By Derry Etkins
Last Saturday, July 31, I had a five-minute glimpse into a possible future for Guyana, through the mind of a radio personality.
It was 17:55 hrs, and I heard a Guyanese male doing a remake of Lionel Abel’s, “Lonely Man”. At the end of this item, there was a DJ-style segue into one of these two songs: “Careless Whisper(s)” by WHAM or “Nikita” by Elton John. The transition was seamless! Someone who had
never heard either of the two would not know that those songs were decades apart! Pardon me, but I was so pleasantly surprised 1) by the re-make and 2) by the smoothness of the transition, that my memory of the second song is vague.
Nice work, by the way, Mr or Ms Radio Personality! (The person On-Air didn’t speak, even as we crossed the 18:00 hrs mark.)
Those who remember differently, please correct me, but, I don’t remember ever hearing a song recorded by one Guyanese re-recorded by another. I am deliberately construing that to mean, that there are indeed Guyanese who respect and revere other Guyanese artistes. I am also going to optimistically assume, that it was a young Guyanese artiste who did the re-remake, paying homage to an “older” artiste.
This listening experience reminded me of two challenges I threw out to my good friends and colleagues Burchmore Simon and Bonny Alves. The first was to add one Masquerade tune to their Mashramani offerings, each year. The second challenge, based on a suspicion that had become an observation, that there are young people are dancing to and enjoying ‘Oldies’, was, to write some new songs that “sit on” or “ride” the ‘Oldies groove’. To get a clear understanding of what I mean by ‘Oldies groove’, think “Stand by Me” or anything by The Drifters.
Now, to some people, the Oldies style might conjure up images of their grandparents dressed in outdated clothes, doing a three-step. I now include all the songwriters and producers in this challenge. Let’s use our knowledge of chords to write modern songs in this style. Let’s use the modern production techniques and sample libraries available to us. The groove is already there and the market in Guyana is readymade. This could be one of the opportunities for Guyana to make her statement. YES! You heard right, with a modern ‘Oldies’ sound! Let’s make the paradox work for us. That very contradiction could be the turbo boost to take the concept over-the-top, as the saying goes.
Imagine Tennicia De Freitas or Adrian Dutchin or Vanilla on stage singing the Guyana version of the modern ‘Oldie’, with Natural Black doing a Guyanese style spoken-word aka rap aka ‘Gyaff’ section!
