One night last week, at the final of the GT&T Jingle and Song Competition was one of those occasions when I felt to speak and didn’t. Fortunately, for me, I have this column where I can say now what I should have said last Thursday night.
On the surface, the situation was relatively simple: early in the show, as the 10 finalists started appearing, several of them were greeted by loud booing from certain sections of the crowd. Now, I understand that booing is part of the professional entertainment business but that’s the simple part; there are occasions when it goes deeper than that, and this was one of them.
In the first place, this was not a roster of seasoned professionals accustomed to the rigors of show business. These were almost totally green performers, many of them on stage for the first time, some in their teens, putting a tentative foot out into the entertainment waters, with original songs the public had never heard before. If you don’t know the entertainment business, let me tell you – that is a mountain.
Frankly, the booing from the audience in the first half of the show was a disgrace, and to these young performers, out there alone on that daunting Cultural Centre stage, facing that massive crowd, it must have a felt like a punch in the belly. If you love a performer you clap and shout and wave, as many did; if you don’t like a performer, sit on your hands, and perhaps mumble to somebody next to you, but booing is not only bad manners, it’s stupid. You are behaving like a lout.
In this competition, the contestants were required to write a jingle as well as a song and then go on stage and perform an established song and an original song; that’s a tall order. I know this is a family newspaper, but the only word that fits that is the unique Guyanese word for something very big and heavy that starts with a “g” and ends with a “y”. (Guyanese have good imagination; use yours.)
People dismiss jingles as just 30 seconds of fluff, but it is one of the most difficult disciplines in music, because in that format you have to come up with an interesting melody, with a clear message, a good intro and a good ending, all within 30 seconds – many popular songs take that much time for just the introduction.
Secondly, the sheer logistics of this competition, to winnow out 10 finalists from 1,000 entrants, meant that the several days of rehearsing and polishing that were needed for these selected singers were simply not available. I spent some time with the 17 semi-finalists to help them with stage presentation and the tightening of songs, and I could see how committed and intense they were, and, very often, how talented, but they were newcomers and the audience should have given them that consideration.
Two final points: Despite what the “American Idol” approach may convey, it is a very rare thing for talent to ignite like snapping your fingers. When you see a Norah Jones or an Usher appear, apparently out of the blue, there are years of experience and hard work back of all that. Many of the GT&T performers are talented, but they remain beginners looking to find their artistic way and they need time, lots of time, to suss out what they are doing and how to do it. Indeed, on that very night, we saw several instances of a singer being lukewarm in one performance and being very impressive in his/her second rendition.
But the final point I want to make here, and the most important, is that as Guyanese we have to be more supportive of our own. One of the performers, perhaps in reaction to the boos, spontaneously commented at one point later in the show that all of the performers on stage that night were winners. I applauded, as did many others. It was true. I have seen that process, most of it requiring you to perform cold, with no backing, in front of seemingly impervious judges, leave grown people in tears. It is a tough task.
Perhaps an influence at play here was that American talent show where people who are manifestly bad come on stage and the audience boos them. First of all, that scenario in that particularly banal television programme is planned. The performers are chosen precisely because they are terrible, and the audience is actually encouraged to boo them. It’s American “entertainment”, folks, but it’s a pathetic practice and, anyway, why do we feel we have to copy whatever comes out of America? If you watch that country, especially of late, there are a lot of things there we shouldn’t emulate, and this is one of them.
I was offended by the booing because I know how much effort and sweat and tears went into those young people coming out there and trying to win us over. I was involved a bit behind the scenes with this talent search, and I know how hard the people involved here from GT&T, like Renatha Exeter, were straining to get this thing right. I know how committed the production crew of Dexter Pembroke and Gareth Daley were. I know how much Gem Madhoo-Nascimento was resorting to Tylenol. I know of the late nights with Darnley Major in the recording studio, and the efforts of the Heat Wave backing band to learn almost 30 songs in two days, and play them live, without backing tracks or sequencers. And I bled for these young performers going through that elimination grind.
During my turn on stage I didn’t say anything about the booing, and I regret that. I should have taken time to say to the crowd, “These are your people, reaching for the stars, trying to make a light shine for them. It’s a difficult road, and they need a lot of support to stay on it. As Guyanese we should be giving them support. If one of these performers makes it, we will be the first to claim them as Guyanese, so try and encourage them in the early going. Save your boos for the people who dump garbage in the gutter, or speed on the highway, or beat up women.”
In retrospect, if I had spoken out I might have gotten hit with some boos, as well, but that’s okay. I’ve been in this game for over 40 years and I can deal with that. Those young people on Thursday, taking that first tentative step, didn’t deserve the treatment that crowd gave them. I have written and said on many occasions, here and abroad, how proud I am of my Guyanese people.
Thursday night, sitting in the Cultural Centre, hearing those early boos, I was ashamed.
