged a strong desire to discover and record the

nation’s history and folklore and to write about the sounds and colours of the forests and savannahs. There were the impulses of social and political revolt to give a voice to the worker in the fields and in the city, to rebel in tones of anguish and anger against the domination exercised by metro- politans, and to aid the quest for self-respect and self-rule which formed the basis of the new nationhood.

L I B R A R Y SERVICES

The National Library and the University of Guyana Library are the two institutions mainly responsible for providing library and information services to the nation.

The National Library The National Library developed out of the Public Free Library for Georgetown established in 1909 in a building erected with funds provided by Andrew Carnegie.

In the early years, the cost of the library service was provided in equal proportions by the government and the Georgetown Town Council. The building was enlarged in 1935 through a grant by the Carnegie Corporation, the purpose being to supply accommodation for the British Guiana Museum.

Until 1949, the amenity of a public library service was enjoyed only by the people of Georgetown. In 1950, legislation was enacted authorizing the Library Committee to extend its services outside Georgetown and the town of New Amsterdam was supplied with a branch in 1953 followed by Mackenzie (now Linden) in 1955. Since that date, library service has been extended to many rural areas.

The library also created a number of other services for its members and the general public such a8 the Public Lecture Series (Harold Stannard, Sir Harry Luke, Dale Carnegie, Philip Sherlock, Dr Thomas Taylor and many others used this opportunity to offer to the Guyanese public lectures as part of adult education) and the Public Library Discussion Circle (once a week on Fridays at 5.30 p.m. a small enthusiastic group would meet to discuss the great books of civilization, taking it in turn to lead the discussion and to present the main points of the books).

The National Library was created in 1972 by the Law Revision Act 1972. It is empowered to perform the functions of both a national library and a public library. As the National Library it is responsible for acquiring and preserving publications received on legal deposit, preparing and publishing a national bibliography, arranging interlibrary loans and training staff for other organizations.

Its main publication, the Guyanese National Bibliography, has been

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prepared since 1973 in three quarterly issues and an annual cumulation. From January 1975, this bibliography has been published in accordance with the International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions for Monographs ISBD(M) and Serials ISBD(S).

The present public library service offered by the National Library consists of a Central Library in Georgetown, three branches in Greater Georgetown, Linden and Berbice; seventeen centres; a book-mobile service; deposit collections in remote areas; a service to five prisons.

The book stock of approximately 150,000 volumes (1975 figures) is fuuy catalogued. Classified catalogues of the adult stock for loan and for reference, and dictionary catalogues of the juvenile stock are maintained at the Central Library and the branches. The reference stock at the Central Library includes the Caribbean Reference Collection which was strengthened considerably in early 1976 with the acquisition of part of the Caribbean collection of the former Guyana Society Library and rare books purchased abroad by the National Commission for Research Materials on Guyana. The Central Library is a depository for certain Unesco documents and also houses a gramophone record collection.

Accessions are publicized by two quarterly lists, the New Books List and the Reference Department Bulletin. Subject bibliographies are prepared on request.

Accelerated library development has been planned in the National Library’s development programme, 1975-80, which was approved by the government and will be included in the country’s five-year development plan. This programme makes provision for a 12,800 square foot extension to the National Library building in Georgetown (financed partly by the British Council), the erection of regional headquarters in the other two counties, branch libraries in towns and the decentralization of library services on a regional basis. Provision has also been made for book stock and for training of professional and sub-professional staff.

The University of Guyana Library

Established in 1963, the library’s stock of approximately 98,000 items includes books, documents, pamphlets and non-print materials, microfilms, tapes, gramophone records and slides. Its stock of periodicals exceeds 3,000 titles.

The library receives local imprints on legal deposit and is also a depository for the documents of the United Nations and several of its agencies.

The library’s long standing policy of acquiring at least two copies of all Caribbeana in print has contributed to the development of a rapidly expanding Caribbean Research Collection. The Guyana section of this collection was enhanced early in 1976 with the acquisition of the valuable collection of the Union of Cultural Clubs, rare maps and books purchased abroad by the National Commission for Research Materials on Guyana, and

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part of the Caribbean reference collection of the former Guyana Society Library.

A duplicated monthly list of accessions is issued and a special series of bibliographies on various aspects of Guyanese history and culture is being prepared. Bibliographies on general topics are prepared in advance of a request or on demand.

The library acts as the international centre for loans between Guyana and the United Kingdom.

Library development plans include the construction of Phase 1 of the library extension which began in June 1976. The extension will house a modern bindery and provide more spacious accommodation for the Tech- nical Services Division and the Caribbean Research Collection.

The library attempts to expand the range and depth of its collection and services to meet the demands of new departments and programmes within the university, as well as to satisfy the increasing number of requests for information services received from agencies actively involved in national development.

Specialized library collections

There are several government ministries and departments and non- government institutions with specialized collections in various subject areas for the use of staff.

The Ministry of Education has appointed a library consultant to advise on libraries in education, to formulate plans for the development of this network and to supervise the execution of the approved plan.

Since her appointment, the consultant has established a Teachers’ Library and Resources Centre to provide lending and reference facilities for lecturers and students of the College of Education, the In-Service Training Centre and officers of the Ministry of Education. Practising teachers can use thelibrary. Two branches are maintained in Linden and New Amsterdam.

The Ministry of Education, School Libraries Division, which was set up by the consultant in 1975 is responsible for organizing and developing school libraries, processing books and training staff for school libraries. The development of libraries at the government technical institutes in Georgetown and New Amsterdam and at the Guyana Industrial Training College, is also the responsibility of the consultant.

The Cyril Potter College, formerly the Teachers’ Training College, provides library services for the staff and students of the college.

The Kuru-Kuru Co-operative College Library is staffed by a librarian. A co-ordinator of libraries in the public service was appointed in 1973

to plan, organize and co-ordinate the Central Public Service Library at the Public Service Training Division and in ministerial and departmental libraries.

The co-ordinator has developed a working collection of books on administration and management at the Central Public Service Library for the use

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of all public service o5cers. She is also responsible for training staff for other government libraries.

Many ministerial and departmental libraries have collections of varying sizes in one or more of the following subject areas: social sciences-economics and related fields, politics and government, law, criminology, social work; science and technology-agriculture, geology, forestry, minerology, medicine, telecommunications, transportation, works and hydraulics.

The Library of the Caribbean Community Secretariat, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Caribbean Regional Youth Development Centre Library, the Guyana Institute for Social Research and Action Library and the Indian Cultural Centre Library form another group of special libraries.

The Guyana Library Association

The association, which was established in 1968, is open to all personnel working in libraries and persons interested in promoting the goals of the association. The stated aims of the association are: (a) to foster the close association of all persons and organizations in Guyana interested in the promotion of librarianship and related fields; (b) to consider and bring to the notice of the government the role which libraries and librarians can play in national development and to make recommendations for the promotion of legislation affecting libraries and librarians; (c) to organize meetings, lectures, seminars, training courses, workshops and visits for the purpose of promoting effective library services in Guyana; (d) to promote the recruitment, training and education of librarians, and generally to take steps to improve their status; (e) to promote and assist in bibliographic activity in Guyana; (f) to advise on the organization of new libraries, the improvement of existing libraries, and to promote the achievement and maintenance of a high standard of library services in Guyana; (g) to publish a journal at regular intervals for the purpose of recording the activities of the association and publishing articles of interest to members.

The association has organized training programmes at irregular intervals, mainly for library assistants.

The association, through one of its members, the university librarian, has begun to revise the 1971 survey of libraries in Guyana. This revision will help to determine the number of libraries in operation, the book stock, personnel and equipment, areas of neglect and strengths of collections. The results of this survey will be used to identify areas in which there is urgent need for the organization of resources, and for the training and placement of personnel.

The association also plans to direct its attention in the near future to the question of standards for entry into the profession and for collections and services. It has begun a programme of educating the public on the role libraries could play in the economic and social development of the country, and on the educationalrequirement sfor the training of professionallibrarians.

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There is need for the organization of a network of libraries to provide access to the information resources available in Guyana and to arrange for the transfer of technological and scientific information from overseas. Economic planning and development in Guyana would be greatly assisted by this fuller utilization of resources thus made available to information scientists.

NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR RESEARCH MATERIALS

Like many emergent nations of the Third World, Guyana was faced with the significant problem of bringing together within its national borders all the records and documentation which relate to its past history. Many of the more important documents are located in State archives or private collections in the Netherlands, France, Spain or the United Kingdom and many of the rare books are offered for sale by antiquarian booksellers in several countries.

As a result, in 1975, a National Commission for the Acquisition, Pres- ervation and Republication of Research Materials (NCRM) on Guyana was established. Bringing together representatives of the major library and archival institutions in Guyana, its responsibilities are to locate and acquire rare and scarce materials on Guyana, e.g. books, manuscripts, prints, maps and photographs at home and abroad, so that they may be housed in the major depository libraries and institutions; to set up an apparatus to identify and preserve these materials and to develop a public awareness of their importance for the ‘national memory’; and to organize a unified programme for the re-publication of the more important out-of-print works and the publication of important older manuscripts that come to hand.

The commission operates through four executive groups dealing respectively with books, non-book materials, preservation techniques and publicity.

Since its establishment, the commission has: (a) sent a mission abroad to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and acquired valuable antiquarian documents and maps for the major institutions; @) launched a public awareness campaign of bookmarks, radio programmes, tapes and interviews; (c) received many significant public donations and (d) organized public exhibitions of visual materials from the past.

One major activity has been the publication programme to bring important and rare books into public circulation: (a) the arrangement with the British Library (formerly the British Museum) for the publication of Colour Sketches of Guyana in the 1840s by Edward Goodall, an English artist accompanying Sir Robert Schomburgk on his travels in Guyana in the 1840s, and (b) the re-publication of two significant out-of-print works on the history of Guyana for readers at adult and school levels; these are Netscher’s History of the Colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice (1888); James Rodway’s Chronological History of the Discovery and Settlement of Guiana, Volume I (1888).

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Arising out of the commission’s work can be discerned the need to establish and maintain adequate storage facilities for the preservation of these fragile elements of the national heritage, and the trained manpower to make full use of the facilities. Public awareness has been aroused and scholars have started work on areas of research not apparent before.

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

In the period before independence, the collection in Guyana of archival material and the introduction of a system of prompt and accurate retrieval of information both in the public and private sectors were largely academic matters and it was the practice for important public papers to be accumu- lated in London only.

It is now recognized that archives constitute a cultural resource and the indispensable basis of a collective national memory and a start has been made on the selection, preservation, arrangement, description and presentation of archival material.

The policy of reorganization includes the introduction of legislation, the provision of a fully equipped and well-designed archival building, the training of professional staff, the establishment of a National Archives Advisory Council, and the incorporation of the archives within the setting of a National Information Service including the National Library and the University Library.

PRINTING OF BOOKS

There are seven or eight governmental ministries and agencies engaged in the preparation and printing of various types of promotional material, and discussions are under way to establish a co-ordinated programme of printing which may lead to the establishment of a national publishing agency.

The main objectives of printing and publishing in Guyana are the printing of textbooks and supplementary readers for use in schools and universities; the reprinting of Guyanese classics of the past, for the benefit of school and adult populations; the provision of inexpensive library editions for the people of books dealing with politics, economics, education, art and music; the collection of documents for use in adult education groups; the promotion of prize-winning entries in literary competitions; and the introduction of Guyanese readers to the best writing in the wider Caribbean area using commissioned translations possibly with the assistance of Unesco.

These needs may be met by the establishment of specific editorial and advisory boards, commissioned to attend to the interests of the people and education, young people, art and literature, social sciences and organizations.

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Early in the twentieth century, an indigenous art movement began to develop in Guyana out of the growing tradition of house painting, the preparation of signs for advertisement of imported products, and home decoration for aesthetic and religious purposes.

The pioneer in Guyanese art is traditionally believed to have been Samuel Horace Broodhagen, partly self-taught and later trained by an expatriate. Broodhagen was a sculptor as well as a painter in oils and water colour, and in later years became cartoonist for two well-known daily papers. A number of British artists came to Guyana, produced paintings and held exhibitions, but their major influence was in the field of art education, organizing and assisting Guyanese talent to develop and mature.

The British Guyana Arts and Crafts Society, formed in 1932, was a nucleus of talented Guyanese artists working principally in landscape and portraiture. The Guyanese Art Group in the 1940s extended invitations to West Indian artists to exhibit their work in Guyana and so furthered the cause of art. When this group creased to meet, E. R. Burrowes introduced his Working People’s Art Class in 1954, taking art to the people, teaching art history and appreciation, and developing a national consciousness. This programme for discovering and encouraging talented young Guyanese men and women is the foundation of the art structure in Guyana today, and it is from this root that the present flowering of art has developed.

The National Collection of Fine Art was started in 1950 with the pur- chase in London of a painting by Denis Williams, The Human World. The Guyanese public supported a series of fund-raising efforts organized for this purpose and the National Collection was thus inaugurated. It is interesting to note that, by and large, the first and third generations of Guyanese artists learnt to paint and carve in this country and developed individual styles related to local subject-matter, whereas the important artists of the second generation-Denis Williams, Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling-learnt to paint in Europe and developed styles related to the European or North American environment. Certainly the Guyanese artist today is engaged upon a compulsive search for identity and at least some of the third generation artists have ventured into experiments into Amerindian mythology as an enrichment of the visual repertoire.

What is exciting on the Guyanese art scene is the emergence of a small group of painters who are producing authentic and powerful images of a modern Guyana, bypassing the European elements in our young tradition, and who may be described as revolutionary in the sense that their paintings relate to the aesthetics in the antique African culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 1763 Monument by Philip Moore is a work that goes beyond abstract considerations of beauty and form, seeks the reality of union with the spirit of the ancestors in a truly African manner, and more than any other, attempts to transform the artistic awareness of

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the Guyanese people. Other artists whose works display this authentic quality are Henwood Adrian, Omawale Lumumba, Doris Rogers and Parry Wallerson. They are producing interpretations of landscape and abstracts charged with an ancestral, as opposed to a mythographical spirit, and although reflecting little knowledge of theory, techniques and history of European art, they embody wholly authentic images of the modern nation and release powerful emotions in the viewer.

A few general observations may be made on the growing National Collection of paintings and sculptures. Despite the multiracial composition of the population the majority of the artists are of African stock. Although numerically superior to other groups and despite their patent commitment to Guyanese nationhood, East Indians in Guyana have remained generally aloof from the mainstream of creative expression in the visual arts, the only discernible influence so far being in an almost imperceptible orientalization of the architectural environment from its original Georgian base.

The strength of the Guyana School which is emerging today lies in its isolation from the fashions of art in metropolitan centres and the fact that the ‘house-trained’ artists continually apply their skills to the stimulus of the immediate environment.

The Burrowes School of Art has been established as one of the five departments of the Institute of Creative Arts. The school of art trains a number of persons who will later teach art in schools, but it also provides instruction for individuals who have begun producing works of painting and sculpture as amateur and professional artists.

Art is also taught in training colleges for teachers and at university level and a small committee is co-ordinating the use of the scant resources available so that the total needs of the nation may be best served.

The lack of interest in ‘local’ efforts as against ‘imported’ articles and a lack of understanding of artistic values are the main reasons for the small number of private collections of paintings and sculptures held in the nation. A few discriminating Guyanese lovers of art have had the means to back their artistic judgement by purchases, but it is the expatriate business executive, diplomat, doctor or minister of religion who, more than others, has seized the opportunity to acquire the more significant pieces of painting or sculpture produced in Guyana.

Because of the importance of the public monument as a means of indicating and focusing national interest and stimulating national unity and pride, a programme for the erection of public monuments has been embarked upon since the inauguration of the republic, starting with the 1763 Monu- ment and continuing with the Enmore Monument and the Cubana Monument. In the planning of the programme, it is proposed to keep in mind the government’s regional plan and to erect public monuments as necessary for the stimulation of national pride.

In Guyana, the socialist revolution inherited an art system developed in the final thirty years of the colonial period which were relatively favourable

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for its development. The main characteristics of the colonial art system in Guyana were: a spirit of amateurism; a patronage system under which artists were none the less obliged to seek a livelihood in para-artistic or non- artistic occupations; dependence on the metropolitan art system in the matter of training, criticism, and aesthetic and art theory. (This was inevitably accompanied by a systematic devaluation, or an outright destruction of the traditional visual culture and the traditional crafts in Guyana.) Passivity in the face of metropolitan graphic and commercial art forms and styles resulted. This colonial art system was nevertheless only an imperfect model since

it lacked certain fundamental elements of a fdly developed bourgeois art system.

These lacking elements were resident capital, a cultivated enwepreneurial class, propagative mechanisms such as art galleries, art literature and art industries, and research and scholarship.

In addition, the effects of hostile climate and a history of disease, together with absentee-landlordism, guaranteed a visual environment in Guyana which is relatively free of the bourgeois presence in matters like architecture, town-planning and collections of antiquities. Consequently, there was not much for the revolution to sweep away.

The central objective of policy in the visual arts, therefore, is how best to transform an inherited imperfect bourgeois art system of amateur status into a fully functional socialist art system of professional status.

There are two guidelines of policy: in Guyana, art has always been a proletarian activity, and in a multiracial society of deculturated immigrants, practice in the visual arts cannot afford to ignore the question of national identity and cultural unity.

A socialist art system must stimulate the production of art and simul- taneously regulate the relationship between the work of art and the people for whom it is created. Consequently this system must promote the highest professionalism in the practice of art through institutionalized training.

Because of the traditional proletarian basis of the visual arts in Guyana, aptitude and enthusiasm need be the only prerequisites in recruitment for training and not necessarily the attainment of irrelevant academic skills. The creative pursuit of art is acknowledged to be an academic discipline in its o w n right.

The State should consequently provide all who display the necessary aptitudes and skills with free tuition of the highest calibre supported by free materials and equipment.

The revolution cannot sustain its momentum without an ever deepening apprehension of national identity. For the 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. As a

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result, in addition to the traditional notions of beauty inherited from a bourgeois past, a work of art in revolutionary Guyana must amplify the interpretation of the words ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’ in areas that yield the new self-image as the pearl of all artistic inquiry, and in such a way as to modify and enrich these traditional notions. It follows that art activities (particularly in the communications media) inherited from a bourgeois tradition, whose effect is destructive for the image of national identity, or whose effect in a multiracial society is racially divisive and reactionary, cannot be acceptable to the revolution.

In the Guyana revolution, the bourgeois relationship between artist and patron (inevitably exploitative of the artist) will yield in importance to planned patronage in the public sector of the revolutionary economy. Where the State controls three-quarters of the economy, it accordingly assumes responsibility for patronage in the visual arts. If an inherently amateur art system of the colonial period is to be succeeded by a professional art system in the socialist period, this transformation will need to be adequately financed. A fraction of 1 per cent of surpluses in the public sector of the economy will provide for cultural advancement on all its fronts since ‘there cannot be a real political and/or economic revolution, nor can the Guyana man or the Guyana way of life be identified unless there is a cultural revolution’ (Forbes Burnham, Guyfesta address, November 1975).

The revolution has a responsibility to guarantee to the artist not only his creative freedom, but also the security of his profession. A revolutionary artist in the context of Guyana is by definition a freedom fighter and if his gifts are to be developed to the full in the cause of freedom, then his profession needs to be guaranteed, in the interests of the revolution, in the execution of monumental works of art, public murals, didactic graphics and the mass production of objects which will elevate the domestic environment of the people and enrich the quality of life in the revolution. It is understood that as in other socialist countries, the Guild of Artists, Craftsmen and Designers is the ideal agent for the implementation of policy and the execution of commissions of state.

CRAFTS

To meet the challenges of their environment, the Amerindian peoples living in Guyana developed an intricate pattern of crafts, making use of the various substances near their dwellings. Wood, straw, balata, cotton, leather and clay were among the more common elements used although the excellence of the craft varied from one tribe to another depending upon the emergence of master craftsmen and the needs of the time.

Among these crafts, pottery has proved most valuable for the purpose of historical analysis, and the careful study of forms, pastes and decoration has been the basis of our unfolding knowledge of the movement of peoples

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into Guyana from the Orinoco River system c. A.D. 500. Against this background is to be understood the question of tribal craft specialization and the cultural effects of trade.

Fine examples of balata craft have been fashioned in villages in the Rupununi in more recent times, with the promise of development on a national scale, for example, in the production of toys. In their crafiwork which combines beauty and usefulness to an equal degree, the Amerindians reproduce traditional symbols of many animals-the tiger, the dog, the frog, the spider and the snake, as well as the dancing human figure.

Authorities have noted nearly a dozen cultural contributions from Amerindian peoples which enhance community life in Guyana, and high among them are the processing of bitter caasava to neutralize its poison, the manufacture of curare, the making and use of the hammock, identifying medicinal herbs and plants, making fish traps, making woodskin and dugout canoes, the use of the warishi for droghing (coastal trading), building and thatching the benab, training parrots as pets and dogs for hunting, and giving names to mountains, rivers, animals and plants in Guyana. As part of a programme to ensure that Amerindians attain equal status with other groups in Guyana, Guyana is encouraging research into some of the more widely used Amerindian languages such as hawak and Warau and the University of Guyana Linguistics Department has embarked upon studies in a number of allied fields.

Throughout Guyana, there is a growing interest in crafts of all types. Some artists have developed traditional techniques in the production of ceramics, testing the results of various Guyana clays for exhibition and sale. In recent times, certain areas have acquired a reputation for certain crafts, for example, Bagotville for straw work and Lethem for leather work, while Women’s Institutes in rural areas maintain classes in the preparation of household articles.

Batik and tie dye techniques have become fashionable since independence and there is a movement to encourage the teaching and production of craft articles of quality, especially in co-operative groups, with a view to meeting the requirements of domestic and overseas markets. The absence of a tourist industry in Guyana ensures that the craft industry is influenced more by quality considerations rather than the necessity of quick sales.

The government’s decision to promote the cotton industry and the existence of a thriving garment industry have stimulated many artists to experiment with embroidery designs and quickened the appreciation of visual patterns.

Crafts are valuable in many ways, but particularly because they embody and provide a visual experience on which the art tradition may be further developed.

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TIME H RI

Timehri, a Carib word, belonging to a language spoken in Guyana before any European tongue, is the name given to ideographic marks on rocks found in Guyana. These pictured rocks are sometimes painted and sometimes engraved, and there are significant differences in the depth of incision, the method of execution and the types of figure represented. Some of the first to be noticed were ‘large white sand-stone rocks (not far from Kaieteur) ornamented with figures in red paint’, described by C. Barrington Brown.

With the passing of time, there have been additional discoveries of timehri markings, e.g. at exceptionally low levels of a river, rock engravings may be exposed which had not been previously noted. Timehri depict the human form, especially in a stick-line pattern, monkeys and snakes or combinations of straight and curved lines making patterns. A Guyanese poet has woven these timehri into his verse as <strange figures of maids dancing in the sun, leaping in reverent rhythms to the sun blazing his power upon the patient earth’.

The imagination of Guyanese artists has also been stimulated by the timehri, and the cacique’s crown, a common pattern in the engravings resembling a rayed sun or the top of a rounded arch, has been used in several of the paintings since independence as well as to denote one of the more important forms of national honours. Timehri has been used as the title of an important Guyanese periodical (1882) and has been selected as the name of the country’s international airport.

Music

The contributions made by all the Guyanese people to the nation’s heritage of music have enriched it into a tapestry of threads from origins as far apart as China and South America-to name the two extremes-which coexisted under the umbrella of European colonialism, with the more recent addition of North American popular music. This rich heritage is being woven into a musical language which will be typically Guyanese. The skeins are tangled, the colours bright and the prospects propitious and exhilarating.

Guyana’s musical heritage goes back to the Amerindian festivals of singing and dancing. The Mari-Mari, Snake Dance and Monkey Dance, accompanied by home-made violins, flutes and shak-shaks provided the entertainment for celebrations, and the free movement of peoples to and fro across the Venezuelan and Brazilian borders has caused the music in those areas to reflect a strong Latin American influence both in melody and in rhythm.

The heritage was further enriched by the plantation songs sung by the slaves, some of which exist today with many of the original African words. Drums of several varieties were used in the different ceremonies, religious

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as well as secular, and song and dance expressed the fears, frustrations, hopes and, finally, the liberation of the slaves. The pre-wedding Queh-Queh ceremony of song and dance still flourishes in many rural areas, and the boatmen, plying the rivers and the rapids in their small boats, still sing their work songs and their shuntos to lighten their labour. The fife and drum of the Masquerade Band, with the special ‘flounces’ of the dancers, orig- inally heard only at Christmas, have become a feature of the entertainment at any national festival today.

The Indians, Chinese and Portuguese brought with them their musical culture and this has woven more threads into the tapestry. For the Indians, music, dance and drama played a significant part in their daily lives. Special music was performed, not only on every occasion and ceremony, but for each season and time of day or night. At one time there were more than one hundred Indian orchestras in Guyana in which the harmonium, tabla, dholak and occasionally the sitar could be heard, but the modern fashion of electronic instruments has changed the composition of the Indian bands of today.

The colourful ceremonies and outdoor pageants of the Roman Catholic church are among the treasured memories of many urban and rural communities.

As a major element in the Guyanese culture, music has been a construc- tive force for education, entertainment and religious worship. Because people could sing before they could write, music was the most popular of the arts in Guyana during the immediate post-emancipation period and for the first two decades after the turn of this century.

This is evident in the fact that, at the turn of this century, many families considered a piano to be a vital necessity in the home and music was a part of the normal education of the Guyanese family. Those who could not afford to buy pianos had concertinas and tambourines, flutes, mouth organs and guitars. Musical life was further enriched by the contributions of religious music, both vocal and instrumental. The people’s love of music reappeared in cathedrals, in churches and in humble mission houses where, during the Christmastide and Eastertide services the vocal soloists and the choirs stimulated the congregations with their siaging.

A concert-going tradition developed in Guyana, and the Militia Band, later to become the Police Force Band, gave regular concerts not only in Georgetown but all over the country. This band provided the wood-wind and brass sections for two symphony orchestras, the Princesville and the Georgetown Philharmonic Orchestras, which gave regular concerts in the t o m hall for more than a quarter of a century. Many Guyanese pianists had the opportunity of performing concertos with these orchestras.

The Music Teachers’ Association was founded in 1948. This dynamic organization later established the music festivals which demanded high standards of both the performers and the audience. Early in the 1940s came the introduction of the steel band, described by one musicologist as the

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greatest musical event of this century. Many Guyanese steel bands have achieved high standards of performance, and the Steel Band Association now assists schools and youth groups in the formation of bands and provides the necessary expertise to teach the tuning as well as the playing of the instruments. The standardization of tuning has not yet been achieved and a great many more technicians are still required.

Musical compositions by the Guyanese became generally known at the time of the First World War, although there are copies of songs by Guyanese published abroad around 1900, and it was the fashion of the time to write songs for soldiers leaving for the war and songs of welcome for those returning home. Since that time Guyana has produced composers of religious music, light instrumental music, popular songs and national songs. Among the most important are R. C. G. Potter, who wrote the music of Guyana’s national anthem, Valerie Rodway, who added significantly to the repertoire of national songs, and Hugh Sam, whose special study is the use of our folk tunes in his instrumental works, usually performed by Ray Luck, an internationally recognized Guyanese pianist. Philip Pilgrim, who died at the premature age of 27 in 1944, set to music the epic narrative poem of A. J. Seymour The Legend of Kaieteur for large choir, three vocal soloists and three pianos. It has also been performed by two pianos and a steel band and is the largest musical work so far to come out of the Caribbean.

There is a growing band of composers of popular music and when publishing and recording facilities are available in Guyana, they will have more scope for their creativity than is now possible.

After glancing at the past and noting the various sources which have enriched Guyana’s musical heritage, it would seem that a tradition so deeply entrenched in the people’s way of life, and which has contributed so manifestly to their cultural and spiritual growth and strength, must be actively encouraged in a programme for cultural development.

For a long time, the majority of the schools had no link with music beyond class singing, but this was utilized to the best advantage in the school festivals, where a massed choir of up to 1,000 voices, accompanied by a military band, annually performed a programme of Guyanese compositions and classical songs, thus bringing the best of the world’s music within the reach of every child. With the past ten years, music has gradually found a place on the

timetable of all schools; more schools now have a music teacher on the staff and instrumental music is taking its place in school life. Very few schools have violins and wind instruments, some have guitars and drums, while a few have steel bands. The world shortage of piano tuners has made itself felt in Guyana and there is a need for technical training in this line.

The Ministry of Education’s programme of broadcasts to schools has for the past few years provided basic musical education for the nation’s schoolchildren. Teachers of music are being trained at both of the teacher- training institutions. Teachers of dancing are trained at the National School

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of Dance to enable them to run dancing classes in their schools. There is a real need for trained teachers in music and dance since it is difficult for teacher-training to keep pace with the demands of the growing school population.

In the National Service, the government has encouraged the formation of a mobile theatre group which produces programmes of music, dance and drama and uses both Indian and African instruments. The Ministry of National Development has established the People’s Culture Corps, which is also seeking to develop a Guyanese identity through experimentation and performance. The National History and Arts Council of the Ministry of Information and Culture has introduced Guyfesta as a means of identifying and encouraging talent throughout Guyana. The council also supports musical activities in the regions and publishes Guyanese music from time to time.

The future indicates a grave need for professional teachers of vocal and instrumental (other than the piano) music and for meaningful research to be undertaken into Guyanese history and folklore. Music belongs to the people and it is the people’s talents which cultural development is intended to identify and encourage.

Drama and the theatre

Drama and the theatre in Guyana have developed on several levels. There has been the middle-class level; boys and girls go to school, take

part in school plays and make the acquaintance of Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan. After school, they maintain this love of the theatre and pursue this taste if and when they go abroad. At home they may wax enthusiastic, take up one of the many aspects of the theatre and act, produce, design sets and write plays. Out of this level of dramatic activity has developed a strong Little Theatre Movement under the name Theatre Guild. In 1957, the guild secured a site and converted an old police gymnasium into a playhouse to seat 200 persons. The guild produces on an average eight major plays a year, some of which are West Indian, runs regular playwriting competitions, and has conducted national drama festivals.

In Guyana there is a tradition of play production by and for the ruling élite that goes back more than a century. In 1860 a Philharmonic Musical Society was prosperous enough to build its own auditorium and stage operettas and musical comedies.

The Assembly Rooms were built by the Georgetown Club in the latter half of the nineteenth century to seat 700 (with extra accommodation) and this facility encouraged the formation of a series of dramatic societies some of which still exist-The Jerusalem Players, The Atheneum Club, The Three Arts, The Demerara Dramatic Club, The Georgetown Dramatic Club, The B. G. Dramatic Society, The Lyceum.

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The first playwright reported to have written a play was Father S. W. Barraud, S.J., Principal of St Stanislaus College, who in 1872 wrote St Thomas of Canterbury and St Elizabeth of Hungary, both five-act plays in the Shakespearian style. In 1893 a Queen’s College master, J. Veecock, Secretary of the Demerara Dramatic Club, presented Falstaff, a collection, with modification, of scenes from Shakespeare. In the 1930s Norman Cameron, a brilliant mathematics teacher and playwright, turned his attention to the stage and began writing a series of plays, remarkable for their emphasis (so unfashionable and strange at the time) upon the dignity and eloquence of dark-skinned people from Ethiopia and Egypt who were kings and philosophers.

Decades before the term ‘Black Power’ was invented, Norman Cameron was producing plays on the Guyana stage that gave the Guyanese pride in themselves, showing that black people had been important in history and that the colour of one’s skin was not really important where excellence was concerned.

At the grass-roots level, the great exemplar and prototype of this movement was Sam Chase, a people’s comedian, who hired cinemas in urban and rural areas to present his popular shows. He chose topics of the day with dramatic possibilities and half-dramatized, half-burlesqued them into immediate entertainment for a growing audience not confined to the working class. H e influenced the minds of the people in Creole, the working- class dialect of persons who work with their wits or their hands and live on subsistence incomes.

Sam Chase is the most celebrated of these people’s playwright-producers, but there has been a continuous stream of such entertainers who have filled an important role in society. Of recent years, the slapstick in the halls of dialect has been making its way on to the stage, and the skit, as a light piece of burlesque and satire, using Creole in gossip and folklore tales, has become a highly acclaimed item on concert programmes.

This, of course, is related to the goal of an egalitarian society adopted since independence. In 1975, the Guyana Festival of Arts, organized round the theme of ‘My Community, My Nation’, provided a framework of much spontaneous dramatic activity on stage, and an outlet for the gossiping communal life of proletarian society.

Another level must be noted. In the 1950s, for a short period the sugar authorities organized a series of annual drama festivals for residents of sugar estates. The challenge of the competition and the educational nature of the adjudications acted as incentives which overcame the initial reluctance of parents to let their daughters appear on stage, in what had been considered an immodest activity. The value of theatre, limited knowledge of the outside world, the careful selection of plays likely to appeal to many age groups and the ready emergence of talent, originality and imagination to embody and support, quickly established the popularity of the festivals.

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Unfortunately these festivals were discontinued for lack of organizing expertise and interest.

There has been a new approach to drama and the theatre since independence. The Department of Drama in the Institute of Creative Arts has inaugurated a series of workshops and seminars at various nationd centres, designed to show that drama emerges from the everyday elements of life andto encourage the techniques and devices by which drama may be created.

A consideration of drama must include two main areas-the writing of plays and their presentation and performance. Modern Guyana has not produced a large number of playwrights; the most notable are Norman Cameron (already mentioned, with some dozen plays to his credit), Francis Farrier, Sheik Sadeek, Frank Pilgrim, Winslow Fraser and Bertram Charles. Their plays range from the light and entertaining to the serious probing into community problems.

There is also a small group of playwrights who write one act, three-act and ‘soap opera’ serial plays to be presented on stage or on radio.

In recent years there has appeared on the scene a small corps of Guyanese actors who have gained training and experience abroad and developed a professional status in that they live by their art. They act in the few original films being made in Guyana and they also devise regular entertainments for theatre-goers, improvising sketches, dramatizing poems or parts of poems that are of relevance to the national scene.

Dance

The National School of Dance was inaugurated in January 1974 as one of the five departments of the Institute of Creative Arts, the teaching arm of the National History and Arts council.

Under its director, Madame Lavinia Williams, the National School of Dance, which has 350 students on the roll, with a long waiting list, has developed over a period of two and a half years an impressive repertoire in ballet, modern dance, folk, ethnic and popular dance, both for adults and children. One group consists of students selected to complete the teachers’ course in order to teach dancing in primary schools. The director has carried out research into the numerous folk dances and legends of Guyana and has presented on the stage a number of concert items choreographed from the Amerindian, African, East Indian and other traditions.

The dance in Guyana owes its present emphasis to the fact that at Carifesta ’72, the Guyanese authorities realized the need for a deliberate and planned system of instruction in dancing, to bring this discipline up to the standard enjoyed in other parts of the Caribbean. The services of a gifted teacher of dance, Madame Lavinia Williams, were secured and in a short period, the National School of Dance was inaugurated with the result that the standard of dancing on the stage has improved considerably.

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There has always been a strong tradition of dancing. In the days before 1838, the social activities of the planters always included such dances as the Lancers, Imperial, Caledonians, Quadrille and other dances of the day; the slaves watched the planters with attention and imitated them in their own occasional festivities.

There was, however, the masquerade dance reputedly of African origin, encouraged on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day when costumed and besequined dancers performed spectacular steps to pick up money thrown from balconies to the lively music of the drum, the flute and the violin.

In recent decades, private dancing classes have sprung up in urban areas for the children of the well-to-do, often to prepare them to benefit from finishing school abroad. Similarly, groups of middle-class adults were formed to practise folk-dancing and the square dance as performed in the United Kingdom and Canada. This practice has now ceased.

The nature of the Guyanese and the Caribbean people made it easy for them to indulge enthusiastically and to excel in every fashionable form of ballroom dancing that has come to Guyana at all levels.

Under an agreement between the Government of Guyana and the Government of India, an Indian Cultural Centre has been established in Georgetown and instruction in the art of dancing as practised in various provinces of India is offered by professional teachers.

One noteworthy development is the award of a scholarship to an outstanding Afro-Guyanese dancer to study Kathak dancing at an Indian university.

As a result of the emphasis since 1973 on the teaching of dancing as an art form based upon the language of the body, this discipline has developed considerably, a National Dance Company is being formed out of the National School of Dance and the art of choreography is being practised on a preliminary scale.

The folklore heritage

The National History and Arts Council established in 1975 a Folklore Research Unit to investigate the rich reservoir of folklore material arising from the many racial groups that live side by side in Guyana and to record the intermingling of community traditions. Folklore material can be found in music, songs, dances, menus, medicinal herbs, games and religious customs and especially in the oral tradition of legends, proverbs, Creole words and Anansi stories.

In addition to the stock of proverbs in Hindu and Urdu, and in the Amerindian tongues, there is an immense store of proverbs of Guyanese and West Indian origin which possess certain characteristics in common, for example, the subject-matter makes capital of the behaviour of certain animals, bird8 and insects (dog, monkey, fowl and cockroach are names

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that occur in nearly all of these proverbs); the behaviour of racial groups especially ‘blackman’, ‘baccra’ and ‘coolie’; the conditions enshrined in the proverbs are those of slavery, poverty and hardship, the relationships between rich and poor, the attitudes of the farmer and the gold digger, etc. The element of imagery with a sharply focused picture in a few words can nearly always be seen and there is a strong sense of humour. Various soci- ologists have described the classes of proverbs, for example, those that trap the history of the past and record the social patterns of Guyanese life, those that put a good face on a bad situation and the proverbs relating to sex and marriage.

These Guyanese proverbs are related to proverbs in use throughout the West Indies and scholars have pointed out that many are African in origin. Many collections of proverbs have been published.

The stories of Anansi (also spelt Nancy, Nansi, etc.) abound in Guyana and the West Indies. Anansi, the spider god of Dahomey (now Benin) (some say of Ghana) travelled in the Middle Passage as an unregistered passenger and was an element of hope in the memories of the victims of the slave trade during the three centuries it existed. Anansi is the main character in many stories invented to show him operating in a variety of situations; he represents the will to survive, often without benefit of morality.

Physically weak but cunning, Anansi always manages to extricate himself from difficult situations, and the symbol of this trickster, Anansi, is opposed always to the symbol of the tiger representing the owner of the slave plantation.

The Anansi stories were invented by the slaves as a means of main- taining the will to survive and become free. One can imagine the slaves on moonlit nights in the slave quarters eating peanuts, laughing and inventing these stories with great gusto and so keeping alive their faith in freedom.

Creole is a term for the words used mainly by the lower strata of society to describe observances, customs, rituals, notions, prejudices, superstitions and traditions held by the mass of the Guyanese people living in urban and rural areas. Some embody historical vestiges of attitudes from the colonial past and others represent the residue of colloquial speech and slang from various classes and ethnic groups.

At the present time, as part of the search for identity which Guyanese have been engaged upon since independence, they have been tracing back these words in a desire to identify the roots in Guyanese history and society on which a unique and attractive future may be built.

In December 1975, the Linguistics Department of the University of Guyana organized a one-day festival of Guyanese words based on a series of papers prepared by third-year students at the university. One of the early speakers explained Creole as words in use with meanings that do not appear in standard dictionaries but which have developed meanings understood by the people of a particular area or nation. She went on to describe twelve

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The cultura1 tradition

categories into which Creole fell so far as her research was concerned-parts of the body, menstrual cycle, sexual intercourse, kinship, appearance and behaviour, man-woman relationships, home and environment, food, clothing, obeahism and superstition, pregnancy and childbirth as well as a miscellaneous section.

The festival aroused great public interest, indicating the desire of many people to know more on a number of subjects, for example, the forming of Creole words, the use of Creole expressions in the writing of Guyanese schoolchildren, specialized meanings derived from cane and rice farming, Hindi kinship, cooking, etc. There was stimulating public discussion after each presentation and, later, all available copies of the papers and discussion were sold on the day of publication.

The earliest legends heard in Guyana undoubtedly belong to the Amerindian peoples who first settled there entering from along the Orinoco River system. Everard Im Thurn in his valuable Among the Indians of Guiana (1883) provides the reader with a full account of their lives and customs, houses and settlements, social life and religion, but is at pains to deny certain errors made by Christian missionaries in their accounts of Amerindian approaches to God and prayer. He summarizes the groups of stories concemed with the origin of man, or at least with bis appearance in Guyana and refers to the work of the Reverend W. H. Brett who had collected in 1879 legends from the Arawaks, Waraus, Caribs and Acawois to illustrate their explanation of the Creation, the discovery of the earth and the great flood.

Among these legends are the stories of Amalivaca and the Old Man’s Fall (Kaieteur) which together with stories of Roraima, Tumatumari and other points of Guyanese geography have been assimilated into Guyanese literature.

Other sources of legends and superstitions in the Guyana canon are Dutch, African, East Indian and Portuguese. The pantheon of our legendary figures includes many names and many are the oral traditions ascribed to them-Massacura-man protecting the river, Dai-Dai (sometimes spelt ‘di-di’) protecting the forests, Bakkoo making his owner prosperous, Old Higue, Moon Gazer, White Lady, Coolie Jumbie, Kanaima the avenger, Ganga Manni who sold marijuana, Old Man Pappee who took children away, Wata Mama protector of river folk, Fairmaid and Duppy. Not all are horrendous figures to terrify the imagination of the hearer; for example, Satira Gal and Lulu are personable ladies and Porkknocker is a typical figure around whom many stories have gathered. But certainly there is a rich Iegendary tradition in Guyanese folklore.

Folklore is an all-embracing overlapping category of oral tradition. GuyaneBe folk-songs have already been mentioned in the section dealing with music in Guyana; here can be catalogued the boat songs and shanties like ‘Itanami’ (expressing the fear of a gold digger as his boat reaches the waterfall of that name), work songs or ‘bush songs’ like ‘Timberman’.

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Folk-songs are sung mainly in Creole and are usually songs of censure, irony, satire and ridicule, based upon witty extempore compositions. Favourites, other than those mentioned, are ‘Yalla Gal’ and ‘Missi Lass ’E Gole Ring’. Ring play songs are sung by children in the villages on moonlit nights and include ‘A Chee Chee Lay’, ‘Lay Lay Bessie Down’ and ‘There’s a Coloured Girl in the Ring’.

Some of the better known Queh-Queh songs are ‘Oman a Heavy Load’, ‘Timber Brock a Me Back’, ‘Gal You Glorious Marning Come’, ‘Me Na Dead Yet’ and ‘Buy Me Lova Wan Shut, Me Ga Wash Am’.

To be explored are various children’s games, for example, litey (played with marbles), jacks, strings (these derive from Amerindian pastimes), skipping, etc. Research on many of these has been carried out in other parts of the Carribean, for example, Trinidad and Tobago.

Of course, a full description of folklore can be broadened to include many other peoples’ manifestations and the study of religious customs as well-Yag, ghandi, kalimipuja, Phagwah, Diwali, obeah, novena and the wide variety of Christmas customs related to eating and drinking. Many of these customs and menus were never written down but were passed in an unbroken oral tradition from mother to daughter in an important conservation of household and seasonal values.

Mention must be made also of two other segments of folklore-the wide field of folk medicine and the use of medicinal herbs and old wives’ recipes for illnesses and ailments of many kinds. There is also the enthralling range of dances that come out of the chequered Guyanese past-cumfa dances, masquerade dances, dances at wakes, dances at weddings, Indian dances, the dragon dance, the flower dance, the wine festival dance and the santapee band dance.

This chapter has been a catalogue at times illuminated by examples and meanings of the varied folk heritage of the Guyanese people, a potential wealth waiting to be assimilated by the creative imagination and fully revealed that can but enrich the future of the nation.

Mass media

The radio, the newspaper and the cinema are three channels of public communication which play an indispensable role in developing countries. They inform, they entertain and also they disseminate and popularize cultural values, and the importance of the service they render is directly related to their technical quality and their content.

In Guyana, the instruments of mass media were not always directed to these ends, but with the achievement of independence, these modern means of spreading information and culture occupy an ever more important place in the daily life of the Guyanese people, due to the rise in the material standards of living and to the people’s increasing interest in cultural matters.

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Because of the small population in a not inconsiderable land mass, radio has been very important as a means of public information and of forming opinion over the past thirty years. Nearly every household in remote and riverain areas possesses a radio receiving set, and the broadcasting services bring to the attention of listeners all the major issues of the day.

BROADCASTING

In 1928, British Guiana operated one of the very first short-wave radio stations in the world-there were hardly a dozen stations at that time. The Post O5ce chief engineer, Mr W. K. Brasher and the wireless engineer, Mr A. E. Gagan, initiated radio broadcasting experiments and connected up telephone subscribers on request for the payment of a small fee. These experiments were abandoned in 1931 when economies had to be made.

In 1935 when the Marylebone Cricket Club c a m e to British Guiana, a Guyanese commentator, Mr George Green, gave a ball-by-ball commentary on the cricket games which constituted a landmark in quality broadcasting. At one time, there were two radio stations, VP3BG and VPSMR, but these amalgamated to form short-wave station ZFY, The Voice of Guiana, while the company responsible for the station, i.e. B.G. United Broadcasting Company, a new entity, was incorporated as a limited liability company on 20 May 1938.

In 1951, broadcasting in Guyana became fully professional when ZFY was acquired by Rediffusion Ltd, a radio company operating in the Caribbean, and the name of the station was changed to Radio Demerara. In 1958, the B.G. Broadcasting Company Limited set up a second service, the B.G. Broadcasting Service. Ten years later, the government acquired control of this second radio station to create the Government Broadcasting Service (GBS) and since then the broadcasting needs of the nation have been met by these two services.

The policy of the Guyana Broadcasting Co. Ltd, an amiate of Redif- fusion Ltd and governed by a board of Guyanese directors, is to provide a balanced blend of information, education and entertainment, funding the service by a system of paid advertising. Radio Demerara regards its most important function to be the promotion of national development and national unity and fully supports the government’s aims.

The Guyana Broadcasting Service, which was converted into a public corporation in 1972, lays special emphasis upon the following objectives: helping to achieve national development; changing the society values inherited from colonialism; creating a sense of national identity by programmes based on Guyanese and Caribbean culture; and attempting to stem the influence of foreign cultural material by replacing it with Guyanese- oriented programmes; developing a Caribbean regional approach.

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NEWSPAPERS

Very early in the history of Guyana a government gazette was needed to publish various notices such as the dates and times of arrival and departure of steamships; the proclamation of new official appointments such as governors and chief justices; and the imposition of rates and taxes. How- ever, the era of the modern newspaper, with the practice of competitive journalism, began in Guyana in the 1880s with the appearance of The Chronicle, The Argosy and The Liberal. The Chronicle and The Liberal early became dailies. The Liberal ceased publication in 1885, while The Argosy became a daily paper in April 1907 to maintain the presence of two daily organs in the country.

The period 1905-07 was remarkable for the publication of the weekly, The Creole, edited by an aggressive lawyer-parliamentarian, Patrick Dargan, who attacked the colonial administration on all abuses and misuses of power and wrote vigorously on themes such as colour prejudice and the heavy expenses of sea defences and drainage schemes.

The period 1925-35 was noteworthy for the existence of two editors, A. R. F. Webber and Samuel Lupton, vituperative where each other was concerned, but leading public opinion into the roots of nationalism with their editorials, and proclaiming the need for social change in the name of the colonial people.

The editorial list of the past century includes names of a series of mainly expatriate editors who left their mark on the country, especially C. K. Jardine of The Chronicle and D. Thompson of The Argosy. In recent decades, Guyanese occupied the editorial chairs with distinction, for example, Herman Phillips, H. R. Harewood (the nation’s first public relations officer) and C. D. Kirton, among others.

At the peak of their journalistic power, the cartoon was used in conjunction with the leading article; this practice has now disappeared. In the h s t half of the twentieth century the newspapers made considerable contributions to cultural advancement with their Christmas annuals and their enlightened Sunday supplements.

The history of newspapers in the past few decades is full of collapses and take-over action by successive groups but in the 1950s and 1960s, foreign press magnates invaded Guyana and bought up ailing papers to run them mainly for profit.

At the present time, there is one morning and one evening paper, both owned by a public corporation. In addition to the dailies, the reading public in Guyana is served by a series of political and church organs.

FILM PRODUCTION

‘Of all the arts, cinema is the most important for us’, remarked Lenin at the dawn of Soviet power. The Guyanese Government is fully conscious of the role that film can play in promoting social change, in developing the nation

54


and recording progress and achievement, in educating the people in the tenets of co-operative socialism and in creating a national identity by making the people fully aware of their strong cultural heritage.

There is a total of fifty-one commercial cinemas throughout Guyana with a capacity of approximately 64,000 seats. Many of these cinemas show a majority of films made in India while there is the great flow of films made in Hollywood and by the European film industries all influencing the Guyanese viewer to adopt values that may undermine his sense of national identity.

In 1976, the National Film Centre in Guyana made and released for exhibition a total of twenty-six Guyanese magazine news-reels, four sports specials, six documentaries and two film clips. The productions were made in colour and in black and white and in 16 mm and 35 mm. Some of the films are distributed through the Guyanese missions overseas. One of the more important films produced by the Film Centre was The World of the Caribbean, a documentary depicting the entertainment arts of the wider Caribbean during the 1972 Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts in Georgetown, Guyana.

Film has undoubted value in showing Guyanese audiences the growing response to the Feed, Clothe and House Programme of the government, the successful operation of co-operative groups, the widening of the nation’s social conscience, the building of bridges of understanding, the oppor- tunities for settlement in the hinterland.

Antiquities and the environment

THE NATIONAL TRUST

Soon after the achievement of independence the government began to consider the preservation of its considerable cultural heritage. In 1972, by Act of Parliament, the National Trust was established to preserve buildings of national, architectural, historic or artistic interest, and places of natural interest or national importance and beauty. The trust was also empowered to preserve furniture, pictures and chattels of all descriptions, having national, historic or artistic interest. Finally, the trust was charged with the responsibility of providing access to and enjoyment of such buildings and places by the general public.

As the first part of a national census of cultural property, the trust has made a preliminary survey of part of the national heritage. Religious buildings of the Christian, Hindu and Muslim faiths that come within the purview of the Act have been identified; a number of Dutch military instal- lations, notably Fort Kyk-over-al and Fort Zeelandia on Fort Island, have been noted and summarily examined with a view to possible restoration and access by the general public (it is hoped to develop one of these forts

55


into a m u s e u m of the Dutch presence), an inventory has been commissioned of cemeteries, especially British military cemeteries, graves and burial mounds.

T h e trust is also committed to the establishment of a series of national museums in social history, science and technology, and archaeology, to be integrated educationally into the life of the nation. A house in Georgetown in which the well-known patriot of the early twentieth century, Patrick Dargan, once lived has been acquired and is in the course of conversion into a Social History Museum. In its completed state, it will display household furnishings, including modes of dress, jewellery, tools, handicraft and other artefacts representative of periods in Guyanese social development. It is also proposed to preserve in a M u s e u m of Science and Tech- nology, examples of the technological history of the nation-an early sugar-mill, a steam locomotive, examples of the development of the telephone and trafic systems, etc.

M a n y sites of archaeological interest exist, the majority of which are closely linked with the nomadic life of Amerindian peoples. T h e trust is interested in the programmes of the resettlement of the Akawaios w h e n they have been removed from the Upper Mazaruni region in order to install a large hydro-development project in that area. T h e Akawaios have been resident in the Upper Mazaruni for some considerable time and the National Trust is interested in ensuring that the unique and regenerative adaptation to the Amazonian environment which they represent should be preserved in their n e w home.

T h e area around Kaieteur Fall has been declared a natural park to preserve its character, and other areas are due to be scheduled-for example, a site at Shell Beach where nesting turtles come from many parts of the world. T h e trust has plans to prepare and publish a series of explanatory pamphlets and brochures for use in schools. T h e present act is being reviewed in order to fit the legislation more closely to the needs of the Guyanese scene.

There is a plan under discussion to encourage the formation of county museums in accordance with the government’s regional programme which will preserve historic buildings (for example, old slave Zogies) for the enjoyment of residents.

T h e City of Georgetown, although laid out by French engineers in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, possesses a distinctive architecture of wooden domestic buildings painted white, which is in the Georgian tradition. Care is being taken to identify and preserve the more outstanding examples of this architecture, which has evolved from the single-roomed slave cabane and embodies the jalousie, decorative spandrels and the Demerara window with lowered shutter, pierced sides, bottom board and timber brackets. Fire unfortunately has devastated m a n y areas of the city at different times and there is need for constant vigdance.

Guyana shares with its South American neighbours a great wealth of

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plant and animal life. Much of its wilderness is still unspoilt and the opportunity exists to strike a balance between the preservation and enjoyment of landscape and life forms and the planned development of timber and other natural resources.

The Guyana Shield within which the whole of the country lies, is a core of very ancient rocks on which are found rain forests, swamps, marshes and savannahs. These give rise to an abundance of floral and faunal forms of great interest and variety, many of the animals exhibiting unusual and often bizarre forms and shapes.

There is a long tradition of naturalists who have been fascinated by the Guyanese forests and savannahs and who have come from different parts of the world to study the country’s plant and animal life. Schomburgk, Rodway, Beebe, Snethlage and others have spent long periods studying the variation in form and the accommodation of human beings within the ecology. There is a growing realization of the value of nature and the countryside and of the need to preserve the environment of Guyana in which the first settlers, the Amerindians, established a true relationship with nature in the cause of human survival, health and medicine, and liberation from the tyranny of time.

In 1976, the National Trust became a member of the Caribbean Conser- vation Association, with headquarters in Barbados. The association’s main objectives are: (a) to foster a greater awareness of the natural and cultural resources of the Caribbean among its people; (b) to co-ordinate all significant conservation work being carried out in the Caribbean; and (c) to obtain technical and financial assistance to help member organizations and governments in their conservation work.

As one of its priorities, the Caribbean Conservation Association has urged all Caribbean m e m b e r governments to become parties to the Unesco Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

One of the links between the Caribbean Conservation Association and Guyana is the recently formed Guyana Ecological Society which has addressed itself to investigations on pesticides, nutrition and medical aspects of socio-economic development.

THE GUYANESE MUSEUM

While it was still an uncompleted project forming part of the Agricultura1 and Commercial Society of British Guiana, the Guyanese Museum received from Robert Schomburgk in the early 1850s its h s t recorded &t of a. collection of Hty-five woods native to Guyana. Other travellers made further gdts and the collection was augmented by duplicates of the exhibits prepared for the 1855 Paris Exhibition.

A Natural History Society was established in 1861, but a disas- trous fire in 1864 destroyed its small collection. In 1867, a company, The

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British Guiana Museum Limited, was formed, the shares were quickly subscribed and the museum came into being, opening with an exhibition on 13 February 1868 to house a ‘permanent collection of zoological, bot- anical and other natural products in which the colony is eminently rich’.

The museum has had a long line of famous curators, men whose names are synonymous with their erudition and contribution to the Guyanese national heritage, Everard Im Thurn, John J. Quelch, James Rodway, Dr Walter E. Roth, P. Storer Peberdy and Vincent Roth. The joint results of their work testify to the truth of a claim made 100 years ago that ‘a more interesting field for a student of natural history than Guyana does not exist’.

In 1937 a British colonial administrator, Sir Geoffrey Northcote, declaring open a new section of the museum claimed: ‘It is a well-known fact that owing to the noble devotion of some of the giants of the past British Guiana has by far the finest scientific collections in the West Indies.’ Another administrator, Sir Wilfred Jackson, speaking a year later repeated the claim: ‘I think it is doubtful whether there is a much richer and better collection. . .we have here the foundation of a collection which might very well become and ought to be one of the best known and one of the most famous in the tropical world.’

The records of the museum are full of the reports of explorations and scientific research undertaken under its aegis or in collaboration with other agencies, into all minerals, soils, timbers, fruits, resins, fishes and animals and other specimens of the natural history of Guyana as a means of instructive recreation for all. The museum has been destroyed by fire on more than one occasion but the collections have always been restored by dedicated workers.

The value of the museum has been enhanced by the fact that since 1882, through the pages of the journal Timehri, the successive curators, who have also assumed the editorship of the journal, have recorded for scholars the world over the results of their meticulous research and have established international reputations.

Festivala

CARIFESTA ’72

The celebration of festivals is a valuable and satisfying expression of the vitality of the nation.

The most important event: in the cultural history of Guyana was the 1972 festival of the creative arts in the Caribbean held from 25 August to 15 September 1972 (Carifesta ’72).

Carifesta was a direct result of the initiative of the prime minister, the Honourable L. F. S. Burnham, who both in 1966 at the achievement of

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independence and in 1970 at the inauguration of the co-operative Republic of Guyana, addressed gatherings of Caribbean authors and artists and expressed the hope that there would be a Caribbean Arts Festival, if possible organized on an annual basis, which would feature Guyanese and Caribbean authors and artists whose work in poetry, painting and sculpture would project the dreams and visions of the region and help to foster and develop a Caribbean personality.

The festival was designed to be educational, inspirational and entertaining on a scale and in a fashion that would commend itself to the general mass of the people who live within and around the gulf existing between North and South America.

The prizewinning symbol of Carifesta ‘72 was a brown hand grasping the sun-the Promethean symbol of man in tropical areas seeking ta create and fulfil his cultural destiny by grasping the sacred fire of the heavens.

Of a total of thirty-one countries invited to participate, twenty-eight took part in a programme of activities over three weeks which included the presentation of dance, drama, music, folk arts, sculpture, painting, pho- tography, lectures and poetry readings from these countries; more than a thousand performers, housed together in a neighbourhood called Festival City, were on stage in several venues before audiences totalling some fifteen thousand Guyanese and visitors.

As part of the festival, an anthology, New Writing in the Caribbean, was published with the aim of bringing to the attention of Caribbean readers, the scope and range of literary work being created by Caribbean writers and of starting the dialogue essential between writers and readers.

All in all, Carifesta ’72 proved to be an explosion of talent, celebration and colour which created many links between Caribbean countries.

In 1975, there was a radical change in the concept of the festival in Guyana. Previously, drama festivals, music festivals, literary competitions, and competitions in arts and crafts had been organized separately, but in 1975 it was decided to stage a combined festival with sessions in different parts of the country. A Guyana National Festival was therefore organized around the theme ‘My Community, My Nation’, which combined five categories: visual arts and crafts, dance, drama and verse-speaking, music, and creative writing.

The main purpose of the festival was to strengthen the folk art tradition and identify in the various areas talents capable of being developed to higher standards of performance while helping to enrich the quality of life in rural areas.

Nearly 1,800 entries were received. The forty-four regional sessions and ten visual arts exhibitions which accompanied them were attended by audiences totalling 20,000 persons. More than 600 certificates of ‘excellence’ and &merit’ were awarded by the fifty-six adjudicators who constituted the country-wide panel.

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Cultural agreements

Under the terms of the Caribbean Community Treaty, Guyana is linked culturally with the other members of the Anglo-Caribbean.

The Guyanese Government has &so entered into cultural agreements with more than twenty fiiendly nations. As a consequence of these links, a number of cultural groups have visited Guyana and given performances in Georgetown and other areas. These have included dancers from Cuba and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, acrobats and musicians from China in a programme which has stimulated the enthusiastic appreciation of the Guyanese people.

Guyanese troupes have visited the Caricom countries, Surinam and Nigeria.

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Prospects and recommendations

There has been a considerable increase in cultural activities in Guyana over the past ten years and the Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (Carifesta '72) hosted by the Guyanese Government was the most important cultural event in the history of the nation. For twenty-one days, the outstanding authors, artists and dramatists of twenty-eight nations from the wider Caribbean met in Guyana and performed on stage in music and drama, presented their art, read poetry and discussed the role of the artist in the Third World society in a tremendous explosion of vitality, music and colour that had never been experienced before. It may be described as the excitement of coming of age in Third World terms and attaining a national cultural identity. Even in the preparatory stages when cultural missions were sent to friendly nations, there was a great sense of being open to the world and of being linked with the products of creative imagination from sister nations in the Anglo-Caribbean, and the Spanish, Netherlands and French neighbours in the archipelago as well as the Latin American continent, in a dialogue that searched for common origins and savoured the distinctive fruits of historical evolution.

The sense of excitement and cultural maturity from Carifesta '72 has never died away. This sense was revived in 1975 when the Guyana Festival of the Arts was organized round the theme 'My Community, My Nation' which encouraged a nation-wide series of cultural presentations in arts and crafts, dance, drama, music and creative writing with a strongly national flavour. Guyfesta '75 was a smaller sister to Carifesta '72 on the home front and a surprising number of talents were identified in outlying regions.

The value of Guyfesta '75 was that it encouraged a decentralized approach to artistic and cultural development and in a series of exchange concerts, the best artists of one region were able to perform in other areas with a consequent enrichment in the quality of life on a regional scale.

This reference to the two festivals in recent cultural history illustrates some of the possibilities for further development. In Guyana, there is a

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broad base of functional literacy but a relatively restricted group of personnel trained in artistic creation and the organization of cultural pursuits. Regionalism and its consequent decentralization are possible answers to the problem of distance and inadequate transportation facilities in Guyana. There is need for the careful selection and training of individuals to be members of regional cultural advisory committees, the programmes and activities of which are included in the national development plan.

Another consequence of the egalitarian society is the need to encourage the flowering of the arts in rural areas. Municipalities and local authorities need to have the legal powers and the necessary finance and planning assistance to set up centres of culture and the arts in the various regions designated by the government. It is necessary to find out how adult people spend their leisure time in rural areas, and how the cultural content in education can be enhanced, since education is the usual ‘spring-board’ of a people’s culture, with a view to establishing guidelines on these and similar points.

At a certain stage, there is need also for a large-scale conference on the development of the arts, such as was organized in New Zealand in 1970. At this conference, observations on previous responses, the evaluations of informed opinion and comparison with the results of similar promotion campaigns in other countries could be discussed to prepare the ground for a national cultural policy.

Already it is evident that ongoing research programmes and surveys should be planned in the areas of art, dance, drama, music, literature and folk manifestation. The new institutions, established or being planned by the administration of the Defence Force, National Service, People’s Militia, etc., should all have built into their structures a strong section on cultural development and promotion that is co-ordinated in the national cultural policy. This policy, to be translated into action, must include the formulation of operational principles, administrative and budgetary practices and procedures.

In certain countries, it has been found expedient to establish the framework of a cultural congress meeting, one every three years, surveying the work of the previous triennial period and charting the way ahead for the new period.

On the basis of information already gathered, the administration may have collected enough data upon which to consider the amount of the public subsidy required for the arts, including the operation of the important new cultural asset, the National Cultural Centre, which must be sustained and well used, and to weigh considerations of a widely based democratisation of culture against the need for the highest quality of artistic achievement.

There are at least two further considerations. First, the number of cultural agreements that the Guyana Government has signed with friendly nations calls for the inauguration of a central agency to be responsible for the co-ordination of the resources available to the nation in a deliberate

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planned and sustained campaign to improve the quality of life in Guyana. Secondly, in drafting a national cultural policy the statement of national

goals m u ~ t be borne in mind; this statement stresses the co-ordination and integration of Guyana in the wider community of Caribbean nations, and therefore involves consideration of problems of cultural trends in the Caribbean archipelago.

Ten years do not perhaps mark a long time in the history of a people, but it is important for each new nation to evaluate its goals and conserve its resources.

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Appendix

Culture and sport1

A nation’s culture is its life-style and in%uences the way in which it assesses itself. Culture provides the framework within which the nation identifies its priorities and goals. It is the vehicle by which greater national cohesion may be achieved, greater national discipline inculcated, and greater self- awareness and self-reliance inspired. More specifically, culture includes the expression of the arts, the prowess of the nation in the field of sports and athletics and those elements of the national life which contribute to the complex of traditions, beliefs and community values.

It is germane to any developmental plan that specific attention be paid to identifying and cultivating those values and sensibilities which are common denominators of the different groups and interests which comprise a nation. To this end, a programme has been devised to establish a multi- dimensional base from which our cultural activities and our prowess in the field of athletics and sport will be projected. Such a programme is designed to: (a) develop and foster a sense of national identity and national unity; (b) develop an awareness of the heritage of the past and its assimilations; and (c) develop pride in the achievements of Guyanese at home and abroad so that a spirit of self-reliance and self-confidence will permeate the Guyanese nation and the spirit of co-operation and team relationships among the various sectors of the population will be emphasized.

If such a programme is fostered on a national scale, it should become self-generating and sustain its own momentum, allowing all sections of the nation to identify themselves with a common image and a national ethos.

A n important aspect of the implementation of this programme will be

1. Chapter 23 of the Draft Second Development Plan, 1972-1976, Ministry of Economic Development, Georgetown, Guyana.

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Appendix

the decentralization of the administrative machinery to provide the impetus for this process of cultural regeneration.

Initially, five areas have been identified as centres of culture and sport outside of Georgetown. These are New Amsterdam, Linden, Anna Regina, Corriverton and Uitvlugt.

To make these centres effective will involve the conversion of existing buildings, the erection of new structures and the creation of facilities for sport and culture. At these centres, residents of the surrounding areas will be provided with facilities for training and for display of skills in various areas. Through these centres, it is proposed to discover, identify and foRter talents in the fields of culture and sport which now lie dormant and unrecognized. In addition, these centres will be operated as research units and will collect and collate the music and dance of the surrounding regions, gathering data relevant to the culture of the country.

The overall objective of these research units will be to increase an awareness among all Guyanese of the existing cultural patterns of Guyanese life and to project these for public scrutiny with a view to ensuring their preservation either as a matter of historical record or as a living part of a growing culture.

NATIONAL FESTIVALS

Against this background, it is clearly necessary to sponsor national festivals to provide an opportunity for display and self-examination. National festivals are already organized by voluntary cultural groups. Of these, the Guyanese Music Festival, the National Dramatic Festival and the National Steel Band Association Festival will be further encouraged.

In order to achieve a well-balanced development of the various performing and exhibitive arts in Guyana, an additional festival of a general nature will be held every two years. Preliminaries will be held at the ‘regional’ or ‘district’ levels, culminating with finals in one of the centres already identified. The festival will be sponsored by the National History and Arts Council. The music, drama and steel band festivals will continue to be staged at regular intervals.

In order to provide for widespread involvement in cultural activities, the National History and Arts Council will offer technical, administrative and financial assistance to cultural societies which have a contribution to make in terms of the development objectives and of the philosophy which informs these objectives. This policy recognizes the importance of removing the bancial constraints which now affect the operations of cultural organizations, especially in the rural areas.

The Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (Carifesta) provided a great experience in many ways and showed the need for government sponsorship in many areas if the vitality of Guyanese music, dance, drama, literature and art was to be ensured. In the areas, notably in art, in which the government has, over the years, pursued a policy of deliberate sponsorship,

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Appendix

Guyana emerged among the leaders, In keeping with our assessment and analysis of Carifesta, the cultural centre must now become the focal point for encouraging music, dance and drama.

Phases 1 and 2 of the construction of the cultural centre will be completed in the plan period. Throughout the plan period, training in dance and dance appreciation will be conducted. This programme of training will be the starting-point for a Guyanese Institute of Dance. Already, Guyanese of promise and aptitude have been identified to proceed for development of their art in the Caribbean, in the Third World countries and in some Western States. They will return to participate in the institute. Tutors have also been selected to come to Guyana in order to develop skills in dancing with a view to arousing interest and identifying talent for the subsequent phases of artistic development.

In music, groups will be encouraged to work towards the creation of a national choir. In addition, financial and technical assistance will be given by the National History and Arts Council to drama groups, with a view to providing programming for the introduction of television towards the end of the plan period.

The National History and Arts Council will encourage the performance and recording of local music, and to this end, a recording industry will be established, sharing the facilities of the dubbing theatre to be erected in 1973. A local film industry will be started, and the Film Unit of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Youth strengthened.

PRES ERVATIO N OF HISTORICAL MONUMENTS, SITES A N D ANIMAL SPECIES

The establishment of the Guyana National Trust is intended to serve our historical legacy. During the plan period, funds wilI be allocated for the identification, preservation and maintenance of historical monuments, sites of archaeological interest and the preservation of animal species in sanc- tuaries. The activities of the trust will be co-ordinated with the work of the research unit.

PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL TOURS A N D FESTIVALS

The staging of the Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (Carifeata) in 1972, showed the tremendous importance of international festivals in contributing not only to a greater understanding and appreciation of the culture and art of other countries, but also in mobilizing our own cultural and artistic potential.

During the plan period, Guyana will participate in the Surinam Inter- national Trade Fairs in 1973 and 1975; the Virgin Islands Festival of Arts; the Bahamas Independence Arts Festival; the Caribbean-American Trade

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Appendix

Fairs to be held in New York (United States); the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts to be held in Nigeria in 1974; and the Second Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (Carifesta) to be held in Jamaica in 1975. Moreover, national groups and artists will tour Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Zambia, the United Republic of Tanzania and other countries. In keeping with existing cultural bilateral agreements, Guyana will be host to several countries, beginning with the visit of a troupe from the People’s Republic of China.

D E V E L O P M E N T OF NATIONAL ARCHIVES

New premises will be erected during the plan period to house the national archives. In addition to its normal functions, the archives will serve as the centre directing the work of research units engaged in the publication of historical documents, historical research papers and literature on Guyanese history and culture in order to make Guyanese aware of their identity. The archives will continue to provide historical data on developmental projects and on past experimentation relevant to our development thrust.

SPORT

In keeping with the idea of creating regional centres to generate interest throughout the country and to become focal points for sport and cultural activity, a sports organizer will be appointed in the Ministry of Information, Sports and Culture. He will be required to coach in various areas of sport and to organize groups in the areas to which he is assigned. This organizer will be able to call upon the services of the specialist coaches now in the employ of the ministry.

A sports hall and a banked cycle track will be constructed during the plan period. The sports hall will be built in three phases, all of which will be completed within the plan period. These facilities, centrally located, will provide a rallying point for sports associations within the country and must be seen as complementary to the new emphasis of providing facilities in five areas outside of the capital city.

Private sporting organizations will continue to encourage the development of sport within the framework of the government’s policies and objectives.

Over the plan period, the government’s allocation for culture and sport will total about $(G.)7 million, to be expended as follows (in million dollars): (a) district cultural/sport.s centres, 1.5; (b) sport (hall of sport, games and tours), 1.0; (c) international tours, 0.6; (d) national festivals and exhibitions, 0.4; (e) promotion of music, dance, drama, art and literature (scholarships, visits, workshops, assistance to troupes and bands, publications and lectures), 1.0; (f) government archives and the National Historic Trust, 0.8; (g) dubbing theatre, 1.7.

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Summary review of culture and sport

The major role of culture and sport in fostering a sense of national identity and national unity was an important aspect of the second development plan.

A review reveals that although it is di5cult to measure the increased awareness on the part of the Guyanese of their past heritage and their pride in Guyanese achievements, the plan may be considered as successful to a certain extent. A number of facilities have been provided, notably the National Cultural Centre and the National Sports Hall. The provision of facilities to make films and of course the hosting of Carifesta '72 must be considered in this light.

It did not prove possible to set up the cultural/sports complexes included in this plan, due to di5culties in identifymg suitable sites and finding trained personnel to design the required buildings; there were also considerable financial constraints. With regard to national festivals, one of the more considerable successes towards the goal of nation-wide participation in cultural activities was achieved through Guyfesta '75 at a modest cost.

In promotion of the arts, the Institute of Creative Arts established by the National History and Arts Council, was a step forward in an attempt to decentralize administration. A site has been allocated near the University of Guyana to provide permanent accommodation for the institute, but work on the actual building has not yet begun. The National School of Dance is now housed in the National Park and is running well. The Bur- rowes School of &t has been established in a temporary home at Eccles and is considering expansion of its curriculum. The Department of Creative Writing held a number of seminar workshops outside of Georgetown and a series of lecture-demonstration courses in the capital. The Department of Drama has been holding workshops to develop drama potential throughout the country and broaden traditional conceptions of drama.

Progress was noted in the field of historical heritage. A programme for setting up museums has been finalized. The National Trust was involved in the creation of monuments and the National Commission for Research Materials made a modest contribution to the national heritage.

A certain amount of decentralization of sports facilities took place partly through the creation of regional members in the voluntary associations that are still the pillars of sports organization in Guyana. Regional sports organizers in various fields have been appointed and have begun work.

A n embryonic filming industry now exists in Guyana and some feature films have been produced.

There has been steady progress in the period under review in the arts and in sport. The establishment of the Institute of Creative Arts augurs well for future development.

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Cultural policy in Guyana; Studies and documents on cultural ...

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