THE ANNUAL FOLK FESTIVAL SEASONS HAVE PROVIDED THE PLATFORMS TO SHOWCASE, TO CELEBRATE, AND TO DOCUMENT OUR HERITAGE
WELCOME TO THE
FOLK FESTIVAL 2019 SEASON
Theme: “Ma’iupe = Working together with the Festival Arts.”
By Dr. Vibert Cambridge, A.A. President, The Guyana Cultural Association of New York, Inc.
Although it is necessary and important to understand and to celebrate the histories of Guyana’s individual racial/ethnic communities,
it is equally necessary to begin to explore and to celebrate the histories of solidarity and exchange in the Guyanese experience …
For almost two decades GCA has been exploring and celebrating the wisdom of Guyana’s folk heritage. We believe that our folk heritage is the accumulated wisdom garnered from more than 12,000 years of settlement in the Guyana space. This body of knowledge offers us a way to try to address the seemingly intractable problems facing the people of this land.
For almost two decades, we have been grappling with four interrelated questions:
· Who are we?
· What has been our journey?
· What can we become?
· How do we get there?
Our early efforts have focused on the “Who are we?” question. Through our annual Folk Festival seasons and the “We bridgin …” initiative, we have sought to identify the origins, geographies and histories of what Peter Kempadoo has referred to as our root cultures. The encounters, interactions, and exchanges among the peoples of these root cultures over the past 12,000 years have created the distinctiveness in Guyanese expressions, e.g., art, food, fashion, music, dance, and language.
Exploring “who we are” has also improved our understanding of the long journey of the Guyanese experience. The question “What has been our journey?” brings to mind the spirit of solidarity—working together. This spirit is evident in the Guyanese response to many of our persistent problems, including safety, shelter, clothing, food, economic life, health, and recreation.
This season, we will consider: “What can we become?” and “How do we get there?” Central to these questions is the task of working together—the essence of solidarity. We propose to explore the spirit of solidarity within the Guyanese festival arts.
Guyanese have used natural, imported, and “found” materials. We have bent wire, painted with lights, painted on bodies, and experimented with a wide color palette to create costumes and to decorate floats, public buildings and homes to express the perennial stories of our festivals.
Guyana has many national and community festivals. Among the national holidays in which we experience the festival arts are Mashramani, Phagwah, Easter (including the Rupununi rodeo), Arrival Day; CARICOM Day; Emancipation Day; Amerindian Heritage Month, Eid-al-Adha; Deepavali; Youman Nabi; and Christmas (Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Old Year’s Night). Of course, our individual communities also celebrate “First Crop,” Kwe-Kwe, Matticore, and organize the Turtle Festival, Parasharas, Fairs and Melas. These too also draw upon the festival arts.
Guyanese festivals celebrate births, rites of passage, changing seasons, national political achievements, and the reaffirmation of our spiritual and religious affiliations. The preparation for these festivals is an act of solidarity bridging communities, generations, genders, and ethnicities to apply the festival arts in the design of artifacts and costumes and the sharing of other creative expressions. The Festival arts are barometers of the state of the Guyanese experience.
GCA’s “Spirit of solidarity in the Guyanese Festival Arts” launches a three-year program of activities to culminate in 2020 during the events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. As is our tradition of participation, our goal is to bring together the community (e.g., Guyanese designers, the Neil Chan Foundation, and other stakeholders) to design a program of events to showcase innovations in the Guyanese festival arts. We anticipate that a series of technical workshops will be held in Guyana during 2019.
One of our goals is to promote the Guyanese festival arts with the diaspora. We anticipate that elements of Mashramani 2020 will be shared at major Guyanese celebrations—Atlanta Carnival, Guyana Folk Festival, Labor Day, and Last lap Lime.
The new Ma’iupe phase is GCA’s contribution to the exploration and celebration of the history of solidarity and fusion in the Guyanese experience.
We believe the three-year program will begin to answer the third and fourth questions: What we can become? How we can get there?
As we say in Akawaio, “Tambolo byuk goh’manodok!” “Together we live!”