Over the last 50-plus years since Tradewinds started, I’ve done a boatload of interviews – radio, TV, newspapers, magazines – in a number of countries, in the Caribbean and North America – but just this week, in a wide-ranging email from a fan, a lady from Grand Cayman came at me with a new one: “A lot of things have been written and said about Dave Martins, and while you may have to think about it I wonder if you could say how do you see yourself?” I had never heard the question before, but I didn’t have to stop and ponder. The answer popped out of me like a cork from a bottle: “Actually, in another conversation here recently, I said to someone that basically I see myself as a country boy from West Dem. There have been a couple occasions where I may have strayed from that, but inevitably I always found myself somehow connecting to that description.”
This month, for instance, as has been reported elsewhere, I was fortunate to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guyana Caribbean Association (GCA) of New York and I had to mention to the Caymanian lady, that the same response would apply to the honour from the GCA. While there may be many factors in that self-appraisal, I believe a principal one is from the lessons of modesty and humility constantly imparted to me by my mother Zepherina in the years I was growing up under her influence at Hague, where I was born, and at Vreed-en-Hoop where I spent my teenage years. The Caymanian lady’s question caused me to reflect on how much those lessons had stayed with me, during all my early years in the music industry, and, in particular, in the mid-1960s, when I entered the CBC-TV Cross-Canada Song Market Competition in Toronto and ended up the winner. This was a major competition, open to musicians all across Canada, then a country of 18 million people, and I was astonished at my achievement. Frankly, I had entered the competition purely on a whim; I was sure I didn’t stand a chance; there were 1,800 other musicians entered. I remember that my wife at the time, Dorothy, watching the telecast of the awards, telling me afterwards of her surprise at how calm I was walking up to accept as the winner. Ironically, while I may have seemed calm, I was churning inside: I’m a country boy from Guyana; what am I doing in this huge North American city competing with all those seasoned musicians? Understand that as proud of my achievement as I was, part of the moment was my surprise at the outcome. This was a long shot; one that completely surprised me. There were other surprises ahead.
Another came shortly after the formation of Tradewinds in late 1966 which I have written about before. In Toronto I had written and recorded four songs and had saved enough money to take the band to Trinidad Carnival in 1967, totally on the gamble of getting the songs on Trinidad radio. Trinis in Toronto told me I was crazy, we were totally unknown in the Caribbean, but I saw it as a calculated gamble and, as it turned out, one of the songs, “Honeymooning Couple” became a hit on radio around the Caribbean and Tradewinds, with a country boy from West Dem at the helm, we were off and running.
Having become known in the region, Tradewinds were then on two tours a year to the Caribbean, from the Virgin Islands to Guyana, annual visits to Trinidad carnival and, to add to that, our popularity in our home base of Toronto was the engine behind my being able to buy a nightclub in downtown Toronto, which became Tradewinds’ home base, playing six nights a week, year round, and travelling on selected weekends to other cities in the USA and Canada. Nobody had to point out to me the almost incongruous scenario this country boy from West Dem was living. There were occasions in the nightclub, We Place, usually jammed on weekends, when I would look out at the crowded dance floor and be somewhat taken aback by what was in front of me.
And then, as Tradewinds popularity grew in the region, and with my own growing wish to return there to live, an opportunity came from Grand Cayman, where the band’s recordings had become popular when we were invited to headline Cayman’s National Festival, Pirates Week. In the wake of that I was offered a weekly Tradewinds gig in Grand Cayman, which led to my selling the Toronto nightclub and moving the band there in the late 1970s. Although I never said anything about it to anyone, the irony for me was that I soon recognized that, despite their success as Caribbean tourism destination, the Caymanian people were, like me, essentially country folk, albeit with a seafaring tradition and plantation life. That affinity was in play as my attachment to the people and their country grew, and I ended up marrying a Caymanian lady, Angela Ebanks, building a home in Grand Cayman, becoming a father of three, and eventually becoming a member of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation (CNCF), later its Chairman, and, later still, taking over as Executive Director of the Pirates Week Festival – the very organization that had brought Tradewinds to the island several years earlier. Looking back on it, the West Dem boy had journeyed far indeed. I recall mentioning elsewhere my awe at being on stage with Tradewinds at Madison Square Garden one year, and Carnegie Hall, another year, in New York – places I had heard about in the movies, as well as our many appearances in the annual Trinidad Carnival and in Guyana during Mash, and the highlight year 1982 when I was honoured with the Golden Arrow of Achievement from President Burnham.
Space does not provide for complete details of all the recognition I have been fortunate to receive, but suffice it to say that the Lifetime Achievement award this year from the GCA of New York adds significantly to the list, coming as it does from an organization, steered by Professor Vibert Cambridge, doing yeoman work in cultural development and sustenance for my native country. The GCA’s wave to me includes an impressive Citation from the City of Brooklyn, New York; quite a leap, indeed for the boy from West Dem.
Finally, in the range I’ve tried to encompass here, to all who have contributed, here and abroad, I express my heartfelt gratitude for what you have shown me over the past 55 years. I am thankful and humbled; this country boy from West Dem.
