Wordsworth McAndrew, who recently passed on after a brief illness in the United States, was born and grew up in Georgetown. He worked at the Guyana Information Services, Graphic and Daily Chronicle Newspapers and, after training at the BBC in the UK, as a broadcaster with the Guyana Broadcasting Service. McAndrew is to Guyana what Louise Bennett is to Jamaica: An archivist and ambassador of our folk traditions, who committed his life’s work to ensuring we do not forget our collective pasts, and to celebrating our nation/native tongue. This week Guyanese John R. Rickford, who delivered the obituary at Mac’s homegoing celebration in New York on May 2nd, remembers him in a modified version of a tribute that first appeared on the Signifyin’ Guyana website.
By John R. Rickford, Professor of Linguistics
at Stanford University
Wordsworth received his formal education at Teacha Marshall’s Prep School, Christ Church Anglican School, and Queen’s College. He became president of the Literary and Debating Society in 1953-54, and served as Assistant Scoutmaster in 1953-54 and 1956-57. His higher education included a degree in Communications at the University of Guyana. But his greatest teachers were the ordinary men, women and children of every race and creed in his native land, whose folktales, ghost stories, legends, songs, proverbs, jokes, riddles, oral histories, beliefs, ceremonies, games, foods, superstitions, holiday customs, magic, ways of healing and hurting, birthing and burying he made it his business to study, in infinite detail, over his lifetime.
Mac was also an accomplished poet, partly influenced by A.J. Seymour and the Wednesday night poetry gatherings A.J. hosted with poets like Martin Carter, Ian McDonald, Ivan Van Sertima, Alex Best and Henry Josiah. His poems include the legendary “Ole Higue,” and other published but less widely known works, like “Barriat,” and “Legend of the Carrion Crow.” Under the tutelage of Celeste Dolphin, he also went on to win several verse-speaking competitions at the Guyana Music Festival.
I got to know Mac quite well from about 1974 when I returned to Guyana to teach at UG and do fieldwork in Better Hope and other rural areas. He accompanied me on several occasions, joining in the interviewing about language, folklore, folk life and culture with great delight, and branching into other areas (like the Kali Mai Puja ceremonies held weekly at the house of Dora, a Better Hope/East coast legend). Some of that material found its way into his wonderful radio show, “What Else?” and into the slim but informative “Ooiy!” folklore manual he published.
He also participated in the “Festival of Guyanese Words” conference that we held in Georgetown, featuring research presentations, but with valuable feedback from those whose expertise as farmers, stevedores, or just a native Guyanese qualified them to extend and challenge our findings. He contributed a paper on Guyanese folksongs, with a short example from each “chapter” of the folksong book, as he put it (“Representational,” “Congo,” “Queh-Queh,” “Pork-Knocker,” “Ring Play,” “Cumfa” and “East Indian Rhyming Song,”). He helped immeasurably with proof-reading, the word-index, and other aspects of the publication that resulted from that conference, and he even stood with us on street corners to sell the publication.
I always thought his name was well suited to his love of words, and wrote “Words worth it!” on the title page when I gave him a book one year.
I learned a lot from Mac over the years. He had an absolute love for Guyanese “culchuh” and an infinite interest in every variant of every tradition that Guyanese and West Indian peoples of every ethnic group had inherited and transformed. I learned from him about how to do fieldwork well.
For instance, if someone said they played a game called “Airy Dory,” and asked if he’d ever heard of it, he’d either say “No,” (although I knew he had heard several accounts of it already) or otherwise indicate that he wanted to hear this particular person’s version. Invariably, some new detail, some local variant would emerge in the course of the narration, and his understanding of the full range and complexity (and perhaps history) of that cultural institution would be enriched in the process.
I also learned from Mac the importance of lavishing time and attention to people in the course of fieldwork—taking time not only to ask them about the particular things you were interested in, but to “lime” with them, take a drink and eat some food with them, show them that you cared about them as human beings. I contrast this, when I teach my own fieldwork course, with the experience the author Studs Terkel reports in one of his books in which an interviewee asked him to stay and shoot the breeze after he’d conducted an interview. When he said he had another interview across town to get to, the interviewee rebuked him: “Hey, how’s it gonna sound—this guy, Studs, comes to my house, gets my whole life on tape, and says he’s gotta run?” As Terkel put it, afterwards, he cancelled his other appointments and spent a memorable evening at the guy’s home. But in retrospect, he wondered how he could have been so thoughtless. Wordsworth, who thoroughly enjoyed human interaction (even when it involved arguing about something, for the sheer love of argument) and who was a real people person and gyaaf-man, helped me avoid that kind of mistake.
I could go on about Mac’s skills as a folklorist, culturologist, radio personality and his power as a poet/performer (anyone who has ever read or heard him perform his “Ole Higue” poem will know whereof I speak). He published at least four books of his poems locally, and three of his poems appear in the 1989 Longman anthology, Voiceprint: An anthology of oral and related poetry from the Caribbean (edited by Stewart Brown, Mervyn Morris and Gordon Rohlehr). I hope someone will establish a website where we can share stories about Mac, Guyana’s greatest folklorist, and what he meant to Guyana and to each of us. Vibert Cambridge at the University of Ohio has started thinking about this and a symposium in his honor is being planned for the week before Carifesta. Best of all – and I am sure Mac would agree – would be for Mac’s notes, recordings and articles to be collected, digitally archived and made freely accessible for future generations of Guyanese and others to study and enjoy.
Walk good, my friend, or as our Surinamese neighbours say, Waka bunu.
For Scouta Mac, by Marc Matthews, London, April 2008
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
BATEAU
missy neva loss
missy neva loss
missy neva loss
no gol’ ring
nah Anancy wuh tek um
say she din deserve um
cause nat a drop ah she sweat
season d bread she ate
Mek he tek it an gie it to
san’fly fuh put pun
mosquito daata finga
fuh marry am
Down Below.
BATEAU
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
BATEAU
round d-thankgiving table d initiates
tranced ridden by forces forged
to downpress grinding oppression
dance trance up through
and down centre pole sanctuary
of ancient memory.
moon drum ah cut
rain pun tinnin tambourine
footbottom ah hol’ beat
stamp by stamp pun d dutty
Cuffi, an dem nameless warriors
dat back-ative he, foot ah beat time
inna d groun, d moaning groun
call Quamina fuh tek d stand
an Jack fuh bear witness
dat d mandingo an d congo
haul way d-whip from d-driva
in endeavour.
BATEAU
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
BATEAU
Call d name dem name
ah d villages bearers of d strain
nabaclis, bachelors adventure
whim an maria’s pleasure
west coast berbice
corentyne essequibo,
beterverwagtin plaisance
an better hope Demerara
buried in place are d tales
folklorist swap of heroes an’ heroines
who no plaque on playing
field reminds, no celebratory
chantel sings their names
in dis lan ah all kinna man
an plenty plenty ossa roaring
watta, dis piece a fruitful lan
dem tek an mek eyepass
pun am, haullin out wuh dem
neva put down.
Rick Chick Chick Congatay
granfadda breakfast is a
empty tray.
BATEAU
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he
march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam
fairmaid wrap she comb
wit silva paypa playing
song wit churlie, fuh
carnfuse ole higue an
mesmerize moongazer
place yu han tenda pun
d drum skin, open d door
fetch d-creek watta sprinkle
pun she face stop she befoe
antabanta tek she mek she
dance fuh dutchman jumbie
between d oleanda, mango
jasmine an’ neem, guava
peepal tree an’ carrion crow bush
slice d air wit cow pissle
brand d-arm ah mamma kali
unconditional devotee, like how
Demerara have typee
fuh potaro, is potaro toe-t-lo-t-poe
mek she gie she maiden to essequibo
an rorima pitch he picknney
like bengaloo baboo all way
to parimaribo fuh bring back
bacoo an duppy
BATEAU
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
BATEAU
daddy gone daddy gone
daddy leff cove an john
fightin stick in he han
fuh stan up fuh
d rights ah d broddaman
dem inna enmore
an walk d line wid
all like crichlow bechu
padmore maryshaw buttla
carta césaire markham
salkey an bruce st John
an lea we hear yu
call out d-names ah dem
dat you know, befoe
somebady halla d final shout
lea we go
BATEAU
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
Scouta gone Scouta Gone
Is
whea Scouta gone? Scouta Gone whea d-beat ah d-drum dat he march to
born. Naah dea whea scouta gone, pam pa lam.
To d-four kornas sprinkle d white rum
An praises be d day dat Scouta Mac
Born
PAM PA LAM
Tinnin Ben’ an d-story jus begin.