Musician Derry Etkins dies
Guyanese musician Derry Etkins has died during recovery from a minor surgery.
Etkins passed at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), this newspaper confirmed last evening.
Etkins, who was revered among Caribbean musicians as a composer, multiinstrumentalist and music educator, had a career with spanned four decades and at least three Caribbean territories.
In a 2012 interview with Stabroek News, he indicated that his greatest desire was to see Guyanese music take its place in the world and to one day play his part by teaching Guyanese children to appreciate music more.
“Throughout history, there have been artistic movements coinciding with political movements,” he said at the time.
A graduate of Queen’s College, Etkins composed almost all of his teaching material and played several musical instruments. He was a bassist turned pianist who fiddled with a few other things, including the trombone, which he described as fascinating.
He spent several years living in Barbados, where he worked with calypsonians and non-calypsonians such as, Red Plastic Bag, Bumba, Kid Site, Mystic, Holly, Classic, Edwin (Yearwood), Wendy Alleyne and Sheldon Hope.
Etkins also attended a few Caribbean song festivals as musical director for singers who represented Barbados. He was the musical arranger twice in the five times Barbados won at the festival, including the year that sealed the “hat trick” for Barbados.
In his later years he dedicated a significant amount of his time to teaching music in Tortola and was most recently employed as a lecturer at the Cyril Potter College of Education as part of attempts to increase the music literacy of the Guyanese population.
Guyanese vocalist Paul Cort worked with him on this endeavour told Sunday Stabroek that Etkins will be truly missed.
“Derry and I worked closely on the Primary Schools Music Initiative with the Ministry of Education which was the brainchild of Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, then Minister of Education. I happily relinquished my post as the main facilitator to him because his institutional wisdom was immeasurable,” he said.
Speaking of Etkins’ skill as an educator, Cort noted that was exactly what Guyana needed at this time in the way of a music educator. “He was the repository of over 40 years’ experience in the teaching profession between Guyana, Barbados and Tortola. He’s among the few who have taught at the nursery, primary, secondary and now the tertiary level,” Cort told Sunday Stabroek.
He explained that Etkins was among a few remaining persons who did the Organisation for Canadian Overseas Development (OCOD) training programme in the 1980s.
One of Cort’s classmates in the programme, Gem Rohlehr-Vogt, told this newspaper that as one of the few qualified music educators, Etkins’ contributions will be sorely missed.
“He loved arranging and teaching theory. Many musicians don’t like theory much less teaching it. His loss is significant,” she noted.