Over the years, going back to my beginnings, travelling on school breaks to my father’s farm in the Pomeroon from our family home at Hague and Vreed-en-Hoop, and later when I worked for B.G. Airways at Atkinson Field and lived there with the family of my sister Theresa at her home near the airport, I had a great exposure to a wide swath of Guyanese culture that remains with me still. Just today, in a note to my long-time friend George Jardim, I was reflecting on the part that exposure played to my musical career in creating songs that Guyanese gravitated to because it was truly their story I was telling. In my youth, I had been exposed to the culture, face to face, and without being conscious at the time of what was happening I was building a legacy I would later draw on when I turned to song-writing as a youngster growing up on West Dem. I didn’t recognise the process consciously but looking back I see it as the genesis of the musician that people came to know from those Tradewinds songs. I was writing, in fact, about the various realities of life in Guyana, I was reporting, really, not inventing, and it is a process I recommend to any young creators who approach me on the subject, as some do……write or paint or design what you know about.
