In a recent column, Kissoon listed his favorite singers as Johnny Mathis, Patrizio Buanne and Andrea Bocelli. They may all be good singers. But as favorites they do reveal a cultural disconnect for a would-be human rights commissioner in Guyana, or anywhere, and a need to set some requirements.
Freddie's history of activism is the reason l supported his pitch for human rights commissioner. He was a member of Movement Against Oppression (MAO), formed to protest police brutality of the early 1970s. MAO morphed into a coalition now known as the Working Peoples’ Alliance (WPA), co-founded by Dr. Walter Rodney. In 2011-12, WPA morphed into a coalition with A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance for Change (AFC) to contest the 2015 presidential election. He has since apologized for his role in the latter. He supported Rodney and went to revolutionary Grenada when it needed help: both major points supporting his petition. Freddie has been consistent in his critique of bureaucracy and on behalf of the oppressed, including an overhaul of time and money-stealing local banking practices, an end to arbitrary police-stops and shakedowns, non-responsive bureaucrats and draconia marijuana laws -the latter affecting mostly young men of African descent. The specifics I will address in future essays. But Kissoon never says a word about the real force-field of influence and why those practices persist; the reasons are imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, global capitalism and its symptoms, racism also known as White supremacy. For Freddie, it seems as if Guyana exists in a vacuum, a lost world, without any influence from abroad. His music choices challenge that position.
Freddie came of age in the 1960s and 70s and in that Guyana, and especially on Sundays, music on the radio was about falling in love, breaking hearts, missing love and betrayal. These songs were most often performed by White men and women.This diet had an impact on our cultural formation. Things began to change by the mid-70s, but still reflected the apartheid that is in music, especially if made in the US or Europe. This prioritizing of things European and American remains the case, in large part, whether it is music, philosophy, or political organization. Music is more accessible now than then and has an added ability; our preferences may reveal our deeper selves and our understanding of our place in the world.
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| Andrea Bocelli |
Mathis, Bocelli and Patrizio Buanne can easily be extended across generations to include Elvis Pressley, Tom Jones, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, Engelbert Humperdinck, of the 60s anf 70s and more recently Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Kenny G, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Iggy Azalea, Adam Thicke and Adele. Buanne won an ‘Elvis’ imitation competition at age 15. First prize was a visit to Pressley’s estate at Graceland. We did not know then, in the 1970s, it was all built on a lie, a fraud really. But we do know now. And what does that say about our infatuation with the beneficiaries of the injustices?
It is true that music has the capacity to transcend race, and class too. And I can hear my detractors muttering about ‘there is no race in music’ or ‘ music is universal’. If only we lived in such a simple world and ‘race’ music never existed. Race is embedded in society and therefore in music. It is a factor in the system of music production and popular success. Johnny Mathis is African-American. His style is not that different from Bocelli and Buanne. Buanne often covers Tom Jones’ hits especially in live performances: songs like “Delilah” and “I Who Have Nothing”. He was once described as Tom Jones meets Julio Iglesias. Often missing from the narrative are the men and women whose music they cover or imitate. At the exclusion of African descended musicians like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Chuck Berry musicians like Jones, Humperdinck, Pressley, The … Stones and many similar outfits made their names imitating African American performers; and held sway on the airways. Black music had and has its audience. It was known in the 1960s and 70s as ‘race’ music. But it could not reach the widespread success of the aforementioned White performers. This ‘Whitewashing’ of music and of history is well documented. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom revisited the stolen lives and music from an earlier period: the 1920s and 30s. This is the fraud. We may not have known in 1970s-Guyana that the rotation list on our radios was based on an injustice.
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| Patrizio Buanne |
One of the reasons for this travesty is that many of us view race through eurocentric lenses. Even when we self-reflect, it is not an accurate reflection. This is not entirely our own fault given our history and education. We don't always see the ongoing negative effects of Europe’s attempts at conquest and control of the rest of the world. Instead, we adopt some of those same attitudes. Kissoon claims a color-ethno-race-blindness for himself. And credits his origins in, and commitment to, the Guyanese working class as the bases for his activism and philosophy. But much more is required of a commissioner. Freddie, or any candidate, should be able to demonstrate a true understanding of ethnic differences and power, sometimes referred to as racism and how that has inserted itself into simple everyday living as in our music.
Music is a very intimate experience in its making and its enjoyment. It is close to our hearts. It jogs memories. It reminds us of past loves and losses. We share it among our friends like food. It enters the rotation of our brain, sometimes without invitation. It is a reflection of our culture and important in expressing who we are. On the surface, this essay may seem like a critique of Freddie. And it is. But it's really a critique of so many of us who claim colorblindness, or no ethnic bias, as a response to charges of racism or ethnocentricity. It is a critique of colonialism. To the extent these things can be known, Freddie is Asian, East Indian. He is not the only Guyanese lover of Johnny Mathis, Patrizio Buanne, and Andrea Bocelli. Everybody loves good music. Right? These singers are loved all over the world.
Whether unwittingly, or not, we must guard against becoming agents of the thing we speak-out against. Freddie has used his platform to target the leadership of the predominantly African, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). The APNU-AFC coalition won the 2015 presidential election with Freddie as a prominent member. They lost the subsequent 2020 election then engaged in mindless shenanigans to retain power. By then Freddie had long distanced himself from his colleagues. He has been hardest against the WPA's African-identifying members, questioning their commitment to the working class and their failure to publicly denounce the behavior of the APNU-AFC coalition and its agents in the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in the aftermath of the coalition’s 2020 elections loss to the predominantly Ethnic-Indian, Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP). A commission empaneled under the PPP found the Peoples’ National Congress (PNC) culpable in Walter Rodney's 1980 murder. Now, the PNC is the most powerful member of the APNU coalition with Rodney's WPA ensconced in that coalition. Freddie's accusations include racism, betrayal of Rodney, and collusion in APNU's attempts to steal the 2020 election.
I take no issue with Kissoon's criticisms. However, many of us are so steeped in western civilization, including the targets of Freddie’s criticisms, it is often difficult to see the real causes and effects of ethnocentrism: eurocentrism in particular, and how our own role in that is as a result of our education and euro-socialization. Many of us, Freddie Kissoon included, seem to believe the big problem in Guyana is ethnic insecurity between ethnic African and ethnic Indian populations. He often defends himself with statements about his late brother's wife who is of African descent, and other family members by marriage, also of African-descent. He would be laughed-at anywhere else. ‘My best friend is Black’ is not a defense to charges of racism and must be rejected. In order for us to defeat racism we need to recognize all the ways it manifests and to help each other see those ways. Ethnic conflict is one of the ways White supremacy manifests and the continuation of it as ideology is tantamount to accepting a position of powerlessness.
Our political leadership, of all the parties, come steeped in the conflict. It is a condition of one's political success. When one ethinic group sees another ethnic group as a threat, they are doing the work of both their enemies. To subscribe to it is to hand over your power to something you see as more powerful, something foreign. It's not enough to critique it when it shows its ugly head. We have to excavate its origins. A commissioner needs to know this and we have to repeat it in our essays. It is not an opportunity for romance and nostalgia. We shouldn't expect people to know this instinctively. Should we?
It is one thing to protest individual incidents of bias and inequity. It is another to identify systems of inequality. And there is a third level. Kissoon is only a vessel through which I can make the point. We know so much about him, we feel like we know him. The point is that Eurocentricity is the primary problem and not the conflict between Indo-centrics and Afro-centrics.
| Marvin Gaye |
Let me be clear, there is a problem of ethnic insecurity in Guyana. Afro and Indo-centrics may yet lead us to another civil war as the one from 1962 to 1964. A commissioner might do well reconciling that and we know who were the main intervening forces, bearing promises of democracy while funding that tragedy. It was repeated in Grenada, Panama a few times, Haiti too, Nicaragua, and everywhere else. Imagine receiving counsel from the US: a country where race is still, too, a proxy for political affiliation or is it the reverse. In Guyana, as can be expected, this is also the case. However, the primary ethnocentricity problem in Guyana is not that between Indians and Africans or the Indigenous or the formerly indentured groups. It is the same as in the US. Eurocentrity is a problem in Guyana. The way Eurocentricity manifests is in a peculiar brand of racism we call White supremacy. And worse, many of us contribute to its continuing strength.
White Supremacy is racism and it is the force that forced us all together. 'Together' may not be an accurate description of our condition. Ethnic insecurity is not the same as racism. Similarly, colorism is not racism. They derive from it. In some ways I am attempting to redefine racism or at least create levels of racism. Calling an ethnic group a derogatory name may be racism. But the ethnic insecurity between Indians and Africans comes as a consequence of racism. It is a consequence of a global phenomena called White supremacy, embedded in our culture, ideas and institutions that often go unnoticed and often by those railing against racism. It has its own torturous history which need not be repeated here. It is not something a Black bestfriend, or Black spouse can absolve. To think so is to adopt aspects of racism as our own. It is what we have been fed and it has become our sustenance. Our music preferences are only a reflection.
There was a time when Bob Marley’s music could not get airtime in Guyana or anywhere including in his country of birth. Thankfully he persisted. Everywhere else, we suffered under this global affliction and censorship from White supremacy intended to shape our cultural consciousness. It achieved substantial success. Not only was the music whitewashed, but the proceeds as well. Stephanie Mills, the famous Broadway and R&B star is credited with this statement on the music industry, “I think they want R&B, but they don’t want it from us,” …..“They want it from Adele and Justin Timberlake and those people.”. It's not just the popularity but the more lucrative ownership of rights to the music, your master recordings, and residual payments for publishing rights that have also been denied its rightful owners. Knowing this, do you listen to Adele differently? It's not personal. It's White supremacy.
This parting anecdote speaks to the current situation in Guyana. In October 2021, I took three nieces, ages 18 to 27, to the Hard Rock Cafe, a stone’s throw from Freddie’s home. It was their choice. It happened to be Karaoke evening. The DJ and a few brave souls tried their best at some of the same songs that Freddie likes, Adele and company. After 3 visits to our table the DJ got one of my nieces to agree to sing. It was her birthday. She asked for 'You'll Never Find a Love" by Jamaican, Christopher Martin. The DJ was very apologetic after several searches conceded he did not have Chris Martin. My niece declined the DJ’s requests to sing another song. It was Chris Martin or nothing. These young women have no issue with Adele, or Justin Timberlake, or any of it. You might find them humming Adele during their daily house chores in their South Georgetown home. Martin is a young balladeer singing a mix of Lovers’ Rock and Dancehall and in patois mostly, of course. The Hard Rock Cafe exchange is important because it has everything to do with race, color and class in Guyana, still, today.
Not so long ago, steelbands in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and most likely everywhere else were asked to play a ‘classical’ piece as part of our national music festivals. ‘Classical’ evolved to mean music composed by Europeans like Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Debussy. Later the bands were allowed to play one other song: a warm-up. The message was that unless a band can play these ‘classics’ they did not deserve a place among our national bands. European music was the real music and often judged by visitors. These bands rehearsed for months to master, by memory, these compositions. They received help from musicians trained at the academy because working class steelbands-people had no access to those compositions.
Good or great White musicians who understand and cite this history cannot absolve the racist culture that prioritized them. Bonnie Raitt has started a conversation for reparations to compensate musicians who suffered under this system. Cristina Aguilera and, the late, Amy Winehouse are examples who always paid homage to the origin of the music. Artistes, especially Black artistes, singing about inequities and injustices were kept at a minimum. So Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and the O'Jays, as examples, were kept at a disadvantage. In Guyana, we depended on a family member or friend returning from abroad to bring a vinyl record. The global music revolution would begin to resonate among the youthful with Aretha Franklin, Marley and Tosh asking us to 'get up, stand up, stand up for your rights’ and demand 'Respect'. Rasta reggae and the early dancehall of Big Youth and U-Roy were even ‘worse’ i.e. more difficult to obtain. It was smuggled-in in its early days.
Maybe, the authorities thought that if you are singing about love you are not singing about revolution and the horrors of colonialism, police brutality and corruption. They would be sadly mistaken because it's a revolution to truly love ourselves, our families, our friends and the rights of all humans. And from there the need for radical change becomes much clearer. Global intellectuals like Cornel West and the recently deceased bell hooks have centered love and music, the blues in West’s case, at the core of their critique of western civilization.
These racist practices may not have been that important if it was restricted to music. I too may hum an Adele bar. But think of that practice of prioritizing whiteness as applied to every endeavor and institution. Apply it to the law, commerce, Exxon oil exploration contracts, policing, education, access to vaccines, healthcare, housing, and you see what danger simple pleasures may hide.
There is no romance and nostalgia in banking practices slowed by US anti-money laundering laws, or going to jail for a spliff because it is still a category 1 controlled dangerous substance under US federal laws. We do not see the connection with local practice and US hegemony. The whole world should now know about police brutality and the devaluation of Black Life.
One day we will all have the luxury of loving all music. No music should be considered less on account of its ethnic origin. And regional music would be played anytime and not just at its allotted season. But we are not in that world yet. Until and unless we can move around in any society without being targets to be choked or shot to death by the police, or because there is no police, or followed in a store, or held without bail for a marijuana spliff, we will know we are not in that world. We wish there were not so many casualties until that world arrives. Nothing said here should diminish the contributions of enlightened European, Indian or other Indigenous contributions to culture and their cultural exclusion from Western Civilization. It must be said that they too suffered under this musical apartheid, not only to promote whiteness, but to prevent any challenge to whiteness and the power and economics of it. If you understand the connection between our simple pleasures, our humanity, and the role of historic and continuing injustice, then do we have a job for you.
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By Clairmont Chung
Writer, Filmmaker
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