Dear Editor,
By the time this letter is published well-known radio personality Mr Noel Adams would have had his heart surgery which was slated for September 12. I wish the Jazz for the Asking supremo well and a speedy recovery.
The NCN staff and all who contributed to Mr Noel Adams receiving his pacemaker did a good humanitarian act. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to the name Noel Adams and the voice that goes with it; the ‘Jazz man’ was once a very popular radio personality and was a household name to Jazz fans. He was also responsible for many talent spotting radio shows: ‘Teens Ville,’ ‘On show young Guyana,’ ‘ In search of a Star,’ and even the drafting of a music policy for NCN as we were informed. I think I can recall – and I hope I’m right – there was a poem written by him with which I was familiar, namely, ‘Visiting Home,’ which reads in part: “I’ve come back to wash the top root of my early years in the swelling of your tide, the years have wearied me and I am now an old man battling against the waves to reach the shore-certain to sink… old age and love will bring me back someday… love dig my grave, grave keep my bones, deep in your lap in the Pomeroon.”
Editor, after all those long years I finally got a chance to see the Jazz man on TV for the very first time appealing to the public for assistance. Like most people I tried to match the voice I knew for so long to the personality I was seeing; it took a short while before I fused the two. A voice is indeed a strange and powerful tool, it can play tricks on one, mislead. Looking at the programme my mind kept churning, and I was somewhat indignant to see that after almost fifty years of steadfast service with an entity ‘Uncle Noel,’ whom many young guns now so sweetly call in dire need of help has to go cap in hand in order to undergo surgery to keep the heart beating.
Now how many big-time businesses – I think the term used is corporate Guyana – have we not seen making generous ostentatious donations to events that are literally worthless, pumping large sums of money into questionable projects without a second thought, some quite bizarre and debauched. Others give freely or grudgingly according to their game plan, since as is said, everything is done with an eye to something else. The thing is, the Jazz man does not fit the bill; he is just not the personality or kind of humanitarian project from which the money barons can realize a field day. Still, thankful we all must be for having a sprinkling of good, genuine, compassionate folks around. And I guess that there will be some – both old and young – who while they wouldn’t be bold enough to utter it aloud would be thinking: 50 years on a job! What have you been doing all along? No doubt a valid question, yet it must be examined against the background of influencing factors.
One of the things I’ve come to accept in life is that we all need the grace of a little luck –Yes, siree! It matters not what we have, who we are or where we’re at, though there are folks who behave as if they are vaccinated against the vicissitudes of life, forgetting that in the best regulated and well-planned family structure there are unguarded moments and disappointment.
Anyway, the reality is that our society is far, very far from taking care of those walking in the rain or living on the edge of a sword; we still have countless ones who as the Jamaicans would say, have to ‘box food out of hog mouth to survive’; who are forever at the mercy of a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.
I can remember there was this little girl – I think she was about 6 or 8 years old at the time, that was about 4 years ago – who was fighting desperately to save her sight and was pleading for financial assistance for the operation. I can’t say whether she was fortunate or not, but trust me I will sure revisit the matter now that the Jazzman situation has come to light.
But I have to say that though the exercise was necessary and a good one, to me it looked somewhat cheap; we see the Jazzman standing looking a bit shy yet thankful, while the box, Noel’s box, is opened and the 100,000 is announced and handed over to him. He stands with the collection – a bundle of bills in hand like a mini-bus conductor – surrounded by NCN staff as one member pleads genuinely with the public to do their best to reach the target of a little over a million which at that point was just about half; “we still have a very long way to go” she said. The expression on her face, the tone of her voice were a clear indication that she was not pleased with the general response and never for a moment did she try to suggest the going was good, unlike the MC who made it look so. But I know beyond a shadow of doubt, betting pennies to pins had the Jazzman been cut from the cloth of the gentry his box account # 1732098 would have long been shaking the tambourine singing hallelujah.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
